In limited release to qualify for the Oscars, The Quiet American is a towering achievement with a soul-baring performance by Michael Caine that deserves the highest praise. Based on Graham Greene's 1955 novel that skewers early U.S. involvement in Vietnam, the film boasts a probing script by Christopher Hampton and Robert Schenkkan. It's a personal best for Aussie director Phillip Noyce, on a roll with his remarkable Rabbit-Proof Fence (the factual story of three aboriginal girls fighting white colonialists).

Caine plays Thomas Fowler, a veteran London Times journalist assigned to Saigon, circa 1952. The married Thomas has taken a teen mistress, Phuong (Do Thi Hai Yen), who supplies him with sex and opium. What Caine shows to piercing effect is the love Thomas feels for the girl, a love threatened by the arrival of Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser is strikingly good), the deceptively naive American who may be behind a bombing in Saigon Square charged to the communists. Noyce stages the action to stunning effect, and he brings delicacy to the battle waged by the men over Phuong, a symbol of her country. Caine has never been better, which is saying something. He puts a human face on a tragic era of history in a film that ranks with the year's finest.

“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.