That Thing You Do! is the kind of movie only a man with a particular amount of clout can get made. An off-beat comedy about a fake rock band from the ’60s starring a bunch of unknowns and unfamiliar songs to boot? Maybe if it was a comic book first. But thank the powers that be for Tom Hanks and his odd sensibilities. He may be a two-time Oscar winner and an impassioned producer of WWII serialized dramas, but when it came to his directorial debut, the end product was something closer to his Bosom Buddies/The Man with One Red Shoe days. When That Thing You Do! hit theaters it bombed, barely making back its budget and putting Hanks’s directing career in question. Not even Tom Freakin’ Hanks could get his passion project to play with audiences. That very well could have been the end of the actor behind the camera. But lo and behold, a decade and a half later, Hanks returns this weekend with another oddball flick, Larry Crowne. Whether the new comedy (sporting plenty of familiar faces) can counter-program Transformers 3 and survive the competitive summer isn’t the point — we should be happy enough he made something. With Larry Crowne, Hanks has succeeded in doing what so few of his actor-turned-director friends have managed: to make a second movie. Here are a few thespians who took the plunge into filmmaking, only to return to their day jobs after one outing.

This is not at all the first film adaptation of the classic tale, but the 1962 version of Mutiny on the Bounty featuring Marlon Brando, Trevor Howard and Richard Harris might be the most iconic. This trailer boasts that the ship involved in Lewis Milestone‘s film is the first built from the keel up specifically for a motion picture. In a time where matte paintings replaced real world backgrounds, Milestone took his crew over the ocean to film, and the result was something as frighteningly realistic as possible. It also doesn’t hurt that his cast is one of the strongest ever assembled. With On Stranger Tides coming out tomorrow, it seems even more fitting that we should head out for the open sea with a couple of strong personalities.

I believe it was Robinson Crusoe who once said “Fess up, Friday” after discovering a urine puddle on his straw shack’s linoleum floor. As revolutionary as that statement was almost three hundred years ago, it took a young man by the name of William B. Goss to bring it into the digital age. Thanks to his initiative, #fessupfriday is the most-used hashtag in Twitter’s four decades of existence. There are certain movies that every cinephile should have seen, but only the brave foolhardy movie lovers immune to ridicule actually admit to the acknowledged classics that have so far eluded them. Which brings me to Francis Ford Coppola’s epic Vietnam adventure, Apocalypse Now. #fessupfriday

We’re spending all week celebrating war movies. Today we revel in the story of three men from very different backgrounds, all confronting the realities of the early days of Hitler’s rise to power.

The Criterion Collection debuted two great releases last week with Ang Lee’s Ride With The Devil, and Sidney Lumet’s The Fugitive Kind. We didn’t have a chance to check either of these titles out yet, but we think both are worth talking about.

With the Academy Awards right around the corner, I’ve had history on the brain. Ever since I bought my mom The History of Oscar in the 11th grade (she’s a lover of Hollywood’s big night), I’ve been curious about Best Picture winners. What made something the Best Picture of its particular year, and how has the criteria for such an award evolved over the years? In an effort to start this journey, I sat down this weekend with four best pics from an era long before my time…

Have we gone from yelling, “Stella!” to the heavens to sarcastically smirking? Are our actors faking it?

Explore the depths of the Zapata’s Mexican Revolution – or at least Elia Kazan and John Steinbeck’s version. And did we mention Marlon Brando’s involved?