"Made in America" (1993)

Genre: Comedy
Starring: Whoopi Goldberg, Ted Danson, Will Smith

An independent black woman conceives a child with the help of a spermbank. When her daughter discovers the truth 18 years later and attempts to learn who her anonymous father is, he turns out to be a car dealer who also happens to be white.

"Babel" (2006)

Genre: Drama
Starring: Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Gael Garcia Bernal, Rinko Kikuchi

Brilliantly conceived, superbly directed, and beautifully acted, Babel is inarguably one of the best films of 2006. Director Alejandro Gonzalez I?arritu and his co-writer, Guillermo Arriaga weave together the disparate strands of their story into a finely hewn fabric by focusing on what appear to be several equally incongruent characters: an American (Brad Pitt) touring Morocco with his wife (Cate Blanchett) become the focus of an international incident also involving a hardscrabble Moroccan farmer (Mustapha Rachidi) struggling to keep his two young sons in line and his family together. A San Diego nanny (Adriana Barraza), her employers absent, makes the disastrous decision to take their kids with her to a wedding in Mexico. And a deaf-mute Japanese teen (the extraordinary Rinko Kikuchi) deals with a relationship with her father (Koji Yakusho) and the world in general that's been upended by the death of her mother. It is perhaps not surprising, or particularly original, that a gun is the device that ties these people together. Yet Babel isn't merely about violence and its tragic consequences. It's about communication, and especially the lack of it--both intercultural, raising issues like terrorism and immigration, and intracultural, as basic as husbands talking to their wives and parents understanding their children. If you want a movie that will leave you thinking, Babel is it.

"Snakes on a Plane" (2006)

Genre: Thriller
Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Julianna Margulies, Nathan Phillips

On board a flight over the Pacific Ocean, an assassin, bent on killing a passenger who's a witness in protective custody, let loose a crate full of deadly snakes.