Ulee's Gold

Written and directed by Victor Nuñez, this drama earned Peter Fonda the only Oscar nomination of his career. Fonda plays Ulee Jackson, a widowed third generation beekeeper in the Florida panhandle who came back from Vietnam alive but carries the war in his limp and his survivor's guilt. His son is in prison after a botched bank robbery, his daughter in law has disappeared into drug addiction in Orlando, and Ulee raises his two granddaughters alone, too stubbornly independent to ask anyone for help. The title points both to the tupelo honey he produces and to the money his son stole, which brings his son's former criminal associates to the door. Fonda won the Golden Globe for Best Actor and the New York Film Critics Circle award, while the Oscar went to Jack Nicholson for As Good as It Gets. The film marked Jessica Biel's feature debut and grossed over nine million dollars in the United States against a two point seven million dollar budget, with Roger Ebert giving it three and a half stars out of four and writing that Fonda revealed a depth of talent nobody had suspected. Who it's for: Viewers who like quiet, slow moving American rural dramas carried by a single performance. Who it's not for: Not for anyone expecting a fast moving crime story, since the film focuses on a man cracking his emotional shell rather than on suspense.