The best Austin Pendleton’s drama movies

John Nash is a brilliant but asocial mathematician fighting schizophrenia. After he accepts secret work in cryptography, his life takes a turn for the nightmarish.

Molly Gunn, the freewheeling daughter of a deceased rock legend, is forced to get a job when her manager steals her money. As nanny for precocious Ray, the oft ignored daughter of a music executive she learns what it means to be an adult while teaching Ray how to be a child.

A bombardier in World War II tries desperately to escape the insanity of the war. However, sometimes insanity is the only sane way to cope with a crazy situation.

An unhappily married socialite finds solace in the company of a recently divorced doctor.

A journalist suffering from burn-out wants to finally say goodbye to his office – but his boss doesn’t like the idea one bit.

A prepubescent chess prodigy refuses to harden himself in order to become a champion like the famous but unlikable Bobby Fischer.

During the Republican run of the 2008 Presidential election, candidate John McCain picks a relative unknown, Alaskan governor Sarah Palin, to be his running mate. As the campaign kicks into high gear, her lack of experience, in both political and media savvy, becomes a drain upon McCain and his strategists.

Rose Morgan, who still lives with her mother, is a professor of Romantic Literature who desperately longs for passion in her life. Gregory Larkin, a mathematics professor, has been burned by passionate relationships and longs for a sexless union based on friendship and respect.

A suburban housewife chokes to death and is brought back to life by a spell cast by her wacky sister.

After losing her job, making out with her soon to be ex-boss, and finding out that her daughter plans to spend Thanksgiving with her boyfriend, Claudia Larson has to face spending the holiday with her family. She wonders if she can survive their crazy antics.

Adrienne Mark (Jeanne Moreau) is the most acclaimed French novelist of her generation, whose best known work, Je M'Appelle France, was an international best-seller made into an award-winning French film (and a disastrous Americanized remake). Adrienne is living in New York City when she learns that the flat in Paris where she grew up (as Adrienne Markowsky) is up for sale. Looking for a key to her past, she buys the apartment and discovers a cache of letters written by her late mother. Adrienne's mother died in a Nazi concentration camp during WWII, but while she's been led to believe that her mother was betrayed while working with the resistance, the letters suggest that the truth was far more troubling. Along the way, Adrienne is romantically pursued by a young fan, William O'Hara (Josh Hamilton), though he instead finds love with Virginia Kelly (Sean Young), an American film producer eager to work with the great writer.

Bettie Page grew up in a conservative religious family in Tennessee and became a photo model sensation in 1950s New York. Bettie's legendary pin-up photos made her the target of a Senate investigation into pornography, and transformed her into an erotic icon who continues to enthrall fans to this day.

Strip Search follows several parallel stories examining personal freedoms vs. national security in the aftermath of 9/11; two main subplots involve an American woman detained in China and an Arab man detained in New York City.

A successful "house tuner" in New York City, who calibrates the sound in people's homes in order to adjust their moods, meets a client with a problem he can't solve.

Retired police lieutenant Al Giardello is running for mayor when he is suddenly shot at a press conference. All of the detectives, past and present, clamor for an opportunity to help find the shooter.

Thaddeus Mackenzie, a wealthy lawyer, learns that he is dying and decides to sell all of his property and visit his old friend Allen Hayden. Allen is a struggling artist with a passion for life who once survived by working the streets, but now is romantically involved with Eva, a wealthy European gallery owner living in L.A. Thaddeus implores Allen to find Jamie, a young street hustler that Thaddeus had once tried to rescue. Allen returns to the streets to face the dark corners of his past where he must choose between what he left behind and the uncertainty that lies ahead.

A destitute 14-year-old struggles to keep his life together despite harsh abuse at his mother's hands, harsher abuse at his father's, and a growing separation from his slightly older brother.

In 1839, the slave ship Amistad set sail from Cuba to America. During the long trip, Cinque leads the slaves in an unprecedented uprising. They are then held prisoner in Connecticut, and their release becomes the subject of heated debate. Freed slave Theodore Joadson wants Cinque and the others exonerated and recruits property lawyer Roger Baldwin to help his case. Eventually, John Quincy Adams also becomes an ally.

Set during World War II, an upper-class family begins to fall apart due to the conservative nature of the patriarch and the progressive values of his children.