Network / Wall Street

NETWORK, 1976, MGM Repertory, 121 min. Director Sidney Lumet helmed this brilliantly vitriolic dissection of network television from Paddy Chayefsky’s Oscar-winning script. Peter Finch won a posthumous Oscar for Best Actor as Howard Beale, the fired news anchorman who goes mad on nationwide TV, threatening to kill himself on camera and utters the famous line: “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” William Holden is equally impressive as Beale’s old friend and boss, head of network news Max Shumacher.

WALL STREET, 1987, 20th Century Fox, 125 min. Ambitious, greenhorn stockbroker Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) becomes the protégé of Machiavellian corporate raider Gordon Gecko (Michael Douglas, in an Oscar-winning portrayal), and things seem to be going swimmingly in the world of high- stakes risk-taking until voraciously unscrupulous Gecko takes his greedy aspirations too far.