The Great Gatsby (2001)

Superb dialogue and the use of dreamy scene overlaps and flashbacks mark this gorgeous, deceptively simple, and quietly intense A&E original movie adaptation of THE GREAT GATSBY. F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic tale of the Jazz Age begins in the summer of 1922, when honest, mild-mannered Nick Carraway moves from Chicago to Long Island to learn the bond trade. Nick lives in a bungalow in West Egg, the Nouveau Riche area where the wealthy, mysterious, party-loving Jay Gatsby lives in his sprawling mansion. Nick's cousin, Daisy Buchanan, and her brutish husband, Tom, live in the more coveted East Egg, where Daisy's fun-loving girlhood friend Jordan is staying with them. While Tom has a married girlfriend on the side, it is also soon revealed that Daisy has a past with the infamous Gatsby, whose love she once rejected because of his formerly low status. Nick reluctantly agrees to reunite Daisy and Gatsby but, before he knows it, he finds himself drawn into a world of heavy drinking, infidelity, dishonesty amid hints of a seedy underworld. Truer to the novel than any other film adaptation, this version of THE GREAT GATSBY beautifully and dramatically weaves a tangled web of wealth and entitlement, love and longing, brutality and apathy.