Once Upon a Time in America (1984)

Almost four hours long, and somewhere in the middle of Once Upon a Time in America, Noodles commits an ugly act the film never earns back, then asks you to keep caring about him anyway. That’s a big stone in this shoe. The rest is a gangster movie that plays like a half-remembered dream, drifting between three eras under a smoky haze. The childhood section is the best stretch: kids running small scams in the shadow of the Manhattan Bridge, a boy on a staircase losing a long battle with a cream pastry, the pan flute floating over everything. James Woods plays Max like a con man who believes his own pitch. Robert De Niro mostly watches and remembers, which works better than it should. Box office was a shrug at $5.5 million worldwide, but its IMDb rating now sits at an 8.3. An 8.4 because it’s gorgeous, patient and haunting, with one choice I can’t forgive. $918 says you go looking for a cream pastry within a day of finishing this, and eat it slowly on purpose.

What works: The childhood chapters, the pan flute score, James Woods’s dangerous Max and a dreamy structure that makes the whole thing feel like memory.

What doesn’t: It runs nearly four hours, the time jumps can lose you, and an ugly act by Noodles poisons sympathy the film still expects you to give.

Who it’s for: Patient viewers who love slow, sprawling gangster epics and don’t mind a movie that leaves its biggest questions open.