1915. Early epic by D.W.Griffith. Impressive visually but most people consider it racist.

1954. The rise of motorcycle gangs in the 50's produced this film about the issue. Brando's famous line when asked "What are you rebelling about?' He replied: 'What have you got?' Oscar nom for Brando.

1962. Having been raised in Canada, I don't think I appreciated till later how sociologically important this movie was to the USA during the civil rights movement. AFI chose Atticus Finch as the 'greatest hero' in films.

1964. Cynical satire re cold war and 'the bomb'. Dark humor was the controversy because a similar DRAMA called Failsafe the same year was NOT controversial.

1967. A watershed film in movie history. Controversies re violence, sexual frankness, the depiction of criminals as human(heroes?) and the juxtaposition of violence and comedy. A changing of the 'guard' and generational shift among movie critics too. Best Picture nominee.

1969. Touched nerves with its finger on the pulse of the nation.Disturbing picture of 60's society and mutual mistrust of culture groups.

1969. Jon Voigt/Dustin Hoffman vehicle. The first and only R-rated movie to win the Oscar for Best Picture.

1972.Controversial sexual content. Probably Burt Reynold's best movie. He and Clint Eastwood were the top two boxoffice male stars of the 70's.

1973. This movie scared many people. There were stories of audience members becoming ill, heart attacks and ambulance calls.

1979. Francis Coppola's(The Godfather) reworking the Joseph Conrad novel 'Heart Of Darkness' into part of the Vietnam experience.

1994. Full of violence and mayhem. At least one (maybe more) actual murders were thought to have been 'inspired' by this movie.

1996. One-sided examination/polemic about the issue of capital punishment. It wasn't really all that controversial because it didn't do especially well at the boxoffice. Oscar win for Sarandon though.

2004. Violence and supposed anti-Semitism. But latter accusation is unfair. Faithful to scripture,depicts both bad and good Jews. So you'd have to say the Bible itself is racist, which is ridic !!!)But Gibson himself now seems to be(TWO major incidents now)But let's not blame the Bible for HIS behavior.

Account of the heroic/tragic downed airplane episode during the 9/11 attack. Film itself not controversial, but many people (including audiences)thought it was 'Too soon!' after the actual event.(World Trade Center too)