John Sayles' panoramic survey of a Texas border town's turbulent racial politics is a noirish mystery, with Chris Cooper's sheriff investigating an old murder that might have involved his straight shooting dad. But where most noir's mysteries go deep into sex and violence, Lone Star explores the fraught human relations amongst coexisting cultures.

Lone Star, Matthew McConaughey, 1996, © Sony Pictures Classics. Photo courtesy of the Everett Collection.