In Cold Blood (1967)

No film can top or even equal Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood,” one of the greatest American nonfiction books ever printed. Yet in 1967, a film of “Cold” rattled America’s nerves with unprecedented harshness and profanity.

Writer/director Richard Brooks, using stark black and white cinematography, lays out an almost journalistic take on the massacre of a Kansas farm family by two low-level crooks (Robert Blake is Perry Smith, and Scott Wilson is Richard Hickcock). We follow the killers, the family and the police, with some vibrant editing as the actual shootings are put toward the end.

The movie is wildly faithful to the book except in one key area – Capote’s self-involved writer has been replaced by a crusty old alpha-male reporter. A homophobic slap against Capote? I don’t think so. As demonstrated in more recent films (“Capote”), the very short guy was larger than life. No, this film works. This needs a reporter to melt into the walls, not bang over the camera. This is about a senseless crime committed by two lost guys, who can just as easily give a ride to a stranded grandpa and a young boy on the road.

The performances are amazing, the judgments harsh all around, with violence that still shocks despite being off screen. A

Capote (2005)

Watching “Capote” is almost dizzying: It’s a film based on a nonfiction book that documents Truman Capote’s research and writing of the ground-breaking nonfiction book “In Cold Blood,” which was later turned into a celebrated 1960s film. The twist here: Not only was a Kansas farm family butchered in cold blood for roughly $50, but Capote (Philip Seymour Hoffman) reported on the initial crimes and then manipulated the subsequent trials to his own liking, in (ice) cold blood. Capote is played as the ultimate self-centered artist: Everything and everyone is in service to his convenience. When he sees the farm family bodies in their coffins, the moment of horror is about his reaction; after he gets the killers new trials, he panics that he won’t have a solid ending by deadline; he scoffs at the success of friend/co-researcher Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird.” This is a fascinating, layered tale of a man who, biblical cliché alert, loses his soul to the gain the world (or the world’s admiration) and seems to realize it. Or does he? That Hoffman manages to not only humanize Capote, but make him a victim of his own ego is a wonder. A-