Movies about war correspondents

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

is the latest in a long line of movies about journalists embedded in far-off lands, covering conflagrations and civil strife, being seduced by exotic cultures, falling in love, falling into dangerous intrigue.

Here are a few of the best from down through the decades:

Foreign Correspondent (1940) Alfred Hitchcock's thriller about a scrappy New York City beat reporter (Joel McCrea) assigned to cover the impending crisis in Europe.

The Passenger (1975) Jack Nicholson is a television reporter working on a documentary in Chad when a businessman in the same ramshackle hotel dies, and Nicholson decides to assume the dead man's identity - shedding his own life and woes in the process. Michelangelo Antonioni directs, the pace is slow, and the character Maria Schneider plays - windblown and beautiful - makes no sense. But this is a haunting film, even if the reportorial elements take a backseat to the sense of alienation and existential gloom.

The Year of Living Dangerously (1982) Mel Gibson is an Australian journalist covering the Indonesian tumult of 1965, when Jakarta was in violent upheaval and Sigourney Weaver was on the staff of the British Embassy. Linda Hunt won an Oscar for her performance as the dwarf Billy Kwan.

The Killing Fields (1984) The story of the relationship between New York Times reporter Sidney Schanberg (Sam Waterston) and his Cambodian colleague Dith Pran (Haing S. Ngor), and Schanberg's long struggle to help his friend when he is captured by the Khmer Rouge.

Salvador (1986) James Woods is a Bay Area photojournalist who heads to El Salvador with his DJ buddy (James Belushi) only to discover that the civil strife there is far more serious, and dangerous, than they'd planned on. Oliver Stone directs.

Cry Freedom (1987) Denzel Washington is South African political activist Steve Biko and Kevin Kline is the journalist Donald Woods, whose initial wariness of Biko's radicalism gives way to a deep friendship and respect.

Welcome to Sarajevo (1997) Michael Winterbottom's gripping film about the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina, with Stephen Dillane as a British TV reporter covering the carnage, and Woody Harrelson as his American counterpart, holed up in the Holiday Inn as the bombs and bullets start flying.

Live from Baghdad (2002) Michael Keaton is a CNN producer in Iraq as the first Gulf War begins. Taut drama adapted from CNN producer Robert Wiener's book of the same name. Helena Bonham Carter co-stars, Mick Jackson directs.

The Good German (2006) Steven Soderbergh's black-and-white throwback to 1940s noirs stars George Clooney as a reporter for the New Republic, arrived in Berlin just after the war and ensnared in a mystery involving counterfeit Reichsmarks, a missing German, and his Jewish wife (Cate Blanchett), who survived the war any way she could.

- Steven Rea