'Avalon' Is Thanksgiving for America

Barry Levinson was one of the most successful directors in America around 1990, when he made Avalon, an immigrant Thanksgiving movie trying to sum up the transformation of the American family in the 20th century. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for Rain Man in 1988, a blockbuster about modern America that received eight Oscar nominations total, winning four. He would go on to make the gangster period piece Bugsy in 1991, personally receiving two more Oscar nominations out of the movie’s 10. But Avalon, which also received four nominations, is the most memorable of them all.