Secret Honor (1984)

Alone in his New Jersey study, Philip Baker Hall’s Richard Nixon monologues to a tape recorder, detailing all the personal slights he has experienced through his life that led to the Watergate scandal. It’s an exhausting hour and a half where the President’s full paranoia, anger, and self-denial are laid bare. The dialogue goes off the rails so often that it’s sometimes impossible what tangent he will connect to next. Hall’s performance is astounding and exceptionally tiring to watch. He looks physically drained and ill by the film’s end.