I had to read The Great Gatsby in high school (as no doubt many other American high school kids did), and absolutely hated it, because in the end, nothing mattered and virtually the entire exercise seemed for naught.

I really need to go back and read it again as an adult, not as a 15 year old, and see if my opinion has changed. I will say, I thought the Gatsby movie with DiCaprio was a ton of fun and held my interest far longer than I assumed it would. But then again, I've enjoyed almost every film of Baz Luhrman's I've seen, so I shouldn't have been surprised. They're definitely more about the spectacle as opposed to the content, but I think that works in the case of something like Gatsby, because that world was all about the spectacle and less about the content. :)

Lovely compare/contrast, @janenightshade. Vertigo, naturally, is a classic and better viewers and would-be critics than I have said far better things about it than I ever could, so I won't bother. :)