9. The Notebook (2004) – I haven’t watched this movie in a long time, and you know that I love me some Ryan Gosling. I’m not going to give you the story, because who doesn’t already know it? This romance is so heartwarming, so romantic, and oh, that kiss in the rain with Rachel McAdams! Also aboard are James Garner and Gena Rowlands. Good story, great cast, and did I mention Ryan Gosling? 4½ kisses in the rain.
10. Becoming Warren Buffett* – Warren Buffett is not your average octogenarian multi-billionaire. The so-called “Oracle of Omaha” is a fairly average guy, just one who is much smarter and more patient than most people when it comes to investing. His wealth came from his management of Berkshire Hathaway, and his philosophy has been simple and consistent: Buffett believes in compounding. Invest a dollar and let it grow. That’s why his BH stock has gone up so much, without stock splits and without rapid turnover. He lives his life in the same way, constantly reading about the financial markets, retaining the same core group of employees (about 25 of them have been with him for decades), operating out of the same office building and living in the first house he purchased. If the market is up, he allows himself the more expensive McDonald’s breakfast on his way to work. It is a formula that has succeeded, as evidenced by his estimated $67 billion net worth. Friends like fellow billionaire Bill Gates set the standard for philanthropy, and they have inspired Buffett to leave the bulk of his fortune to the Gates Foundation, where his money will help millions of people around the world. This is an engrossing story about a fascinating man and well worth investing 90 minutes to watch on HBO. 4 cans.
11. Fracture (2007) – It looks like a slam dunk case of attempted murder for assistant prosecutor Willy Beachum (Ryan Gosling; yes, I’m on a Gosling roll this month). Ted Crawford (Anthony Hopkins) is arrested in his own house for the shooting of his now-comatose wife. The authorities have his signed confession and there is a witness who heard the shot. But the murder weapon can’t be found and the arresting officer was having an affair with the victim. And then there is the accused, a brilliant, manipulative man who decides to act as his own attorney. Willy catches this case a week before he is scheduled to leave the prosecutor’s office for a much more prestigious and lucrative job in a big, cushy law firm. What could happen? This movie is suspenseful, intriguing and arresting (in a sense…). Watch it carefully because you won’t see the twists and turns coming. 4 cans.
12. Lion* (2016) – Remember “The Girl on the Train?” Well, this movie is “The Kid on the Train.” In a desperately poor region of India, five-year old Saroo tags along with his older brother as Guddu attempts to find some money-making activity. He leaves Saroo on a bench in the train station until he can return, but Saroo awakes, finds himself all alone, and disobeys his brother’s instructions. He boards an out-of-service train that takes off for a long journey with this poor lost child. Living on the street in an area thousands of miles from home – and where the people speak a different language – he uses an incredibly astute sense of danger to protect himself. Eventually, he winds up in an orphanage with many other lost or abandoned children. But Saroo is one of the lucky ones, as he is adopted by a loving couple (Nicole Kidman and David Wenham) who take him to Tasmania to live. He grows up (played by Dev Patel) haunted by his past and yearning to reunite with his birth family. But how can he find them, so many years later? This film is heartwarming and harrowing at the same time. The little boy (Sunny Pawar) who plays young Saroo is a revelation. This movie is based on a true story, which is amazing. 4 cans.
13. The Nice Guys* (2016) – Even watching Ryan Gosling on a snow day couldn’t save this movie. Gosling and Russell Crowe team up – when they aren’t beating each other up – as private investigators in search of an actress who may or may not be dead and a porn movie that may or may not exist. This film is supposed to be of the “film noire” genre, which I believe is the French phrase for “everything is dark and hard to see.” When they are not engaged in machine gun fights and falling off balconies and other mayhem, the two leads do have a good degree of chemistry, but you could have left this one in the chem lab. Sorry, Ryan, you were good, but the movie? Not so nice. 2 cans.
14. The Good Guy* (2010) – This contemporary drama looks at the lives of some young, hip New Yorkers. Tommy (Scott Porter) is always under pressure at the Wall Street bank where he works, and Daniel (Bryan Greenburg), a genuinely nice guy (no relation to the movie listed above) is hired to be a replacement for one of the guys on Tommy’s team. These guys are young, rich, aggressive and misogynistic when it comes to women. Tommy’s very nice girlfriend, Beth (Alexis Bledel) believes him and believes in him – and she shouldn’t, because Tommy is a cheating, lying scumbag. In my opinion, of course. Daniel, on the other hand, is not, and you root for him NOT to become like the guys in the office. Not a great movie (not even a good title), and proof again that Alexis Bledel will never exceed the limited acting ability she demonstrated in “Gilmore Girls.” 3 cans, at best.
15. The Impossible* (2012) – The Impossible would be “The Improbable” if I didn’t already know that this movie about the deadly 2004 tsumani in Thailand was true. Kudos to the director, J. A. Bayona, and the tech crew for a terrifying reenactment of the tsunami hitting a hotel where Henry and Maria (Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts) are vacationing with their three young children. Maria is swept away but manages to stay with her oldest son, who turns into the caretaker for his seriously injured mother. The audience doesn’t know initially whether she will survive or whether the rest of the family has been killed. The aftermath of the tsunami is equally harrowing, as people desperately search for their loved ones. This film is a celebration of the human spirit, not just among the injured, but also among those who love them and help each other. 3 cans.
16. The Great Santini (1979) – Bull Meechum (Robert Duvall) is neither great nor is he named Santini. But the Marine fighter pilot is the alpha male to his squadron, the first one to gather the guys for drinks and pull outrageous stunts, to defy authority even while he enforces it menacingly at home. He demands respect from his wife (Blythe Danner) and kids, the oldest of whom is a teenager coming of age and beginning to question his father’s authority. Bull is relentless, whether he is moving his military family from place to pace or playing any kind of game with the kids. He sees himself always as a winner. There is a famous scene where his son (Michael O’Keefe) beats him in basketball for the first time ever, despite Bull’s attempt to change the rules to slither out of the loss. When the son won’t comply, Bull starts throwing the ball at his son’s head, as if to shake a change of mind out of him. The action takes place in the South, and there are subplots regarding racism and white supremacy that help show that O’Keefe’s character has somehow developed the empathy his father lacks. Duvall is at his military best here, prepping for his part in “Apocalypse Now” to some extent. Not a fun movie to watch, but well made from a novel by Pat Conroy. 3½ cans.
17. Catch Me If You Can (2002) – As the Sinatra song goes, “I’ve been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn and a king.” Frank Abagnale Jr. wasn’t quite ALL of those things, but substitute in airline pilot, doctor and lawyer and you get the background of a very young man who bluffed his way through multiple careers while cashing in on check fraud, eluding the frantic attempts of his personal Jauvert, an FBI agent named Carl Hanratty (trusty Tom Hanks), to capture him. Abagnale (Leonardo DiCaprio) is an earnest and charming teenager when he figures out how to dupe older and less wise adults, talking himself into jobs, passing the bar and posing at a pilot. He studies his craft, gleaning information from people in his chosen professions who are all too willing to share. And he proves himself to be a more-than-worthy opponent to the FBI as he dupes Hanratty the first time they face off. This movie is based on the true story of Abagnale, who was a clever and cunning con man. Catch it if you can. 4 cans.
18. Paterson* (2017) – I asked a friend of mine who had already seen this movie whether it was good. She described it as “a week in the life of a bus driver,” and that pretty accurately sums it up. Adam Driver plays a pleasant guy who wakes up early every morning, kisses his wife (Golshifteh Farahani), eats his Cheerios, grabs his Stanley lunch pail and walks to the bus depot to start driving passengers around Paterson, NJ. If you didn’t know anything about Paterson before, it is more than just the spectacular Great Falls. It is the home of poet William Carlos Williams, a man much admired by Paterson the bus driver, himself a poet. The driver comes home each night for dinner, dutifully walks his dog and heads to the local bar for one beer. His supportive wife encourages him with his poetry and fancies herself a bit of an artist, always painting designs on the furniture and her clothing. I hope I didn’t ruin the plot, because that is essentially the entire movie. It is a quiet, sweet little story, the kind of movie where if you happen to fall asleep for a few minutes, you won’t miss much. Roses are red, violets are blue, the most tuna cans I can give this movie is 2.
19. Hell or High Water* (2016) – This buddy movie/road movie/chase movie/cops vs. bank robbers movie is not your typical good guys vs. bad guys story. In some ways, the bad guys are actually good guys, but to reveal more wouldn’t be fair to the screenwriter or the viewer. Let’s just say that Marcus Hamilton (Jeff Bridges), a crusty old Texas Ranger who is about to retire, catches this case and in his laconic but experienced way he sets out to capture the crooks, brothers Toby (Chris Pine) and Tanner (Ben Foster). They are clever enough to elude him at first, but this IS his last go-around, which gives him more motivation. The dialog here is sparse but meaningful. You get the picture of the economics in these dusty Texas towns, where robbing a bank this easily hasn’t been done since Bonnie and Clyde. I definitely had not seen this story before, but it was worth the $5.99 rental to keep me busy on a Saturday night. 4 cans.
20. Moonlight* (2016) – This movie is a powerful look at a very lonely man, taunted for his homosexuality as a boy, who grew up poor, neglected and very much alone in life. Mahershala Ali plays Juan, a local drug dealer who finds young Chiron as he hides from taunting bullies. Chiron is so quiet that Juan isn’t sure whether he can actually speak. Juan becomes a friend to the boy, teaching him to swim and introducing him to his girlfriend Teresa, who becomes a lifeline for him when he needs to flee from his drug addict mother and just find peace somewhere. We see Chiron as a young boy, then a high school student, and finally, as an adult. His life is consumed with loneliness, the only respite coming from a brief sexual encounter in high school with Kevin, a macho classmate who hides his sexuality. This heartbreaking film is not easy to watch and I never want to see it again, but it is a sobering look at isolation, forcing the viewer to experience the pain of not being able to acknowledge one’s own identity. Chiron is trapped in a world without relief from suffering, where he is tagged as gay and traumatized throughout his formative years. 4 cans.
21. Three Days of the Condor (1975) – Joe Turner (Robert Redford) reads books for a living. His employer? The CIA. He and the others in his non-descript office become targets when he uncovers a terrorism plot that the CIA does not want disclosed. Luckily for Turner, he is out to lunch (literally) when intruders invade the office and murder all of his co-workers. The look on Redford’s face throughout most of the film is one of fear and confusion, as he tries to figure out what happened and why, and while he has to protect himself from a paid assassin (Max von Sydow). He drafts a random woman (Faye Dunaway) to assist him, threatening her with a gun and holding her captive. Personally, I would have gone with him willingly, but I’m not in the movie. This movie offers plenty of suspense and a commentary on government agencies and their abuse of power. It may be old, but it remains timely. 3½ cans.
22. The Armstrong Lie (2013) – We’ve seen great examples lately of people telling lies so loudly, so often and so vehemently that their falsehoods almost sound true. This was the case with revered cyclist Lance Armstrong, who suffered a huge fall from grace when he finally admitted that his Tour de France victories were achieved at least in part because he was using banned substances, doping, whatever you want to call it. He cheated. Only he doesn’t think so, because so did all of his competitors, which is borne out by evidence. It was a question of keeping the playing field even, according to Armstrong. OK, big deal, right? Except it was, because Armstrong duped public, the cycling leadership and the US government, who paid him through the sponsorship provided by the USPS. He made enough money to fly private jets, live a lavish lifestyle and employ a well-known doctor who created a “program” intended to keep Armstrong fit and healthy, with a little help from his pharmacological friends. And he got away with it for a long time, demanding acquiescence by his teammates and outfoxing (with the help of his doctor) all available tests designed to detect banned substances. Yes, he raised millions for cancer through his Livestrong Foundation (remember those ubiquitous yellow rubber wristbands?), and yes, he persevered and overcame cancer to win the Tour 7 times. But now, those titles have been stripped from him, his sponsors have dropped him, and he cannot compete in any sport where the Anti-Doping Agency has jurisdiction. This is a hard look at an impossibly driven and arrogant guy who wanted to win at any cost, who defamed others in the course of protecting himself, and whose rise was followed by the inevitable fall. I see a parallel here. 3½ cans.
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