The Soloist and the dignity of non-judgment

 

The Soloist, based on a true story, shines a heart-warming ray of light into squalor, blight and hopelessness.

The backdrop is Los Angeles, which ultimately serves as a metaphor for the human condition, and it's depressing. 

Throughout the film we are shown alternating images and vistas of beauty and ugliness, order and chaos, light and darkness: in one scene, the camera pans upwards from the literal underbelly of streets where the homeless Mr. Nathaniel Anthony Ayers (played by Jamie Foxx) lives to the bright shiny streets of downtown Los Angeles where Times writer Steve Lopez (played by Robert Downey, Jr.) works. There are plenty of more visually disturbing scenes to offset the bright, sunny beautiful scenes worth seeing almost for their own sake. But the screenplay is not the driving force of this movie. The driving force of this movie is, absolutely, the story - no car chase, no explosions, no '"big reveal" twist ending...just a heartwarming story.

You can't handle the truth! A Few Good Men, complexity and judgment

"You want answers?"
"I think I'm entitled."
"You want answers?"
"I want the truth!"
"You can't handle the truth!"

That great line was voted as the #29 movie quote by the American Film Institute (out of 100), and #92 of "The 100 Greatest Movie Lines" by Premiere in 2007.

A Few Good Men is loosely based on a true story. In the movie, two soldiers are charged with killing one of their bunkmates. Demi Moore, Kevin Pollack and Tom Cruise are to defend them, and it's supposed to be but a bit of paperwork to put these young men away...but something doesn't add up.

Star Wars, Complexity and Judgment

For the first Generation X people who saw Star Wars in theatres as a kid in 1977 (like myself), our minds were simple - the bad guy was bad, the good guy was good, and "story" was basically about how the good guy would eventually beat the bad guy. In Star Wars, Darth Vader was the bad guy and wore black, pretty simple. At the end, his TIE fighter spiraled out of control and the theatres erupted with cheers - the bad guy was vanquished, victory won.

Enter The Empire Strikes Back and - hold the phone - the bad guy ain't so bad...is he? When he said those words "I am your father!", although we in the theatres gasped in unison with Luke "Noooo!", by the end of the movie - Luke outfitted with a new mechanical hand, Han Solo frozen in carbonite - it was clear there must needs be at least one more installment to complete the story even though we had indeed "searched our feelings, and knew it to be true."