I caught the end of BILLY ELLIOT last night and was choking up before I even realized it. I actually own the film, but somehow catching it unexpectedly like that as I was looking for a laugh before bed, sandbagged me, emotionally.
Movies like that inspired me when I was young, often based on true stories with plots that involve someone from a working-class background overcoming the odds to achieve some unlikely goal.
Now, at a later age, they just move me, sometimes because they remind me of some of my own struggles and how they were overcome, or not.
So, I thought I’d make another alphabet movie list (I have the feeling I’ve done one like this before) of movies that used to inspire me to push on with my own attempts to transcend my background and circumstances and now choke me up with emotional satisfaction as I watch them and sometimes see some of my life reflected in them.
ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN and APOLLO 13
BILLY ELLIOT and BREAKING AWAY
COAL MINER’S DAUGHTER and CHARIOTS OF FIRE
DANCES WITH WOLVES
ERIN BROCKOVICH
FIELD OF DREAMS
GOOD WILL HUNTING, THE GREATEST GAME EVER PLAYED and GLORY
HOOSIERS
IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT
JERRY MAGUIRE
KILLING FIELDS, THE
LEAN ON ME and LUCAS
MY LEFT FOOT, MIRACLE and MISTER HOLLAND’S OPUS
NORMA RAE
ON THE WATERFRONT
PREFONTAINE
QUIET MAN, THE
RUDY, REMEMBER THE TITANS, ROCKY and ROCKY BALBOA
SEA BISCUIT, STAND & DELIVER and SCHINDLER’S LIST
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and 12 ANGRY MEN
UPSIDE OF ANGER, THE
VERDICT, THE
WHALE RIDER
X?
YANKEE DOODLE DANDY
ZERO FOR CONDUCT
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3 comments:
Melanie Griffith in "Working Girl"....big-haired girl from Staten Island makes good.
: )
The 'poor little rich boy' in "Captains Courageous" certainly isn't my story specifically but he nonetheless transcends his callowness to something less self-centered. Plus, I just love the story, the cast (Spencer Tracy as a Portuguese fisherman...I don't buy it any more than when he played a Mexican in Tortilla Flats yet his last scene always gets me), the setting on a end-of-an era fishing ship, all of it with a mid-Thirties MGM (?) sensibility. I'd watch it right now if I could.
Great additions. WORKING GIRL is exactly right, as is one I forgot MILLION DOLLAR BABY (the one with Swank and Clint and Freeman).
As for CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS, aboslutely. It's funny I didn't really think of many older flicks as I usually do, ones from my childhood etc. But thinking of them NATIONAL VELVET also comes to mind as a great one. And what was that more recent one based on a true story about the little girl and the horse who wins the race with Chris Kristoferson as the grandfather?
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