1. 3 idiots (2009)
2. 12 years a slave (2013)
3. 50/50 (2011)
4. A beautiful mind (2001)
5. A simple life – Tao Jie (2012)
6. A time to love and a time to die (1958)
7. Amistad (1997)
8. Barfi! (2012)
9. Biruma no tategoto – The Burmese harp (1956)
10. Changeling (2008)
11. Children of Heaven (1997) = Bacheha-Ye aseman (original title)
12. Chuyến đi cuối cùng của chị Phụng – Madam Phung’s last journey (2014)
13. Cinema Paradiso (1988)
14. City lights (1931)
15. Dances with wolves (1990)
16. Dave (1993)
17. Dearest (2014)
18. Driving Miss Daisy (1989)
19. Erin Brockovich (2000)
20. Firelight (1997)
21. Forrest Gump (1994)
22. Good doctor (2013 TV series)
23. Gran Torino (2008)
24. Hacksaw Ridge (2016)
25. Hart’s war (2002)
26. Heaven & earth (1993)
27. Hotel Rwanda (2004)
28. I am Sam (2001)
29. I can speak (2017)
30. Intouchables – The intouchables (2011)
31. Invictus (2009)
32. Ip Man (2008)
33. It’s a wonderful life (1946)
34. Khid thueng withaya – The teacher’s diary (2014)
35. La leggenda del pianista sull’oceano – The legend of 1900 (1998)
36. Little Lord Fauntleroy (1980)
37. Loving (2016)
38. Magnolia (1999)
39. Megan Leavey (2017)
40. Midnight cowboy (1969)
41. My love, don’t cross that river (2014)
42. Okuribito – Departures (2008)
43. One flew over the cuckoo’s nest (1975)
44. Philadelphia (1993)
45. Prayers for Bobby (TV movie 2009)
46. Rain man (1988)
47. Roman holiday (1953)
48. Schindler’s list (1993)
49. Shoplifters= Manbiki kazoku (2018)
50. Srimanthudu = The weathy man (2015)
51. Temple Grandin (2010 TV Movie)
52. + The blind side (2009)
53. + The boy in the striped pajamas (2008)
54. The bucket list (2007)
55. The Elephant Man (1980)
56. The fault in our stars (2014)
57. The gold rush (1925)
58. The Green Mile (1999)
59. The intern (2015)
60. The kid (1921)
61. The pianist (2002)
62. The Shawshank redemption (1994)
63. To kill a mockingbird (1962)
64. Tokyo story (1953)
65. Tôi thấy hoa vàng trên cỏ xanh – Yellow flowers on the green grass (2015)
66. Three billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri (2018)
67. WALL-E (2008)
68. Where the heart is (2000)
69. Wonder (2017)

 

Preamble

Movies are for entertainment, sure. But have you been bored with movies of violence, movies of absurd sci-fi, or tear-jerkers? You want to find something else in the movies you watch, like humanity? You think movies of humane value are rare? They are not rare. This article will introduce to you such movies in my perception. But after watching an introduced movie, you may still wonder: “What is the humane value?” It’s up to you to think. I may introduce you one point, and you may find another. You should explore yourself to reach your verdict. Quite often you cannot see or hear the humane value; you should feel it.

Movies are rated up to 10, and can be evaluated as follows:

9.0 and above: masterpiece
8.0 – 8.9: excellent
7.6 – 7.9: very good
7.0 – 7.5: good
6.0 – 6.9: pretty good.

Due to various reasons, the compilation for this non-profit site cannot give reference sources. If  an introduced film gives some food for thought in your life, then I hope my plagiarism could be tolerated.

3 idiots (2009)

IMDb Rating: 8.4

Director: Rajkumar Hirani
Stars: Sharman Joshi (Raju Rastogi), Aamir Khan (‘Rancho’ Shamaldas Chanchad), Omi Vaidya (Chatur ‘Silencer’ Ramalingam), Madhavan (Farhan Qureshi), Kareena Kapoor (Pia), Mukund Bhatt (Mr. Rastogi), Rahul Kumar (Millimeter – MM)

The story in this movie from India is simple: two friends are searching for their long lost companion, they revisit their college days and recall the memories of their friend who inspired them to think differently, even as the rest of the world called them “idiots”.

Like so many Indian films, this is a very long film – almost three hours. When a movie is bad or just okay, this can seem like forever, but since 3 Idiots is a  very good film, you will not mind its length. What is the type of this film? Much of it is a comedy, but it also has many poignant moments, some existential moments where they explore the meaning of life and work, and it’s also a tender film about friendship. Also, the men in the movie are not afraid to cry–something you rarely see in western films.

3 Idiots brings to you not only laughter, but also a philosophy, like “Live with your passion but not with other’s expectations”. Or rather, it’s like in Bill Gates’ commencement speech at Harvard: “Don’t let complexity stop you. Be activists.” Read and watch: http://apps.npr.org/commencement/speech/bill-gates-harvard-university-2007/

Wonderful and well worth your time – with a delightful script, wonderful characters and lots of moments that will make you smile… and perhaps a few that will bring you to tears.

Even though the film is about three idiots, perhaps they are idiot in the way that Steve Jobs advised new graduates in his commencement speech at Stanford: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” Read: https://news.stanford.edu/2005/06/14/jobs-061505/

12 years a slave (2013)

IMDb Rating: 8.4

Director: Steve McQueen
Stars: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Dano, Paul Giamatti, Lupita Nyong’o, Sarah Paulson, Brad Pitt, Alfre Woodard

12 years a slave tells the true story of Solomon Northup, an educated and free black man living in New York during the 1840’s who gets abducted, shipped to the south, and sold into slavery. It is a film that stimulates at both an emotional level and an intellectual one.

Perhaps the most noteworthy thing about 12 years a slave is the way that it portrays slavery itself. Instead of taking the easy way out and limiting his exploration of the topic solely to the slaves, Steve McQueen increases the scope and we see how it affects those who profited by it.

To watch 12 years a slave is to be confronted with the grim reality of slavery in a way that’s never been done before.

This movie is a potent reminder of why we are where we are as a society today.

50/50 (2011)

IMDb Rating: 7.7

Director: Jonathan Levine
Stars: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen, Anna Kendrick, Bryce Dallas Howard, Anjelica Huston, Serge Houde, Andrew Airlie

Inspired by a true story, a comedy centered on a 27-year-old guy who learns of his cancer diagnosis, and his subsequent struggle to beat the disease.

This film is considered by many, including IMDb, as a comedy, but to me it is more than that. Be serious. This is a quiet film but it packs a great deal of power. The humor was wonderfully placed, because without humor, life with cancer is unbearable. As too many folks know so well. Go see it and be entertained and learn a bit and rejoice in life even with cancer.

Watch 50/50 to realize that cancer is not the end of the patient.

A beautiful mind (2001)

IMDb Rating: 8.2

Director: Ron Howard
Stars: Russell Crowe, Ed Harris, Jennifer Connelly, Paul Bettany, Adam Goldberg, Judd Hirsch, Josh Lucas, Anthony Rapp, Christopher Plummer

This is an American biographical drama film based based on the book A beautiful mind of Sylvia Nasar that recounts the life of John Nash, a Nobel Laureate in Economics. The story begins in Nash’s days as a graduate student at Princeton University. Early in the film, Nash begins to develop paranoid schizophrenia and endures delusional episodes while painfully watching the loss and burden his condition brings on wife Alicia and friends.

The film shows a person at his best and worse and everything in between, by a masterful actor.

A beautiful mind‘s greatest achievement, in my humble opinion, is the way it makes schizophrenia accessible to “sane” people. Howard is able to portray all the complex reactions to mental illness while maintaining the humanity and dignity of the patient.

A simple life = Tao Jie (2012)

IMDb Rating: 7.6

Director: Ann Hui
Stars: Andy Lau, Anthony Wong Chau-Sang, Chapman To, Deannie Yip, Dennis Chan, Hark Tsui, Lan Law, Lawrence Ah Mon, Paul Chun, Sammo Hung Kam-Bo, Suet-Fa Kong, Tin Leung

After suffering a stroke, an altruistic maid announces that she wants to quit her job and move into an old people’s home. In fact, the boss named Roger, cared by her since his childhood, considers her as his aunt. The film title Tao Jie means “Jie Aunt”.

It’s a movie which primarily focus on every little moment of an elderly woman, who served Roger’s family for more than 60 years but it is never a dull moment as the first impression might seem. It’s a movie which really drives you to care for the characters in a natural way as opposed to many films where they “force” you with “natural” gimmicks. No, this movie broke most typical western styles, but at the same time made it entertaining and thrilling.

It’s a movie where there’re no explosions, no foresight drama or no extreme twists… It’s truly, a simple life, but it is full of humane and touching characters, in Dao Aunt, in her boss Roger, and in her friends at the old people’s home.

A time to love and a time to die (1958)

IMDb Rating: 7.7

Director: Douglas Sirk
Stars: John Gavin, Liselotte Pulver, Jock Mahoney, Don DeFore, Keenan Wynn, Erich Maria Remarque, Dieter Borsche

After I read this book that the film is based on, the feelings linger in my heart for a long time. The same happens after I watch this film.

It could be one of the best romantic war films ever made. This is mainly because the fabulous director Douglas Sirk doesn’t allow it to become a soppy schmaltz. Also, the film is incredibly moving, especially in a scene at the beginning where a young man, unable to live with the guilt of having shot a woman, shoots himself. John Gavin is good as Ernst Graeber and his beloved is adequately played by Liselotte Pulver, but the most outstanding performance could be by Charles Régnier as Joseph.

In short, this is a film of significant value. Not because it is about history, but because it is about the redeeming quality of humanity.

Amistad (1997)

IMDb Rating: 7.2

Director: Steven Spielberg
Stars: Morgan Freeman, Anthony Hopkins, Matthew McConaughey, Djimon Hounsou, Anna Paquin, Stellan Skarsgrd, Nigel Hawthorne, David Paymer, Pete Postlethwaite, Tomas Milian

From an authentic but obscure story, Steven Spielberg made a great film. Amistad is an American historical drama film based on the true story of the events in 1839 aboard the slave ship La Amistad, during which Mende tribesmen abducted for the slave trade manage to gain control of their captors’ ship off the coast of Cuba, and the international legal battle that follows their capture by a U.S. revenue cutter. The courts must decide whether the Mende are slaves or legally free. Slavery itself is not the issue. Instead, the court must decide whether the defendants were born of slaves (in which case they are guilty of murder) or were illegally brought from Africa (and therefore had a right to defend themselves against kidnapping).

A sympathetic lawyer is engaged to defend the slave. Ironically, crazily and painfully, he suggests that the slaves should be presented in the court as cargo, not as human beings!

The film is unabashed about showing us the brutality and outrageousness of the covertly institutionalized slave trade that haunted one of America’s darkest, most retrograde periods, and pulls no punches about the cultural differences between its victims, its culprits, and those who felt that it was not their problem.

Barfi! (2012)

IMDb Rating: 8.5

Director: Anurag Basu
Stars: Ranbir Kapoor (Barfi), Priyanka Chopra (Jhilmil), Illeana De Cruz (Shruti), Haradhan Bannerjee, Sumona Chakravarti, Roopali Ganguly, Rahul Garg

This is essentially a love triangle between (1) Barfi, a hearing and speech impaired son of a poor chauffeur; (2) Jhilmil, an autistic girl almost abandoned by her rich parents; and (3) Shruti, the narrator of the tale of love, the soon to be married tourist visiting Darjeeling along with her parents.

Simply put, Barfi! shows that love can neither be defined nor contained by society’s definition of normal and abnormal. The film has numerable good moments to recall, laugh and to love with. For a film with hardly any dialogs, Barfi! amazingly manages to say a lot, using a combination of sign language, facial expressions, first person narration, and sometimes simply stunning silences to convey a gamut of emotions.

The film is a way of life, it has potential to make you laugh without getting dirty, it has power to make you cry without getting dramatic, and it has energy to teach you love for all without being a documentary.

Biruma no tategoto – The Burmese harp (1956)

IMDb Rating: 8.1

Director: Kon Ichikawa
Stars: Rentarô Mikuni (Captain Inouye), Shôji Yasui (Mizushima), Jun Hamamura (Ito)

An Imperial Japanese Army regiment surrenders to British forces in Burma at the close of World War II and finds harmony through song. A private, thought to be dead, disguises himself as a Buddhist monk and stumbles upon spiritual enlightenment. Magnificently shot in hushed black and white, Kon Ichikawa’s The Burmese harp is an eloquent meditation on beauty coexisting with death and remains one of Japanese cinema’s most overwhelming antiwar statements, both tender and brutal in its grappling with Japan’s wartime legacy.

There are moving scenes, like when the Japanese buries the bones of his fellow soldiers, or when the Japanese inmates sings Home, sweet home behind barbed wires while outside a boy then a monk accompanies them with a harp.

Changeling (2008)

IMDb Rating: 7.8

Director: Clint Eastwood
Stars: Angelina Jolie, Gattlin Griffith, John Malkovich, Michelle Martin, Jan Devereaux, Michael Kelly

Based on a true story in Los Angeles in 1928. Single mother Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie) returns home one day to discover her nine-year-old son, Walter, is missing. She calls the police and after enduring a grueling 24 hours, they search for her son Five months later, the “proud” LA police department brings her kid back, making it a good PR session. Unfortunately, it’s not her kid and stupidly, although she’s naturally upset about, she poses with the kid and takes him home. LAPD, needing the good publicity, forces her to take the boy overnight with the logic that she is merely in shock. After confronting corrupt city authorities, Collins is vilified as an unfit mother and sent to an asylum.

The rest of this thriller carefully traces the discoveries leading to resolutions and disappointments. Along the way, police corruption is exposed, mental institution incarceration of women is laid bare, and grisly serial murdering is slowly detailed.

Clint Eastwood s knows a good story, and he knows how to tell it on film. In this case, a humane mother fighting against inhumane police.

Children of Heaven (1997) = Bacheha-Ye aseman (original title)

IMDb Rating: 8.3

Director: Majid Majidi
Writer: Majid Majidi
Stars: Mohammad Amir Naji, Amir Farrokh Hashemian, Bahare Seddiqi

After a boy loses his sister’s pair of shoes, he goes on a series of adventures in order to find them. When he can’t, he tries a new way to “win” a new pair.

Nominated for 1 Oscar. Another 13 wins & 4 nominations.

Chuyến đi cuối cùng của chị Phụng = Madam Phung’s last journey (2014)

IMDb Rating: 8.7

Director: Nguyen Thi Tham

Where does theatre begin and real life end? Endearing Madame Phung and her transvestite singers travel around Vietnam, sparking fascination and hostility from the local people, in this 86-minute documentary.

“I saw beautiful fags praying, and felt like running away,” explains Madame Phung of her decision to abandon life as a monk and take to the road. This frank, alluring documentary follows the madam’s itinerant troupe of gender-bending performers as they bring their homemade fair to the remote southern and central regions of Vietnam. In a behind-the-scenes look at life in a rarely-seen community, the group struggles to earn a living with their lottery, mini train ride, merry-go-round and powers of seduction in the face of poverty, hostility and violence.

Thanks to this movie, from now on transvestites would be looked at with more humane eyes.

Cinema Paradiso (1988)

IMDb Rating: 8.5

Director: Giuseppe Tornatore
Stars: Philippe Noiret, Enzo Cannavale, Antonella Attili, Marco Leonardi, Pupella Maggio, Agnese Nano, Leopoldo Trieste

Cinema Paradiso offers a nostalgic look at films and the effect they have on a young boy who grows up in and around the title village movie theater in this Italian comedy drama that is based on the life and times of screenwriter/director Giuseppe Tornatore. The story begins in the present as a Sicilian mother pines for her estranged son, Salvatore, who left many years ago and has since become a prominent Roman film director who has taken the advice of his mentor too literally. He finally returns to his home village to attend the funeral of the town’s former film projectionist, Alfredo, and, in so doing, embarks upon a journey into his boyhood just after WWII when he became the man’s official son. In the dark confines of the Cinema Paradiso, the boy and the other townsfolk try to escape from the grim realities of post-war Italy. The town censor is also there to insure nothing untoward appears onscreen, invariably demanding that all kissing scenes be edited out.

City lights (1931)

IMDb Rating: 8.6

Director: Charles Chaplin
Stars: Charles Chaplin, Virginia Cherrill, Florence Lee, Harry Myers

A homeless tramp befriends a lovely blind flower seller and convinces her he is a millionaire while he secretly labors to pay for the restoration of her sight. One of Charlie Chaplin’s masterpieces, this heart-rending film was made and released as a silent with music track in the post-talkie era.

The film’s theme concerns the consequences (and suffering) resulting from the Tramp’s attachment and efforts to aid a blind girl (and restore her sight with money for an operation) and a millionaire, as he persuades both of them that life is worth living. Both characters cannot “see” him or recognize him for what he is. However, the Tramp functions as a savior and wish-fulfiller for the blind flower girl while masquerading as a wealthy duke. For the drunk millionaire, the Tramp repeatedly saves the man’s life and provides a congenial friend.

Dances with wolves (1990)

IMDb Rating: 8.0

Stars: Kevin Costner, Mary McDonnell
Director: Kevin Costner

This is an American epic Western film starring, directed and produced by Kevin Costner. It is a film adaptation of the 1988 book of the same name by Michael Blake that tells the story of a Union Army lieutenant who travels to the American frontier to find a military post, and of his dealings with a group of Lakota Indians.

In 1863, First Lieutenant John J. Dunbar is wounded and receives a citation for bravery. He recovers fully and is awarded Cisco, the horse who carried him, and his choice of posting. Dunbar requests a transfer to the western frontier so he can see it before it disappears.

Dunbar is transferred to Fort Hays, a large fort presided over by Major Fambrough, an unhinged officer who despises Dunbar’s enthusiasm. He agrees to post him to the furthest outpost they have, Fort Sedgewick, and kills himself shortly afterwards. Dunbar travels with Timmons, a mule wagon provisioner; they arrive to find the fort deserted. Despite the threat of nearby native tribes, Dunbar elects to stay and man the post himself. He begins rebuilding and restocking the fort, and prefers the solitude, recording many of his observations in his diary.

What is humane about this movie is that, unlike other movies concerning Indians, here the Indians are viewed with more human eyes.

In 2007, Dances with wolves was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.

Dave (1993)

IMDb Rating: 6.8

Director: Ivan Reitman
Stars: Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, Frank Langella

Dave Kovic runs a temporary employment agency, and has a side job impersonating President Bill Mitchell. He is requested by the Secret Service to make an appearance as the President at a hotel. Dave assumes it is a matter of security, but it is really to cover up Mitchell’s extramarital affair with a White House staffer.

Mitchell suffers a severe stroke during the rendezvous, leaving him in a coma. White House Chief of Staff Bob Alexander and Communications Director Alan Reed convince Dave to continue impersonating the President, telling him that Vice President Gary Nance is mentally unbalanced. Only Bob, Alan, the Secret Service, and the medical staff know of the switch. First Lady Ellen Mitchell leads a separate life, rarely seeing the President.

Behind the comic air of the impersonated President is a humane heart. For instance, while visiting a preschool, he observes a lone boy playing with his toy (looking like to be autistic) while other children gathers around their teacher. So he comes and sits down, engaging the boy in conversation. When the cameras start flashing, he raises his hand requesting them to stop. The First Lady is greatly surprised by his humane gesture, that perhaps she rarely finds in her husband.

Dearest (2014)

IMDb Rating: 7.8

Director: Peter Chan
Stars: Zhao Wei (Li Hongqin), Huang Bo (Tian Wenjun), Tong Dawei (Gao Xia), Hao Lei (Lu Xiaojuan), Zhang Yi (Han Dezhong), Zhao Wei (Li Hongqin)

This Chinese film is based on a true story of child abduction in the mainland. Divorcee Tian Wenjun runs a small internet cafe in Shenzhen. But when his young son, Pengpeng, runs off with his playmates and doesn’t return, years of hell begin for Tian and his ex-wife, Lu Xiaojuan. Wracked by guilt and despair, they begin an initially fruitless search for him.

Following years of unrelenting search, Tian Wenjun and Lu Xiaojuan finally locate their abducted son in a remote village. After the boy was violently taken away from the village, the abductor’s widow Li Hongqin — the boy’s foster mother — also loses her foster daughter to a state-owned orphanage in Shenzhen. Heartbroken, Li goes on a lone but determined journey to get her daughter back.

With two families, two stories, two tragedies, two children, this drama film is touching to be seen and to contemplate the humane value buried in it.

Chan notes how he not only met with the parents who lost (and then found) their child, but also another father in the same situation. “They were from a group called Baby Come Home. They are the pioneers on the internet, looking for missing children. It was very sad when we met them. He still hasn’t found his son.”

So Chan decided to put pictures of the missing boy on screen as the end credits roll. “He pleaded with me to put his real telephone number when it’s released in China, instead of a fake one. Just in case. He wants somebody to call him,” Chan says.

For this father’s sake alone, you have to hope Dearest is seen by millions.

Driving Miss Daisy (1989)

IMDb Rating: 7.4

Director: Bruce Beresford
Stars: Morgan Freeman (Hoke Colburn), Jessica Tandy (Miss Daisy), Dan Aykroyd (Boolie), Esther Rolle (Idella)

This is an American comedy-drama film based on Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Alfred Uhry of the same name. The story defines Daisy and her point of view through a network of relationships and emotions by focusing on her home life, synagogue, friends, family, fears, and concerns over a 25-year period.

In 1948, Mrs. Daisy Werthan, or Miss Daisy, a 72-year-old wealthy, white, Jewish, widowed, retired school teacher, lives alone in Atlanta, Georgia, except for a black housemaid named Idella. When Miss Daisy drives her 1946 Chrysler Windsor into her neighbor’s yard, her 40-year-old son Boolie buys her a 1949 Hudson Commodore and hires Hoke Colburn, a black chauffeur. Miss Daisy at first refuses to let anyone else drive her, but gradually gives in.

This is a film of great love and patience. It is also an immensely subtle film, in which hardly any of the most important information is carried in the dialogue and in which body language, tone of voice or the look in an eye can be the most important thing in a scene. After so many movies in which shallow and violent people deny their humanity and ours, what a lesson to see a film that looks into the heart.

Erin Brockovich (2000)

IMDb Rating: 7.3

Director: Steven Soderbergh
Stars: Julia Roberts, David Brisbin, Dawn Didawick

Roberts plays a real-life heroine who helped uncover one of the biggest environmental crimes in history. The real Erin Brockovich is a divorced mom of three with few employment prospects who talks her way into a job at a law firm, begins an investigation on her own initiative, and plays a key role in a pollution suit.

Firelight (1997)

IMDb Rating: 7.3

Director: William Nicholson
Stars: Sophie Marceau (Elisabeth Laurier), Stephen Dillane (Charles Godwin), Dominique Belcourt (Louisa), Lia Williams (Constance)

In 1837, Swiss governess Elisabeth Laurier agrees to bear a child for an anonymous English landowner in return for money needed to pay her father’s debts. They meet over three nights at a lonely island hotel. Despite their wish for detachment, they develop a deeply passionate connection during their lovemaking by firelight. Nine months later, Elisabeth gives birth to a girl, and as agreed, she gives up the child to the care of the English landowner. Over the coming years, Elisabeth never forgets her child. She begins to keep a journal of watercoloured flowers and plants, adding a page for each holiday and birthday they are apart.

The anonymous Englishman is Charles Godwin, a landowner and struggling sheep farmer, who can barely keep the debtors of his philandering father, Lord Clare, at bay. Charles’s wife, Amy Godwin, is paralysed and catatonic due to a horseriding accident. Amy’s sister, Constance, runs the Godwin household.

Seven years after giving up her daughter, Elisabeth manages to locate her, and she gets herself hired as the new governess for the child, who is named Louisa. Initially, Charles rejects Elisabeth, and demands that she leave immediately. However, Constance insists that he should give the new governess a month to find a new situation. Showing Elisabeth the catatonic form of his wife, Charles forces Elisabeth to swear never to reveal to Louisa or anyone the nature of their previous relationship.

Elizabeth has to find a way to deal with the problem child, outwardly as a governess and inwardly as a mother. And she does have her own method. Like when the recalcitrant repeatedly throws abuse at her, she plashes ink onto the child’s face and does the same onto hers. Then she begins lecturing.

Forrest Gump (1994)

IMDb Rating: 8.7

Director: Robert Zemeckis
Stars: Tom Hanks (Forrest Gump), Robin Wright Penn, Gary Sinise, Mykelti Williamson

Forrest Gump is short on I.Q. points but long on heart, a pure and simple soul who follows a straight path through the world, ever true to the homely advice of his mother and to his lifelong love Jenny. Humor, sadness, action, drama and a Vietnam film all rolled into one. This is a powerful yet charming movie; fun for its special effects and profound in how it keeps you thinking long after it’s over.

The charmed and charming life journey of an innocent tossed through three decades of America’s turbulent modern history makes for an original and hugely appealing story. Throughout the film, Forrest Gump’s love to his school sweetheart Jenny is unabated, with a touching phrase: “I am not a smart man, but I know what love is”.

You should not miss this film.

Good doctor (2013 TV series)

IMDb Rating: 8.1

Director: Ki Min Soo
Stars: Won Joo (Park Shi On), Moon Chae-won (Cha Yoon Seo), Joo Sang-uk (Kim Do Han), Kim Young-kwang (Han Jin-wook), Chun Ho-jin (Choi Woo Suk), Kwak Do-won (Kang Hyun Tae)

Park Shi-on is an autistic savant who was sent to a specialized care center as a child, where he was discovered to have a genius-level memory and keen spatial skills. He eventually enters the field of pediatric surgery as a resident, where he is given six months to prove himself capable. However, due to his atypical mental and emotional condition, Shi-on faces conflict from his peers and patients, who view him as childlike and unreliable. Most critical is the hotheaded surgeon Kim Do-han, who labels him a soulless robot of a doctor who can only rely heavily on his photographic memory instead of feeling what the patient needs. Despite help from understanding and fair colleagues like Cha Yoon-seo and Han Jin-wook (Kim Young-kwang), the hospital is a fierce and competitive world, and the challenges Shi-on faces become only greater when he falls in love with Yoon-seo.

The Korean series reminds thus that autistic people need understanding, as they often think and say their own ways, even peculiar ways.

Gran Torino (2008)

IMDb Rating: 8.3

Director: Clint Eastwood
Stars: Clint Eastwood, Bee Vang, Christopher Carley, Ahney Her, Brian Haley, Geraldine Hughes

A racist Korean War veteran living in a crime-ridden Detroit neighborhood is forced to confront his own lingering prejudice when a troubled Hmong teen from his neighborhood attempts to steal his prized Gran Torino. Decades after the Korean War has ended, ageing veteran Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood) is still haunted by the horrors he witnessed on the battlefield. The two objects that matter most to Kowalski in life are the classic Gran Torino that represents his happier days working in a Ford assembly plant, and the M-1 rifle that saved his life countless times during combat.

When Kowalski’s teenage neighbor (Bee Vang) attempts to steal his Gran Torino as part of a gang initiation rite, the old man manages to catch the aspiring thief at the business end of his well-maintained semi-automatic rifle. Later, due to the pride of the Asian group, the boy is forced to return to Kowalski’s house and perform an act of penance. However, Kowalski still wants nothing to do with the young troublemaker…

The film has drama, comedy, and action that makes the audience laugh at times and sniffle at others.

Hacksaw Ridge (2016)

IMDb Rating: 8.2

Director: Mel Gibson
Stars: Andrew Garfield (Desmond Doss), Sam Worthington (Capt. Glover), Richard Pyros (Teach), Milo Gibson (Lucky Ford), Hugo Weaving (Tom Doss), Rachel Griffiths (Bertha Doss), Teresa Palmer (Dorothy Schutte), Darcy Bryce (young Desmond)

This the extraordinary true story of Desmond Doss who, in Okinawa during the bloodiest battle of WWII, saved 75 men without firing or carrying a gun. He was the only American soldier in WWII to fight on the front lines without a weapon, as he believed that while the war was justified, killing was nevertheless wrong. As an army medic, he single-handedly evacuated the wounded from behind enemy lines, braved fire while tending to soldiers and was wounded by a grenade and hit by snipers. Doss was the first conscientious objector to ever earn the Congressional Medal of Honor.

And the humane value lies in the fact that Doss saved his friends as well as his ennemies.

Hart’s war (2002)

IMDb Rating: 6.3 [7.0]

Director: Gregory Hoblit
Writers: John Katzenbach (novel), Billy Ray (screenplay)

Stars: Bruce Willis (Col. William A. McNamara), Colin Farrell (Lt. Thomas W. Hart), Terrence Howard (Lt. Lincoln A. Scott), Cole Hauser (Staff Sgt. Vic W. Bedford), Marcel Iures (Col. Werner Visser)

Second Lieutenant Tommy Hart, a navigator whose B-25 was shot out of the sky in 1942, is burdened with guilt as the only surviving member of his crew. Now he is just another POW at the fiercely guarded Stalag Luft 13 in Bavaria.

Then routine comes to a halt with the arrival of a new prisoner: First Lieutenant Lincoln Scott, an African American airman.

I think those who give this film a low rating are unfair. This is a war film but it goes beyond war. You may not know that black officers in the U.S. Army suffered badly by racial discrimination – even in an army fighting at war. So, it is a film to listen to and to take from it what you are able to. Negative comments are a sad indictment of viewers with a limited attention span, probably they want to watch the war only. A lot of what is uttered during the “court-room” sequences has great relevance in all facets of life – if you care to listen. Listen to the statement of the Air Force officer, Lt. Lincoln A. Scott, about the abuse that he suffered as a black person even in his uniform, worse than for white German POW, and keep in mind his final words about such abuse: “it’s appalling”.

Heaven & earth (1993)

IMDb Rating: 6.8

Director: Oliver Stone
Stars: Hiep Thi Le (Le Ly), Tommy Lee Jones (Steve Butler), Haing S. Ngor (papa), Bussaro Sanruck (Le Ly – age 5), Joan Chen (mama), Thuan Le (Kim), Dustin Nguyen (Sau), Mai Le Ho (Hai), Vinh Dang (Bon), Le Ly Hayslip (jewelry broker), Doan Chau Mau (monk Chau Mao Doan)

Oliver Stone creates a powerful tale of the devastation of the Vietnam War. What makes this movie so unique, both from Stone’s earlier work and virtually every other American movie about the Vietnam War, is that this film is told from the perspective of a Vietnamese woman. And it conveys the philosophy “Different skin, same suffering”.

The film also touched upon Buddhist philosopy. Le Ly was a victim of communist, she was even raped by one of them, but she showed no hatred. Apparently many Vietnamese blame their fate only but not anybody else.

The film inspired some of the audience to read the two books (When Heaven and Earth changed places and Child of war, woman of peace) it was based on, and these book are really commendable.

Hotel Rwanda (2004)

IMDb Rating: 8.2

Director: Terry George
Stars: Don Cheadle, Sophie Okonedo, Joaquin Phoenix, Tony Kgoroge, Rosie Motene, Neil McCarthy

In 1994, some of the worst atrocities in the history of mankind took place in Rwanda – and in an era of high-speed communication and round the clock news, the events went almost unnoticed by the rest of the world. In only three months, one million people were brutally murdered.

In the face of these unspeakable actions, inspired by his love for his family, an ordinary man summons extraordinary courage to save the lives of over a thousand helpless refugees, by granting them shelter in the hotel he manages.

The great strength of Hotel Rwanda is that it’s not about superhuman heroism but simply about human decency.

I am Sam (2001)

IMDb Rating: 7.6

Director: Jessie Nelson
Stars: Sean Penn (Sam Dawson), Michelle Pfeiffer (Rita Harrison Williams), Dakota Fanning (Lucy Diamond Dawson), Dianne Wiest (Annie Cassell), Loretta Devine (Margaret Calgrove)

This film is sweet, well meaning, and very charming.

Sam Dawson is a mentally challenged father raising his daughter Lucy with the help of an extraordinary group of friends. As Lucy turns seven and begins to intellectually surpass her father, their close bond is threatened when their situation comes under the scrutiny of a social worker who wants Lucy placed in foster care. Faced with a seemingly unwinnable case, Sam vows to fight the legal system and forms an unlikely alliance with Rita Harrison, a high-powered, self-absorbed attorney who initially takes his case pro bona as a challenge from her colleagues.

I can speak (2017)

IMDB Rating: 7.6

Director: Lee Je-Hoon
Stars: Na Moon-Hee (Na Ov-Boon) Lee Je-Hoon (Kim Min-Jae), Sung Yoo-Bin (Young-Jae), Yum Hye-Ran (Jinjoo-daek), Lee Sang-Hee (Hye-Jung), Jung Yeon-Joo (A-Young), Lee Ji-Hoon (Jong-Hyun), Son Sook (Jung-Sim), Kim So-Jin (Geum-Joo), Choi Soo-In (young Na Ok-Boon), Lee Jae-In (young Jung-Sim).

The film begins with an elderly woman named Na Ok-Boon, also known as the Goblin Granny, filling out yet another citizen’s complaint, finally up to 8,000 in number, at her district office. At the moment, she is trying to prove a developer is sabotaging the buildings in her neighborhood in order to speed up redevelopment. The new civil servant at the office, Kim Min-Jae, agrees to look after her complaints, much to the delight of his colleagues. When Ok-Boon finds out Min-Jae speaks English quite well, she browbeats him into teaching her, for reasons he has yet to figure out.

Up to this point, the film plays out as a light-hearted comedy, wherein the lonely old lady and the fastidious civil servant from an unlikely bond. It’s also at this point the film swings wildly into drama territory, when it’s discovered Na’s urgency to learn English stems from her need to fill in for a drying friend at U.S. congressional hearings in Washington for HR121: the U.S. House of Representative solution.

There are two movies, perhaps three, in one: one about an elderly woman considered as a trouble maker and fighting city hall; another about two close old women whose friendship is built since their teenhood; and finally a painful disclosure and an emotional examination of a war legacy.

Intouchables – The intouchables (2011)

IMDb Rating: 8.6

Director: Olivier Nakache, Eric Toledano
Stars: François Cluzet (Philippe), Omar Sy (Driss), Anne Le Ny (Yvonne),     Audrey Fleurot (Magalie)

Based on a true story, this film is about friendship, trust and human possibility. Sy is a failed robber, going through the motions and playing the stereotypical jobless émigré. Cluzet is a romantic and melancholy mind trapped in a useless body. The circumstances that bring them together are funny and an awkward relationship quickly blossoms as they bring out the best in each other.

Intouchables depicts an unlikely camaraderie rooted in honesty between two individuals who, on the surface, would seem to have nothing in common.

One of the funniest, most honest and touching films.

Invictus (2009)

IMDb Rating: 7.4

Director: Clint Eastwood
Stars: Morgan Freeman, Matt Damon, Tony Kgoroge

The film tells the inspiring true story of how Nelson Mandela joined forces with the captain of South Africa’s rugby team to help unite their country. Newly elected President Mandela knows his nation remains racially and economically divided in the wake of apartheid. Believing he can bring his people together through the universal language of sport, Mandela rallies South Africa’s underdog rugby team as they make an unlikely run to the 1995 World Cup Championship match.

Ip Man (2008)

IMDb Rating: 8.0

Director: Wilson Yip
Stars: Donnie Yen, Simon Yam, Lynn Hung, Gordon Lam, Fan Siu-wong, Ying Yu, Chen Zhihui

Wing Chun grandmaster Ip has an amazing wife, plenty of money, the most beautiful house in town, and a blossoming martial arts academy. But when the Japanese occupy his hometown of Foshan during the Sino-Japan war (1937), Ip, like the rest of the locals, is forced into hard labor and brutal sparring matches for the enemy’s amusement.

This is a true kung fu film without stupid maneuvers like running on water or flying over the trees. Above all, it shows the mastership spirit: kung-fu is for self-protection and assistance to the weak. Therefore each time facing an opponent Ip does not show hatred, he fights if this is unavoidable. There is humane character after each kick or punch.

Watch this film then compare with other fighting films full of hatred.

It’s a wonderful life (1946)

IMDb Rating: 8.7

Director: Frank Capra
Stars: James Stewart (George Bailey), Donna Reed (Mary Hatch), Lionel Barrymore (Mr. Potter), Thomas Mitchell (Uncle Billy), Henry Travers (Clarence), Beulah Bondi (Mrs. Bailey), Frank Faylen (Ernie), Ward Bond (Bert), Gloria Grahame (Violet), H.b. Warner (Mr. Gower), Frank Albertson (Sam Wainwright), Samuel S. Hinds (Pa Bailey), Mary Treen (Cousin Tilly), Virginia Patton (Ruth Dakin), Todd Karns (Harry Bailey)

Watch this old film and you may agree with one reviewer that it is a life-changing experience. It is better to leave it all to you to explore, so no summary is given here. Just suffice to say that some people watch this film again every Christmas.

Khid thueng withaya – The teacher’s diary (2014)

IMDb Rating: 7.9

Director: Nithiwat Tharatorn
Stars: Chermarn Boonyasak (Ann), Sukrit Wisetkaew (Song), Sukollawat Kanaros (Nui), Chutima Teepanat (Nam)

This film is like fresh air blowing over the cinemas of violence, hatred, or tears-jerkers. It is not a fairy tale, but based on a true story. The film setting is a small primary school built on a barge floating on a large lake. Access to and departure from this school must be done by a commercial boat.

Song is a former wrestling athlete who becomes a teacher at the school which has only four pupils. He finds a diary of Ann, the former teacher. It is the only thing that helps him relieve his loneliness after teaching hours. Many stories of Ann at this school is written in her diary. He also writes his thoughts in Ann’s diary. He wants to find her but he does not know how.

Then he leaves the school. The former teacher returns and sees that her diary contains additional articles. In turn, she wants to meet him but she does not know how.

The tow leads are charming. The female lead is smarter, braver, and more skilled among the two, capable of adapting her life at the houseboat school with the kids. On the other hand, Song, the male lead, breaks his arm as soon as he reaches the school and struggling to teach the kids algebra maths (because he sucks at maths). Although they are different, they share the same ideals towards teaching the young. It’s their passion and dedication in teaching that brings them together as one.

Heartwarming, lighthearted, meaningful, sweet and funny, Khid thueng withaya presents professional dedication in moments that your heart would feel earnest, sincere and touching.

La leggenda del pianista sull’oceano = The legend of 1900 (1998)

IMDb Rating: 7.9

Director: Giuseppe Tornatore
Stars: Tim Roth, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Bill Nunn, Clarence Williams III, Mélanie Thierry, Gabriele Lavia

There is a certain charm in the notion of a man who is born on board an ocean liner and never gets off. He does not move, yet is never still.

The man’s full name is Danny Boodmann T.D. Lemon 1900. That is because as a squawling infant he was discovered on the luxury liner Virginian by a man named Boodmann, in a lemon box, in the year 1900. He is reared in the engine room, his cradle swaying as the ship rolls, and as an adult plays piano in the ship’s lounge. And what piano! So great is his fame that even the great Jelly Roll Morton comes on board for a duel, in music.

Little Lord Fauntleroy (1980)

IMDb Rating: 7.4

Director: Jack Gold
Stars: Alec Guinness (Earl of Dorincourt), Rick Schroder (Lord Fauntleroy), Eric Porter (Havisham), Colin Blakely (Hobbs), Connie Booth (Mrs. Errol), Rachel Kempson (Lady Lorradaile)

Filmed in England with virtually no other American in it than Ricky Schroeder, it has the proper Victorian feel to it. Ricky brings his brash but honest Yankee personality into this staid atmosphere and shakes up his grandfather’s long-held prejudices against the Colonies and his own family and tenants. Schroeder was the ultimate child actor; no other would have done this role justice as he is perfect for the part. His beautiful blond hair, in the requisite pageboy required for a Victorian Lord Fauntleroy, frames his angelic face and visually sets him on a plane above every other actor, even Alec Guinness. Guinness is superb as the bitter and self-absorbed grandfather. The rest of the supporting players are excellent, especially Colin Blakely as the opinionated Mr. Hobbs, the American grocer.

The English countryside and architecture also have their own role to play here. The landscape is lush and beautiful, and the enormous estate that Lord Fauntleroy will inherit is magnificent, adding much to the atmosphere.

The pace of the film is also excellent, events happen and characters develop with interesting detail but without over emphasis or very drawn out scenes.

Far and away the best version ever made, this is in top 20 or even top 10 family films.

You must watch this film together with you kids or grandchildren.

Loving (2016)

IMDb Rating: 7

Director: Jeff Nichols
Stars: Ruth Negga (Mildred), Joel Edgerton (Richard), Terri Abney (Garnet), Alano Miller (Raymond), Chris Greene (Percy), Sharon Blackwood (Lola Loving), Christopher Mann (Theoliver), Mike Shiflett (Magistrate), Will Dalton (Virgil)

Loving has aroused considerable and genuine (as opposed to media-generated) interest and anticipation.

Nichols’ film is a fictional re-creation of the landmark Mildred and Richard Loving case in Virginia in the 1950s and 1960s, which ultimately led to the striking down of state laws banning interracial marriage in the US. Politically and legally momentous, the Loving story is also a testament to the profoundly humane potential of the American working class and its deep feeling for fairness. The determined struggle of the Lovings – Mildred was black and Richard white – for their basic rights is touching.

After nearly 10 years of dealing with the legal system, he simply wants the justices to know that “I love my wife, and it is just unfair that I can’t live with her in Virginia.” His simple declaration creates one of the film’s most tender and devastating moments

Magnolia (1999)

IMDb Rating: 8.0

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Stars: Jason Robarbs (Earl Partridge), Julianne Moore (Linda), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Phil Parma), Melora Walters (Claudia), John C. Reilly (Jim Kurring), Tom Cruise (Frank T.J. Mackey), Philip Baker Hall (Jimmy Gator), William H. Macy (Donnie Smith) Jeremy Blackman (Stanley Spector)

Magnolia presents three stories. This is a film of sadness and loss, of lifelong bitterness, of children harmed and adults destroying themselves. As the narrator tells us near the end, “We may be through with the past, but the past is never through with us.” The humane message is clear to parents and children: life is short, so you should give your folds more attention and love while you can.

Megan Leavey (2017)

IMDb Rating: 7.1

Director: Gabriela Cowperthwaite
Stars: Kate Mara (Megan Leavey), Ramon Rodriguez (Matt Morales), Tom Felton (Andrew Dean), Bradley Whitford (Bob), Edie Falco (Jackie Leavey), Common (Gunny Martin), Will Patton (Jim), Damson Idris (Michael Forman), Miguel Gomez (Gomez), Megan Leavey (drill instructor)

The fill tells the true story of the profound bond between a Marine corporal and her war dog Rex. Megan Leavey is that rare breed: a war movie that actually shows something new about war, a sub-culture within a familiar sub-culture, the world of the military’s K-9 units. For that alone, it should be applauded.

Everyone should know how incredible these dogs are. But beyond its fascinating informational aspects, Megan Leavey is a powerfully emotional film that somehow—unbelievably, considering the subject matter—avoids sentimentality altogether.

Midnight cowboy (1969)

IMDb Rating: 7.9

Director: John Schlesinger
Stars: Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight (Joe Buck), Sylvia Miles

A tawdry, strident yet deeply affecting tale. The film is an exquisite time capsule. It is filled with dark social and political commentary.

Joe Buck leaves his small-town Texas to New York to try his luck. There is no luck for him. A few months in the city leaves him sharp-cheekboned and pale. Then he meets an ailing and sleazy swindler who is only good at making a meal from almost nothing. The two homeless, down-and-out, anti-hero drifters develop unlikely companionship.

Based on the novel by James Leo Herlihy, the film featured controversial gay intonations, yet it grossed $44 million – about $200 million by today’s standards.

Midnight cowboy became the first X-rated film to receive the best picture Oscar, and decades on, its influence still reverberates through cinema. It definitely is one of the greatest films ever made, and a stark view of small-time hopes in big city squalor. Also a devastating and humane masterpiece.

The film is placed 43rd on the American Film Institute’s list of the 100 greatest American films of all time. Also, it is deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

My love, don’t cross that river (2014)

IMDb Rating: 8.0

Director: Mo-Young Jin

A tender and touching film about love. This is a South Korean documentary film that follows elderly married couple Jo Byeong-man (98 years old) and Kang Kye-yeol (89 years old). Director Jin followed the couple for 15 months and documented their everyday life. Through word of mouth, the film became the most commercially successful Korean documentary/independent film of all time.

Whenever they go, they are hand in hand, and wear the traditional “hanbok”. In the spring, one put flowers on the other’s hairs. They know the way to play together in all seasons: putting flowers on each other’s hairs in the spring, playing in cool spring water in the summer, or among falling leaves in the fall and in snow in the winter. Married for seventy-six years, and they behave like a newly-married couple.

The film is like a fairy tale in a modern but superficial society. Ask yourself: how long since you and the one you love are not hand in hand?

One of the great documentaries ever.

Okuribito = Departures (2008)

IMDb Rating: 8.1

Director: Yôjirô Takita
Stars: Masahiro Motoki, Ryôko Hirosue, Tsutomu Yamazaki, Kazuko Yoshiyuki, Kimiko Yo, Takashi Sasano

This is a Japanese drama film with its title Okuribito meaning “one who sends off”. Loosely based on Coffinman, a memoir by Shinmon Aoki, the film follows a young man who returns to his hometown after a failed career as a cellist and stumbles across work as a nōkanshi—a traditional Japanese ritual mortician. He is subjected to prejudice from those around him, including from his wife, because of strong social taboos against people who deal with death. Eventually he earns their respect and learns the importance of interpersonal connections through the beauty and dignity of his work.

This is a simple and touching film. Simple because there are no twists and actions, no irregular expressions, and touching because the film is close to our heart by presenting humane view to the departure, which is viewed by the Japanese as just a trip to another place.

This is an exotic realm of philosophy that is for you to explore.

One flew over the cuckoo’s nest (1975)

IMDb Rating: 8.8

Director: Milos Forman
Stars: Jack Nicholson (Randle Patrick McMurphy), Louise Fletcher (Y tá trưởng Ratched), Will Sampson (“Chief” Bromden), Brad Dourif (Billy Bibbit), Michael Berryman, Scatman Crothers, Mwako Cumbuka, Danny DeVito, William Duell

The film portrays the horrible truth about how patients were treated in mental institutions back then, and tells the story of someone who desperately wanted to break out, to rebel, to change things, for himself and for the others.

We can see excellent storyline, top notch acting, painfully bleak visuals, perfectly setting the tone for the movie, and alternates between being truly uplifting to devastatingly depressing.

In the next 100 years after its production, the film may maintain its values in its meanings and messages.

Philadelphia (1993)

IMDb Rating: 7.6

Director: Jonathan Demme
Stars: Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, Roberta Maxwell, Buzz Kilman, Karen Finley, Daniel Chapman, Mark Sorensen Jr.

This is an American drama film and one of the first mainstream Hollywood films to acknowledge HIV/AIDS, homosexuality, and homophobia.

Andrew Beckett is a senior associate at the largest corporate law firm in Philadelphia. He hides his homosexuality and his status as an AIDS patient from the other members of the firm. A partner in the firm notices a lesion on Beckett’s forehead. Although Beckett attributes the lesion to a racquetball injury, it indicates Kaposi’s sarcoma, an AIDS defining condition. Beckett is dismissed by the firm’s partners. he believes that someone deliberately hid his paperwork to give the firm an excuse to fire him, and that the dismissal is actually as a result of his diagnosis with AIDS. He asks several attorneys to take his case. Unable to find a lawyer willing to represent him, Beckett is compelled to act as his own attorney.

Philadelphia has the power to open more than a few blinkered hearts. It is an extremely well-made message picture about tolerance, justice and discrimination. Safe and apolitical it may be, but Philadelphia succeeds as a deeply affecting humanist drama.

Prayers for Bobby (TV movie 2009)

IMDb Rating: 8.2

Director: Russell Mulcahy
Stars: Sigourney Weaver, Henry Czerny, Ryan Kelley

This is a televised docudrama that is based on the critically acclaimed book, Prayers for Bobby: A mother’s coming to terms with the suicide of her gay son, by Leroy F. Aarons, which is itself based on the true story of the life and legacy of Bobby Griffith, a young gay man who killed himself in 1983 due to his mother’s homophobia.

Mary Griffith is a devout Christian who raises her children – Ed, Bobby, Joy and Nancy – according to the evangelical teachings of her local Presbyterian church in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Ed finds Bobby resisting temptations to overdose on Aspirin as an initial suicide attempt before Bobby confides to him that he is gay. Life changes for the entire family after Mary learns about his secret. In hopes of converting him, she takes him to a psychiatrist, who explains to Bobby’s parents that a person’s homosexuality is the result of lacking a close relationship with parental figures. She then advises Bobby to pray harder and seek solace in Church activities, as well as to arrange a special bonding time with his father. While spending such quality time with his father, Bobby explains his desire to become a writer, to which his father suggests “some dreams are just not realistic.”

This film is not only about homosexualism. It is also about community, family, friendship – all need understanding and sympathy.

Rain man (1988)

IMDb Rating: 8.0

Director: Barry Levinson
Stars: Dustin Hoffman (Raymond), Tom Cruise (Charlie Babbitt), Valeria Golino

A movie that makes you smile and cry, simultaneously.

As the film opens, we see Charlie frantically trying to juggle his way out of a crisis in his Los Angeles business, which seems to consist of selling expensive imported automobiles out of his hip pocket. He is driven, unhappy, a workaholic. One day he receives word that his father – a man with whom he has had no contact for years – has died back East. At the reading of the will, he learns that he has received a pittance (including a prized 1949 Buick Roadmaster), and that his father’s $3 million fortune has gone into a trust.

Who is the trust for? Charlie discovers with a shock that it goes to support an older brother he never knew he had – an autistic brother who has been institutionalized for years. Visiting Raymond at the home where he lives, Charlie finds a methodical, mechanical, flat-voiced middle-age man who “definitely” knows things.

This classic fim gives touching and warm feelings towards autism and brotherhood.

Roman holiday (1953)

IMDb Rating: 8.1

Stars: Audrey Hepburn (Princess Ann), Gregory Peck (Joe Bradley), Eddie Albert (Irving Radovich), Margaret Rawlings (Countess Vereberg)
Director: William Wyler

Princess Ann escapes the boring confines of her rarefied royal existence for a day, to be rescued by Joe Bradley, an American a reporter. Bradley senses a scoop and seeks to inveigle the Princess into a story. However, this is a fairy tale, of the Princess and the commoner. Love blossoms, the beautiful Princess experiencing everyday things we might take for granted with a delight we cannot know. Sitting at a roadside café, getting a haircut, enjoying an ice cream, smoking the first cigarette in life, dancing on a riverboat. She soaks in these experiences in the company of her handsome saviour, not realiaing his intentions to exploit here story.

It’s a fairy tale, beautifully told.

Schindler’s list (1993)

IMDb Rating: 8.9

Director: Steven Spielberg
Stars: Liam Neeson (Oskar Schindler), Norbert Weisser (Albert Hujar), Friedrich Von Thun (Rolf Czurda), Ben Kingsley (Itzhak Stern), Ralph Fiennes (Amon Goeth), Mark Ivanir (Marcel Goldberg), Caroline Goodall (Emilie Schindler),

Schindler’s list blends the abject horror of the Holocaust with tender humanism to create a dramatic masterpiece. Based on Thomas Keneally’s prize-winning 1982 book, the film is about the compelling true story of Oskar Schindler, an enterprising German-Catholic businessman, rogue and Nazi Party member who moved to Cracow after the German invasion of Poland. He earned a fortune on bribes and black-market deals. But as he began to absorb the horror surrounding him, Schindler built a factory-camp to protect his unpaid Jewish workers.

The film was made in black and white, except for one scene showing a little girl in a red coat. She comes from the memories of a camp survivor who, while interviewed by Spielberg before the movie, talked about a little girl in a red coat who was shot in front of him by a Nazi officer.

In the movie, she represents the horrible reality that comes to Schindler’s mind when he sees her body (with the red coat around her) in the pile of all the dead Jews. When before he wasn’t really concerned, after seeing the body he takes a big hit of the reality around him and that’s probably when he decides to turn around the Nazis and try to save Jews.

Shoplifters = Manbiki kazoku (2018)

IMDb: 8.0

Director: Hirokazu Koreeda
Writers: Hirokazu Koreeda (original story), Hirokazu Koreeda (screenplay)
Stars: Lily Franky (Osamu Shibata), Sakura Andô (Nobuyo Shibata), Mayu Matsuoka (Aki Shibata), Jyo Kairi (Shota Shibata), Miyu Sasaki (Yuri), Kirin Kiki (Hatsue Shibata)

This film, based on a true story in Osaka, is devastatingly clear-sighted about modern Japan, its dysfunctions and hypocrisies. It is about a family that comprises three generations crammed together into a small home – the adults earn low wages; work menial jobs; and struggle to feed, clothe, and educate the kids. Their income is supplemented by committing petty theft, and, for the daughter, working in a peep show. The storytelling touch is deft, rendering Shoplifters a warm, heartfelt, and engrossing experience that’s entirely deserving of the Palme d’Or at Cannes. A rich, satisfying and deeply intelligent film.

Srimanthudu = The weathy man (2015)

IMDb: 7.6

Director: Siva Koratala
Country: India
Artists: Shruti Haasan (Chaaruseela), Mahesh Babu (Harsha Vardhan), Jagapathi Babu (Ravikanth), Sampath Raj (Shasi), Rajendraprasad (Narayana)

Harsha is the son of a multi-millionaire named Ravikanth. He is quite simple in life and shares different ideologies to his father. He sets on a personal mission to his village and encounters Sasi and his gang who are troubling the villagers big time. Rest of the story is as to how Harsha’s personal mission becomes a revolution and helps the villagers grow and prosper in the future. The songs are nice, the music is catchy and the choreography generally very good. Overall, Srimanthudu is an entertaining watch.

Temple Grandin (2010 TV Movie)

IMDb Rating: 8.3

Director: Mick Jackson
Stars: Claire Danes (Temple Grandin), Julia Ormond (Eustacia), David Strathairn (Dr. Carlock), Catherine O’Hara (Aunt Ann), Stephanie Faracy (Betty Goscowitz), Barry Tubb (Randy)

The film follows Temple Grandin’s life, providing background through a series of flashbacks. As a child, Grandin is uncommunicative and prone to tantrums and is diagnosed with autism. The medical consensus at that time was that autism was a form of schizophrenia resulting from insufficient maternal affection. Despite recommendations to place her in an institution, Grandin’s mother hires therapists and works to help her daughter adapt to social interaction.

The movie is captivating not only for the exceptional acting but providing us with a glimpse into the world of autism. Everything about this movie points to excellence: the writing, the direction, the cinematography and the acting of a superb cast featuring Claire Danes in what must be the role of a lifetime.

The movie is moving in its emotional impact without becoming maudlin. The pace of the movie is quick and takes us through a number of years in the fascinating life of Temple Grandin without losing us or boring us.

+ The blind side (2009)

IMDb: 7.6

Director: John Lee Hancock
Stars: Quinton Aaron (Michael Oher), Sandra Bullock (Leigh Anne Tuohy), Tim McGraw (Sean Tuohy), Ray McKinnon (Burt Cotton), Jae Head (Sean Jake), Lily Collins (Collins)

Teenager Michael Oher is surviving on his own, virtually homeless, when he is spotted on the street by Leigh Anne Tuohy on the Thankgiving Day. Learning that the young man is one of her daughter’s classmates, Leigh Anne insists that Michael – wearing shorts and a t-shirt in the dead of winter – come out of the cold. Without a moment’s hesitation, she invites him to stay at the Tuohy home for the night. What starts out as a gesture of kindness turns into something more as Michael becomes part of the Tuohy family despite the differences in their backgrounds.

The film is based on the life of Michael Oher, a one-time star for Briarcrest Christian School and then an offensive lineman for the Baltimore Ravens.

+ The boy in the striped pajamas (2008)

IMDb: 7.8

Director: Mark Herman
Stars: Vera Farmiga, Asa Butterfield, Zac Mattoon O’Brien, Domonkos Németh, Henry Kingsmill

This is a powerful fictional story that offers a unique perspective on how prejudice, hatred and violence affect innocent people, particularly children, during wartime.

Eight-year-old Bruno (Asa Butterfield), whose father is a high-ranking Nazi officer, moves with his family to a military outpost next to a death camp. Lacking the companionship of other young boys, he wanders off against his parent’s orders to the camp and strikes up a friendship with mysterious kid Shmuel (Jack Scanlon) from what he assumes is the local farm. The two communicate through the gaps in the barbed-wire fencing.

The acting is heartfelt. The scenes between the two boys are delicately played; often they feel like the carefree interactions of any two youngsters, but they never lose their grounding in bitter reality, Shmuel’s missing teeth, dirt smothered face and prisoner garb (the “striped pajamas” of the title) serving as constant reminders of the underlying circumstances of their friendship.

Given the subject matter, the film could be difficult to watch for young viewers.

The bucket list (2007)

IMDb Rating: 7.4

Director: Rob Reiner
Stars: Jack Nicholson (Edward Cole), Morgan Freeman (Carter Chambers), Sean Hayes (Thomas)

Two old codgers who are nothing like people, both suffering from cancer that is nothing like cancer, and setting off on adventures that are nothing like possible. Edward is an enormously rich old man, diagnosed with cancer, given a year to live, and is sharing a room with Carter, about the same age, same prognosis. Then they take a road trip with a wish list of things to do before they “kick the bucket.”

Without tragedy, without tears, The bucket list is a touching story of two old men with humane feelings and ardent love for life, whether they are healthy or sick.

Listen to Carter:
You know, the ancient Egyptians had a beautiful belief about death. When their souls got to the entrance to heaven, the guards asked two questions. Their answers determined whether they were able to enter or not. ‘Have you found joy in your life?’ ‘Has your life brought joy to others?’

The Elephant Man (1980)

IMDb Rating: 8.3

Director: David Lynch
Stars: Anthony Hopkins, John Hurt, Anne Bancroft, John Gielgud, Wendy Hiller, Freddie Jones, Michael Elphick

This is an American historical drama film about Joseph Merrick (whom the script calls John Merrick), a severely deformed man in late 19th century London.

In Victorian times it was common for showmen to make money showing human curiosities for public entertainment. But the garish poster outside promised something extraordinary: “The Elephant Man”.

Frederick Treves, a surgeon at the London Hospital, finds John Merrick in a Victorian freak show in London’s East End, where he is kept by a Mr Bytes. His head is kept hooded, and his “owner”, who views him as intellectually disabled, is paid by Treves to bring him to the hospital for examination. Treves presents Merrick to his colleagues and highlights his monstrous skull, which forces him to sleep with his head on his knees, since if he were to lie down, he would asphyxiate. Treves brings him to the hospital.

Merrick tells the doctors that he knows how to read, and has memorized the 23rd Psalm because it is his favorite. He is permitted to stay in the hospital, but his life is not uneventful.

His audience would feel a paint when he cries, “I am not an animal! I am a human being! I … am … a … man!”

The fault in our stars (2014)

IMDb Rating: 7.8

Director: Josh Boone
Stars: Shailene Woodley (Hazel Grace), Ansel Elgort (Augustus Waters), Nat Wolff (Isaac), Willem Dafoe (Peter Van Houten), Laura Dern (Frannie)

This is an American romantic drama film based on the novel of the same name by John Green. Hazel Grace Lancaster, a sixteen-year-old cancer patient, is forced by her parents to attend a support group, where she meets and subsequently with Augustus Waters, another cancer patient. He invites Hazel to his house where they bond over their hobbies and agree to read each other’s favorite books. They keep in touch via text over the weeks that follow and grow closer.

The enjoy the time they are together, they love and they endure.

Listen to Hazel who mentions a quote: “If you want a rainbow, you have to deal with the rain.”

The gold rush (1925)

IMDb Rating: 8.3

Director: Charles Chaplin
Stars: Charles Chaplin, Mack Swain, Tom Murray

This is the quintessential Chaplin/Little Tramp film, with a balance of slapstick comedy and pantomime, social satire, and emotional and dramatic moments of tenderness…

Classic scenes include the starvation scene of two cabin-marooned prospectors boiling and fastidiously eating a stewed shoe, the Tramp’s cabin-mate deliriously imagining his companion as a large chicken, the teetering cabin on the edge of a cliff, and Chaplin’s lonely fantasized New Year’s Eve party (with the dancing dinner rolls routine) when he waits for a girl who never comes.

Then he goes out to look for the girl, and find her flolicking with her friends. He just bows his head and walks a way – a scene that stops all laughter and excites deep feelings.

The film is a comedy, but a touching comedy.

The Green Mile (1999)

IMDb Rating: 8.5

Director: Frank Darabont
Stars: Tom Hanks (Paul Edgecomb), David Morse (Brutus ‘Brutal’ Howell), Michael Clarke Duncan (John Coffey), Bonnie Hunt (Jan Edgecomb), James Cromwell (warden Hal Moores), Eve Brent (Elaine Connelly)

Set on Death Row in a Southern prison in 1935, this is the remarkable story of a prison guard who develops a poignant, unusual relationship with one inmate who possesses a magical gift that is both mysterious and miraculous.

In flashback, the elderly Paul Edgecomb tells his friend Elaine about the summer of 1932 when he was a corrections officer in charge of Death Row inmates in Louisiana’s Cold Mountain Penitentiary. His domain was called the “Green Mile” because the condemned prisoners walking to their execution are said to be walking “the last mile”; here it is on a stretch of green linoleum to the electric chair.

One day, a new inmate arrives, John Coffey, a seven-foot-tall black man convicted of raping and killing two young white girls. Upon being escorted to his cell, he immediately demonstrates “gentle giant” character traits: keeping to himself, fearing darkness, and being moved to tears on occasion. Soon enough, John reveals extraordinary healing powers by healing Paul’s urinary tract infection and resurrecting a mouse. Later he also heals the wife of the warden, who is terminal.

It turns out he is also innocent of the crimes he was convicted of.

The message to The Green Mile is understandable: justice isn’t always just and the miracles can happen in the most unexpected of places. Even though the film has somewhat mystic atmosphere, its broad meaning is humane belief in life, and inter-racial friendship.

The intern (2015)

IMDb Rating: 7.2

Director: Nancy Meyers
Stars: Robert De Niro (Ben Whittaker), Anne Hathaway (Jules Ostin), Rene Russo, Anders Holm

Ben Whittaker, a 70-year-old widower, has discovered that retirement isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Seizing an opportunity to get back in the game, he becomes a senior intern at an online fashion site, founded and run by Jules Ostin. The tirelessly benevolent retiree becomes the fashion entrepreneur’s unlikely guide to work-life equilibrium.

Behind at least one successful woman stands an older, wiser man.

You’re never too old to keep an open mind.

The kid (1921)

IMDb Rating: 8.3

Director: Charles Chaplin
Stars: Charles Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Jackie Coogan, Philip D’Oench, Dan Dillon, Robert Dunbar, Florette Faulkner

This is one of Chaplin’s very best movies.

An unknown woman (Edna Purviance) leaves a charity hospital carrying her newborn son. An artist (Carl Miller), the apparent father, is shown with the woman’s photograph. When it falls into the fireplace, he first picks it up, then throws it back in to burn up. The woman decides to abandon her child in the back seat of an expensive automobile with a handwritten note imploring the finder to care for and love the baby. However, the car is stolen. When the two thieves discover the child, they leave him on the street. The Tramp (Charlie Chaplin) finds the baby. Unwilling at first to take on the responsibility, he eventually softens and names the boy John. Elsewhere, the woman has an apparent change of heart and returns for the baby, but is heartbroken and faints upon learning of the baby having been taken away.

The kid is also impressive in that, while the story is a sentimental one, it strikes an ideal balance, maintaining sympathy for the characters while never overdoing it with the pathos. The careful balance makes the few moments of real emotion all the more effective and memorable.

The kid was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. Innovative in its combination of comedic and dramatic elements It is widely considered one of the greatest films of the silent era.

The pianist (2002)

IMDb Rating: 8.5

Director: Roman Polanski
Stars: Adrien Brody, Thomas Kretschmann, Frank Finlay, Maureen Lipman, Emilia Fox, Michał Żebrowski

In September 1939, Władysław Szpilman, a Polish-Jewish pianist, is playing live on the radio in Warsaw when the station is bombed during Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland. Warsaw soon becomes part of the Nazi-controlled General Government.

By November 1940, Szpilman and his family are forced into the Warsaw Ghetto. People starve, the guards are brutal, and starving children are abandoned in the streets.

On 16 August 1942, Szpilman and his family are transported to Treblinka extermination camp. But a friend in the Jewish Ghetto Police recognizes Władysławe, and separates him from his family. He becomes a slave laborer, and learns of a coming Jewish revolt. He helps the resistance by smuggling weapons into the ghetto, on one occasion narrowly avoiding a suspicious guard. Szpilman eventually manages to escape, and goes into hiding.

In April 1943, Szpilman watches from his window as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which he aided, unfolds, and then ultimately fails. After a neighbor discovers Szpilman in the flat, he is forced to flee to a second hiding place.

In August 1944, during the Warsaw Uprising, the Armia Krajowa attacks a German building across the street from Szpilman’s hideout. Tank shells hit the apartment, forcing him to flee. Over the course of the following months, Warsaw is destroyed. Szpilman is left alone to search desperately for shelter and supplies among the ruins. He eventually makes his way to a house. He is discovered by Wehrmacht officer Wilm Hosenfeld who learns that Szpilman is a pianist. He asks Szpilman to play on a grand piano in the house. The decrepit Szpilman manages to play Chopin’s “Ballade in G minor”. In this moment, there is no separation between doctrines and countries; only humane nderstanding remains.

The Shawshank redemption (1994)

IMDb: 9.3 – #1 IMDb

Director: Frank Darabont
Writer/Author: Stephen King
Stars: Tim Robbins (Andy Dufresne), Morgan Freeman (Ellis Boyd ‘Red’ Redding), Bob Gunton (Samuel Norton), Joseph Ragno (Ernie), Neil Giuntoli (Jigger), James Whitmore (Brooks Hatlen), William Sadler (Heywood), Clancy Brown (Captain Hadley)

The film tells the story of banker Andy Dufresne, who is sentenced to life in Shawshank State Penitentiary for the murder of his wife and her lover, despite his claims of innocence. Over the following two decades, he befriends a fellow prisoner, contraband smuggler Ellis “Red” Redding, and becomes instrumental in a money laundering operation led by the prison warden Samuel Norton.

Read a sentence in the letter that Andy wants to tell Red: “Remember, Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies”.

This is truly the best film of all times.

To kill a mockingbird (1962)

IMDb Rating: 8.3

Director: Robert Mulligan
Stars: Gregory Peck (Atticus Finch), John Megna (Dill Harris), Overton (Sheriff Heck Tate), Rosemary Murphy (Maudie Atkinson), Ruth White (Mrs. Dubose). Brock Peters (Tom Robinson)

This is the movie based on the Harper Lee novel of the same name about Scout, Jem and their father, Atticus Finch who is an attorney in a small southern town. It is both a coming of age story about the children as well as a hard-hitting drama, as Atticus defends a black man who is on trial for the rape of a white woman.

Of course, the defense of a man wrongly accused of a crime is a common story line, but To kill a mockingbird stands out as an exceptional example for several reasons. Among them, the date that the film was released: 1962, on the cusp of the civil rights movement in America, and the fact that it takes place in the south in the 1930’s. It is also far from the first film to explore the experiences of children and their own personal growth, but To kill a mockingbird stands out because of its sheer honesty and natural performances by the child actors portraying these rich characters.

One of the things that makes To kill a mockingbird a truly great film is the love and respect everyone involved in bringing Harper Lee’s novel to the screen had for the original source material. It shows up on screen in every single frame.

Tokyo story (1953)

IMDb Rating: 8.2

Director: Yasujirô Ozu
Stars: Chishû Ryû, Chieko Higashiyama, Sô Yamamura

The film tells the story of an aging couple who travel to Tokyo to visit their children and grandchildren. It contrasts the behavior of their children, who are too busy to pay them much attention, and their widowed daughter-in-law, who treats them with kindness. But the old couple sadly remark on how their children have changed.

This film is considered to be one of the best of Japan and the world. In the International Film Festival in Busan in 2015, Tokyo story is voted to rank 1st among the best 100 Asian films of all times.

The film doesn’t want to force our emotions, but to share its understanding. It ennobles the cinema. It says, yes, a film can help us make small steps against our imperfections.

Note: The remake Tokyo family (2013) directed by Yôji Yamada with IMDb Rating of 7.5 is pretty good, and the image quality is of course far better.

Tôi thấy hoa vàng trên cỏ xanh = Yellow flowers on the green grass (2015)

IMDb Rating: 7.9

Director: Victor Vu
Stars: Jayvee Mai The Hiep (ông Nhân), My Thanh (Mận), Trọng Khang (Tường), Thịnh Vinh (Thiều)

Victor Vu is one of the best directors in Viet Nam, and he gave us an awesome film which based on Nguyen Nhat Anh’s I see yellow flowers on the green grass.

The movie is set in 1980’s rural area of Vietnam and viewers can have a overview about Viet Nam at that time: poor, destitute, but truly full of love. The story follows 12-year old Thieu and his 7-year old brother Tuong. Everything runs slowly, smoothly with many beautiful pictures in Phu Yen province’s countryside. The brothers do everything together, play in rice paddies, run errands, sleep on same bed… Their days are filled with curious adventures. Then one day Moon comes into the picture…

One could easily pick up that the movie is a string of small episodes involving the lives of these three characters in rural area where resources are scarce and that the welfare sometimes depends on the sacrifices made.

The film brings some soft and pleasant feelings, and perhaps some tears. Love is not apparent in conversations or actions; you should fell it.

Three billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri (2018)

IMDb: 8.2

Director: Martin Mcdonagh
Countries: U.S., U.K.
Artists: Frances Mcdormand (Mildred), Caleb Landry Jones (Red Welby), Kerry Condon (Pamela), Sam Rockwell (Dixon), Alejandro Barrios (Latino), Darrell Britt-Gibson (Jerome)

A grieving mother wages war on her local police department after their investigation into her teenage daughter’s rape and murder putters to a halt. She rents three billboards to call attention to her daughter’s unsolved murder. The billboards upset the townspeople, including Chief Bill Willoughby and the racist, violent, alcoholic Officer Jason Dixon. The open secret that Willoughby suffers from terminal pancreatic cancer adds to everyone’s disapproval. Mildred and her son Robbie are harassed and threatened, but to Robbie’s chagrin, she stays firm about keeping the billboards up.

 

WALL-E (2008)

IMDb Rating: 8.5

Director: Andrew Stanton
Stars: Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, Jeff Garlin

WALL·E is a robot that is left all alone on Planet Earth, which is now covered with garbage. The humans have left onto a corporate ship and are living their lives care free. For 700 years, WALL·E has been collecting waste pieces here and there and making them into his treasures. Then, its programming is faulty: it really wants is a friend, it is dreaming!

One day a ship lands with a female robot, Eve, who WALL·E just adores. But Eve is on a mission to find a plant to bring back onto the human ship to show that Earth is safe.

Nobody thinks a sci-fi films brings about humane value, but this film does. It is spectacular, majestic, touching, involving, and achingly beautiful. And it is good entertainment.

The most endearing love story in space.

Where the heart is (2000)

IMDb: 6.8

Director: Matt Williams
Stars: Natalie Portman (Novalee Nation), Dylan Bruno (Willy Jack Pickens), Stockard Channing (Sister Husband), Ashley Judd (Lexie Coop), James Frain (Forney Hull)

Pregnant 17-year-old Novalee Nation runs away from her Tennessee home toward the bright lights of California, accompanied by her boyfriend, Willy Jack Pickens. But Willy gets cold feet and abandons her at a Walmart in Sequoyah, OK. Novalee’s life savings amount to a few dollars, so she moves into the Walmart, sleeping there at night and venturing out during the day.

Immediately we are introduced to a whole host of vivid characters. There is nurse Ashley Judd who is rearing five young children of her own, department store photographer Keith David, and shy librarian James Frain who is taking care of his alcoholic older sister (Margaret Ann Hoard).

With the help of the eccentric Sister Husband and Lexie Coop, a nurses’ aide, Novalee tries to get her life in order for the sake of her expected child, Americus Nation. Eventually Portman experiences life, tragedy, love, triumph, and everything in between.

The film is inspirational: in the midst of the violence and profanity that occurs in life, it reminds you that there are still good, honest and decent people.

Wonder (2017)

IMDb: 8.0

Director: Stephen Chbosky
Countries: U.S., Hong Kong
Artists: Jacob Tremblay (Auggie Pullman), Owen Wilson (Nate), Julia Roberts (Isabel), Izabela Vidovic (Via), Rukiya Bernard (Nurse), Mandy Patinkin (Mr. Tushman), Noah Jupe (Jack Will), Bryce Gheisar (Julian), Elle Mckinnon (Charlotte), Daveed Diggs (Mr. Browne), Ty Consiglio (Amos), Kyle Breitkopf (Miles), James A Hughes (Henry)

Auggie is a brainy 10-year-old boy with a congenital facial deformity. He has been home-schooled by his mother, Isabel. But now that he’s 10, she and Auggie’s dad, Nate, have made the decision to send him to middle school. They know they can’t shield him from the world forever, and they have no desire to.

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Note: this post is still open, to be updated when there is new information.

Compiled by: Diệp Minh Tâm – Updated Nov-2019