Because they are all sourced from the one great story. The larger story. Our story. The giants of culture have been borrowing our story for years in the films they direct and produce. By identifying the redemptive stories embedded in all those great films, we feel like we are taking it back, one review at a time.
I love coming-of-age movies and this is one of my favorites. Cameron Crowe’s biopic about a boy growing up way too fast is very familiar to my experience as a young man. The soundtrack of great music and the “friends” you find in your vinyl collection was the experience of many young men and women.
Not typically a fan of RomComs, but this one was a pretty good ride. William Thacker is an unsuccessful travel bookstore owner in Notting Hill and falls into a relationship with Anna Scott, the most famous actress in the world. This one is hilarious, endearing, and full of redemptive turns. Anna famously reminds William that despite her fame and fortune,
What if you magically became the only person in the world who remembered all the Beatles songs? Would you pass them off as your own? This is exactly the conundrum that Jack Malik is facing in this movie. Full of great music, funny circumstances, and a hard realization that way more important than all the fame
This movie, based on the novel by Stephen King, takes us on a coming-of-age journey with a group of young boys to solve the mystery of a dead body. With an all-star cast featuring Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, Jerry O’Connell, Kiefer Sutherland, Richard Dreyfuss, and John Cusack.
In this movie from 1982, Robert Redford leads a team of misfits with complementary skills that test security systems. They’re hired by an imposter CIA operative to steal a secret black box that has powerful encryption ability. This predecessor to the “Oceans” franchise is full of mystery, adventure, and a lot of laughs.
A beautiful story about an immigrant trying to find a better life for her family colliding with a wealthy and dysfunctional family in California. This one deals with power of fidelity, the cost of infidelity, and how stories can be completely redeemed through the love of others. Adam Sandler, Tea Leoni, and Cloris Leachman are perfectly cast.
A great comedy that doesn’t seem to fit in the cinematic canon with all John Hughes other teen films from the 80’s, but carries a similar sensibility that you will recognize. If you look past all the slapstick, you will find a powerful redemptive story. The ability to look past our own frustrations can often provide the simple path to overcoming…helping someone else with theirs.
This animated film is no Disney movie, but it has much of the heart and sentimentality that you would find in one. Sometimes we assume the worst and seek to destroy the things we do not understand.
One of the quirkiest and worst reviewed movies I have ever reviewed, but something about it has me returning to it again and again. Maybe it is protagonist's awkward optimism. Maybe it is his idealistic belief that love can truly conquer all. But I think the thing I remember most is that he more courageously, sacrificially, and completely fights for the heart of his beauty in a way I‘ve never seen in film. In a way that not only rescues her,
This one is very different and quirky, but one of my favorite romantic comedies ever. What if your life was an inexplicable story that somebody else was writing? And what if that very boring and disinteresting story was just starting to get really enjoyable and worth living?
Sometimes the best way to understand someone you don’t really know is to walk the path they have walked. A father (Martin Sheen) walks the last steps of his son’s life as a way of understanding and redeeming his loss. As you might imagine, he gets his life transformed in the process.
Not exactly loved by the critics, but probably suffered from the incredibly high expectations of Ridley Scott’s direction and their inability to accept Russell Crowe in a RomCom. Max Skinner is a successful investor, womanizer, and narcissist. But deep within him there is an embedded memory of a glorious childhood, being deeply loved, and a yearning for a better life.
Toward the end of the movie, a man in Nashville tells Rose that he didn’t understand a word she is saying. I could relate. Understanding the “English” of the characters in their deep Glasgow Scottish accents could be challenging, but worth the strain. This one follows the familiar trope of an unknown finding stardom, but not in the way you typically expect.
Longfellow writes that “often times we call a man cold when he is only sad”. That is certainly the case with Russell Durwitz. He is an image consultant who helps other find success in the world’s eyes despite the fact that any form of happiness has eluded him. A surprise visitor on his 40th birthday takes him on a adventure of remembering, healing and restoration.
This one is sneaky fantastic. A woman who appears to be ill-equipped and not too interested in raising her pre-teen son, drops him off to live with two crack-pop and mysterious distant relatives. They regale with tales of adventure and heroism and help him on the journey to manhood in very unorthodox fashion.
A young sailor, Antwonne Fisher, appears to be angry at everyone and everything. What he is really longing for is a sense of home, family, and fathering. The love of a great woman and an unlikely father figure allow him to journey back through his story of brokenness to find healing and a family he had only dreamed existed.
Professor Keating has returned to his own prep school, Welton, to shake things up a bit. His mission is to awaken beauty, passion, and love in the collection of future doctors, lawyers, and bankers that attend. It is a beautiful story of awaking and the slumbering coming alive.
While Alex “Hitch” Hitchens may have a lot of experience and tricks up his sleeve to help a man with the heart of a woman, true love still comes down to old fashioned chemistry. True love can overcome impossible odds where even the best strategic approach can fail. Hilarious and endearing journey for both Will Smith (Hitch) and Kevin James (Albert).
Turns out there quite a few Spider Men of different varieties and from different dimensions. Most notably, young teen Miles Morales who is trying to figure out his superhero body at the same time that his friends at school are trying to figure out their human ones.
Matt King has been made trustee of the estate that holds his family’s 25,000 acres of undeveloped land on Kauai. While the family’s extensive descendants want to sell the land before the trust ends in seven years, Matt is distracted by a much bigger problem. HIs wife’s coma related to an accident associated with an affair, has his immediate family and his relationship with his daughters in a shamble.
Pete and Ellie have pretty much a perfect apart from one thing. Ellie starts to realize she experiencing a void that can only be filled by children. Entering into the local foster to adopt program turns out to be the most heartbreaking and fulfilling experiences of their lives.
What do you do if you are a classically trained African American pianist in the 60’s? You decide to take a tour of the deep South…and bring along a mafia tough guy to be your bodyguard. Beautiful story of how two men overcome hatred, anger, and fear to find a deep and loving lifetime friendship.
There isn’t a more controversial topic in the country than race. And let’s face it, some of the history around this topic is pretty ugly. Some of the movies that have dealt with this topic have been appropriately horrifying. What I most appreciate about this movie is that it introduces in the issue in a way that still felt appropriate for my children.
What makes a holiday film an enduring classic? The Hallmark channel is working overtime this time of year to figure out that formula, but it is very rare that a new Christmas movie becomes a classic. What if someone made a movie where the hero was the very epitome of light coming into the darkness of the world?
Breakout performances for Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence are just part of the incredible ensemble cast. This hilarious and poignant movie answers the question: What happens when two really broken people meet? Pat (Cooper) thinks that the path to happiness will come from restoring the life before his bipolar disorder and resulting violence had him institutionalized.
The 2009 animated feature from the folks at Pixar may have the most beautiful and poignant picture of both the joy and heartbreak of marriage ever captured on film. And that is just in the first 10 minutes! The rest of the film is about fulfilling the dreams of a lost loved one. In the process of that huge adventure, a wounded heart is restored, a man finds a new reason to live, and a young boy finds the father figure that he desperately needs.
It took 14 years to bring this sequel to market because director, Brad Bird, didn’t want to make the typical “money grab” parlaying the success of a film with a quick sequel, but waited until the right story emerged to follow up the first one…and it shows. This one packs a serious combination of doing the right thing, caring for others, and the love of family.
Ray Kinsella thinks the voice he is following is all about the restoration of Terence Mann, Shoeless Joe, and Dr. Moonlight Graham. He thinks he is supposed to mend their broken stories of an abbreviated association with baseball. But the journey Ray is taking is about something much deeper, the inexplicable restoration of his relationship with his father.
Fourteen year old Duncan’s life sucks and having to spend the summer at the beach house of his mom’s new boyfriend. His desire to escape the house, the boyfriend, and some unsettling things going on there, leads him to the local waterpark.
This fantastic coming of age film is one of my favorite of the last few years. Three young boys seeking the natural independence that adolescence requires, embark on starting a new life and a new home. With salvaged materials from construction projects, they create a semi-permanent home and organize under their own rules and laws.
What would you do if you found out you only had a few weeks to live? Well, Henry decided to drop out, return to his childhood neighborhood and anesthetize the pain until the inevitable occurs. When a simulacra (religious imagery in natural phenomena) appears on the side of his house, people in the neighborhood start making a pilgrimage to his backyard.
The true story of how four poor hispanic high school students in Arizona form a robotics club with their substitute teacher who is a recently laid off engineer. With only 800 dollars, some used car parts, and other inexpensive spare parts, they take on returning champ MIT and many other prestigious university team’s with college students and budgets more than ten times the size of theirs.
Okay, there aren’t a lot of RomComs (romantic comedies) that can really qualify as redemptive, but this one hits the mark. Not only is it a movie about relationships that won’t make you blush, it is a story about two half-hearted people both becoming more fully alive. Ben has an unhealthy obsession with the Boston Red Sox that keeps him from love and life.
20 year old Francis Ouimet doesn’t know that golf is an elitist sport not intended for his kind. He just knows that he loves the game and seems to posses God-given gifting for the sport. This true story about the winner of the 1913 U.S. Open is a little slow moving, but is inspiring and appropriate for the whole family.
If you don’t need a lot of action, adventure, or even dialogue and you love modernist architecture, this might be the film for you. The buildings, bridges, and other structures take center stage as two young people befriend one another through their different relationships with both architecture and family.
A nice little Disney film based on the true story of a down-on-his-luck professional sports agent who thinks that the most popular sport in one of the most populous countries in the world might be the source of the next great baseball player.
One of those small independent films that almost no one saw. A quirky caper with a truly odd-ball protagonist and a good ensemble cast of some really flawed people that all find a way to endear themselves by the end of the film. The film rests on this newspaper ad: “WANTED: Someone to back in time with me. This is not a joke. You’ll get paid after we get back.
When Frank Adler promises to give his niece a normal upbringing, he has no idea what challenges he will face once her abilities as a mathematical prodigy are revealed. A beautiful film about how the love of a parental role model can conquer anything. The scene where Frank teaches her about what it was like when she was born is one of the most touching scenes I have seen in a film in a long time.
We all eventually learn that the success that the world offers doesn’t hold a candle to the fulfillment we find in love, family, and home. Hassan Kadam has to travel from complete obscurity to the pinnacle of culinary success in order to learn this simple lesson. A delightful family film that will leave you soul satisfied and possible searching for some good Indian food.
Pamela Travers is terrified of Walt Disney making her beloved “Mary Poppins” into a whimsical cartoon like other Disney movies she’s seen. She completely resists every attempt by Walt to win her over until Walt realizes something very important: treating the story well means treating Pamela’s own life story well.
Oakland A’s GM, Billy Beane has a problem. The budget he has to field a team is only a fraction of the teams he is competing against. But he makes a huge bet on Peter Brand’s mathematical approach by building a team with lower cost players to replace superstars in the aggregate. While thumbing his nose at 100 years of baseball tradition,
Based on the true story of a man in Texas who planned to launch himself into orbit. This is well before some well-known billionaires decided to throw their hat in the same ring. Farmer still carries the childhood belief that he can be anything he wants to be. For him, that is an astronaut. Okay, so I can’t really recommend you watch the movie, it is pretty mediocre, but the trailer is fantastic.
What happens when an undersized horse, an oversized jockey, a broken-hearted owner, and a crackpot trainer get together? Movie magic. The incredible true story of how three people and a horse cooperated in the restoration of one another and the inspiration of everyone in Depression era America.
A sadly overlooked tale about a Scottish ichthyologist and lover of salmon fishing who encounters a visionary sheik with a similar love and desire to bring the sport to the most unlikely of places - the deserts of Yemen. Though the tale is around the mission of bringing this project to fruition, it is really a story about a person really stuck finding faith, love, and a life worth living.
From the incredible mind of Wes Anderson comes a stop action masterpiece that is as entertaining as it is visually stunning. Despite the fantastical tale that provides backdrop to the story, the tale really is about a boy, the love of his lost dog, and his heroic quest to locate him.
P. T. Barnum is a serial entrepreneur in all the best and worst of ways. He is a man of compromised character who wants worldly riches and personal acclaim. This whitewashed Disney-like depiction, however, is a family friendly joy-ride from start to finish. An overriding theme of finding purpose and value in someone despite their limitations is the prevailing theme.
Walter lives a very tedious professional and personal life and compensates by regularly daydreaming a more significant story. One small decision leads him on a life-changing adventure that leads him to life, love, and becoming a completely different man. One of the more uplifting and inspiring films in recent years.
The men in Tim’s family have an incredible secret; they can travel back to any point in their life. While time travel is a tried-and-true movie technique, this story takes a uniquely redemptive turn. At first Tim goes back to right the wrong of things in the past. But what Tim ultimately realizes is that he lives every day as if he were living it over again,
From a desire to start over after the loss of his wife, adventure writer Benjamin Mee moves his two children to the countryside to renovate and re-open a struggling zoo. A beautiful story of healing and restoration for Mee’s family, the zoo, and many others. Based on the true story of a zoological park in Devon, England. Appropriate for most of the family.
This is one of those great redemptive stories that you can also watch with the older kids. A coach getting a final chance, Kevin Costner, gives the local migrant working children their best chance at a better life by starting a cross-country team. While trying to change their lives his life gets changed in the process.
The trailer quotes a movie reviewer that called it “The sweetest damn film of the decade.” I couldn’t have said it any better myself. In this parable of the “Wizard of Oz”, we find three characters looking for a heart, a brain, and their courage. Their journey not only redeems the characters lives, but actor Shia LaBeouf attributes the movie to saving his.
Possibly one of my favorite films of all time. Young JoJo, who doesn’t really understand the horrors of the Nazi regime, is training to be a soldier at the age of 10. He is accompanied on his journey with a sanitized version of an idiotic Hitler as an imaginary friend. While JoJo personally experiences some of the horrors of the Nazis, he escapes with much of his innocence intact, a more tender heart, and a desire to love.
As a child of divorce, I really hate divorce. The redemptive experience of this movie is that it might cause you to be less selfish, learn to overlook your differences, and not let this become your marriage story. When love starts to fail in this one, it seems like everyone from therapist to friends seems to just encourage the breakdown.
Be warned. While it is one of Quentin Tarantino’s least violent movies, it is still a Quentin Tarantino movie. But the one real violent scene is a rewriting of history. And what if that rewritten version had some of history’s real baddies getting back what they perpetrated in real life? That is the movie's surprising turn. Beautifully acted, incredibly scripted, and full of great music.
For a Christian film, this one is full of great music and good performances. It shows how staying true to who you are can be a painful adolescent journey, but the only one that stands a chance to change lives. A pure and innocent heart can change the lives of even those that seem the most unredeemable.
The true story of a group of young boys in small coal who become fascinated by the space race with the Russians. When they break ranks with their intended future to enter a science fair and dream of a career outside of the coal mines, it inspires many but antagonizes some of the most important people in their lives.
A child believed by his mother to have died in childbirth spends his life in an orphanage never losing hope that he will be reunited with his parents. What he doesn’t know is that his parents, both musicians never spent more than one night together. The boy, Evan, has a natural musical gift and can hear music wherever he is.
The best selling book by Louis Sachar has become a movie! Stanley Yelnats IV looks to be the next in the long line fulfilling the 100-year curse of his family. After being charged with a crime he didn’t commit, he gets sentenced to Camp Green Lake to be rehabilitated with a rogue’s gallery of other boys.
Will Hunting is a genius and a janitor that roams the halls of MIT at night. His solving of “unsolvable” problems left on chalkboards by professors at this Ivy league school draw the attention of officials. His fighting draws a similar level of attention from the law.
Skeeter Stone has returned to her life In 1960’s Mississippi. She turns her world upside down when she decides to interview the black women who have served the elite of local society. Although initially guarded , she earns their trust, collects the stories, and helps form an empowering community among the women.
King George must ascend the throne and offer his country a strong voice of authority in its’ most troubled hour. The problem is that he stutters horribly and has a confidence that is equally fractured. He meets an unconventional Australian actor that he believes is a medically trained speech therapist.
Vincent Papale has never known darker times. It is 1978 and he has lost his job and his wife has just left him. He is a broken man that decides to risk all on a one-in-a-million shot at walking on to his favorite Philadelphia Eagles.
Rudy is undaunted by his size, his circumstance, and the incredulousness of everyone he knows. He is going to go to Notre Dame and run onto the field as part of the Fighting Irish Football team. He doesn’t have any money, academic qualification, or athletic ability. His dream couldn’t feel any more improbable.
One of my closest friend’s favorite family movies has now become one of mine. It is the source of frequently quoted one-liners and even dance parties in his home and it is easy to see why.
One of our favorite rom-coms of all time. It is quiet, sweet, and full of redemptive perspective. Lucy works at a toll booth for the Chicago “L” commuter train who harbors a secret crush for a man who passes by every day.
I had a close friend talk about their love of this movie for so long, that I had to finally give a viewing. Typically not a fan of foreign films with subtitles, this one was worth putting up with that inconvenience.
The Ted Talk superstar, author, and much sought-after speaker finally made her way to Netflix. As a clinical social worker, she approaches topics like courage, vulnerability, and shame like the subject matter expert that she is.
This New Zealand film fits in a very narrow vein of humor that will either make you love this film or not be able to get through very much of the footage. I happen to love the director Taika Waititi and this type of humor and really enjoyed this ride.
Told through the vehicle of a grandfather’s reading a story to a grandson, this one is great fun and a favorite of many. This may be the highest-rated romantic comedy of all time and is filled with heroes, villains, and the rescue of a princess.
Not sure how I missed this one for ten years, but our family really enjoyed this movie. It contains redemptive turns all over the place. Several key characters go on transformational journeys during the 100 minutes of this really entertaining ride.
Not exactly a redemptive movie, but a spot-on depiction of my high school and hometown. Maybe my older sister’s circa high school and hometown, but very familiar.
Critics are loving this film and it is easy to see why. It sort of has everything, but unfortunately for me, sometimes feels like it has too much. My teenagers enjoyed this one a whole lot more than I did.
Still can’t figure out why the critics hated this movie so much, but we really enjoyed the film. Maybe it was the slower paced sweet sentimentality of the film as it dealt with some very challenging issues. Critics hate “nice”.
One of the best-reviewed movies of 2019 and it is easy to see why. A phenomenal cast, great screenplay, and loads of entertainment and suspense. It is full of twists, plot turns, and misdirections.
Funny, adventurous, and hopelessly romantic, this movie somehow made it to release during all the chaos of movie offerings in 2020. This one is a little young and formulaic, but a nice ride nonetheless.
Definitely not one for the kids. This gritty tale of desperation finds an unorthodox but redemptive conclusion. A lost caregiver signs up for a young man with cerebral palsy who hates his life and everyone who cares for him.
Okay, this one isn’t redemptive at all, directly anyway. This movie confirms what we already knew, in times of tragedy, the last place we can turn for hope is the educational industrial complex, the ineptitude of our political system
I am always a sucker for parent-child stories, but this is one of the freshest takes I have ever seen on that idea. Borrowing directly from Field of Dreams, Good Will Hunting, About Time,
I heard some of the Oscar buzz around this for Nicole Kidman as Lucille Ball, but what got me to tune in is the screenplay credit for Aaron Sorkin. He is responsible for some truly great films and his quick sharp dialogue never disappoints.
Okay, so this plays a little bit like an international version of a Lifetime flick. It could also have come straight out of Disney, but it is not quite shiny enough and lighthearted for them.
Something about this one kept me from clicking on it until a close friend suggested that I would really love it, and I did. Though there was some heartache,
My wife was super excited about this one and I likely wouldn’t have seen it otherwise. I kept thinking, “This could have been so good.”, but it just wasn’t.
There wasn’t anything about another Nicolas Cage vehicle that would have interested me, but I kept hearing good things about this movie.
Watered down in my subconscious by all the less-quality sequels, a rewatch of this movie immediately brought me back to how fun this ensemble story was. Humor,
The only film my kids were able to watch from my favorite director, Wes Anderson. This adaptation of the famous Roald Dahl book by the same name is such a fun movie.
A family favorite at the Schroller house. A rat is an unlikely hero in the food-themed period animated film. An inspired story where gifting and desire can overcome any obstacle on the route to success.
