The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

7 Academy Award Nominations including Best Picture

directed byFrank Darabont
starring Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman

The one story that sticks with me from this film is the old man, struggling to survive after 50 years in prison, leaving his friends and letting his pet bird go, completely lost outside of the walls that had become his home. "They send you here for life," says Morgan Freeman's Red, "and that's exactly what they take."

This film is about a man who refuses to have his life taken away. It's a fantastic tale, something that almost approaches myth - but perhaps that's the voice of narrator God Morgan Freeman in my head. It's a story about redemption, yes: the self-made kind that comes from a bitter determination to survive in mind and spirit as well as in body. Hope, freedom, justice, they're all played with here.

It's a slow film at times - I was glad for excuses to double-task. But it's also satisfying, thoughtful, and fascinating. Such depravity and such hope, coexisting so closely. It's not hard to understand how The Shawshank Redemption became so celebrated.