It all started in the summer of 1977. I thought Star Wars was a B-Movie when I went to see it the first time, but when I saw the whole two hours I knew this was something very special and something that had never been done before. In the end, this one movie has created a movie franchise and a list of toys and games that have greatly surpassed any other movie in history. All of us have been reminded of not only the first movie in 1977, but the Empire Strikes Back in 1980 and Return of the Jedi in 1983 because of the sudden and tragic death at only age 60 of Carrie Fisher of a heart attack. The year 2016 has been one of the worst years of celebrity deaths of all time. All of these people will be sorely missed.

At the very end of the movie Lion, right before the ending credits, there is a comment that is one of the most amazing facts about this true story.  80,000 children are lost every year in India.  That is 80,000 children.  There is no better depressing fact of how difficult it is to live in one of the poorest countries in the world than this statement.  According to the link above, many of the missing children wind up in the sex trading industry and one can only wonder how many of these children die every year either after being kidnapped by a sex trader or who just die homeless on the streets of any number of crowded and poor cities in India. India also has the largest number of child laborers in the world under 14.

The true story of Lion is about a very unlikely lost and found trek through 25 years. The film shows the very long odds of one 5-year-old child named Saroo, played by Dev Patel getting lost after falling asleep in a train station and then even making it to 6 years old after travelling over 1000 miles from his home and winding up in another part of India. Even worse is that Saroo wound up so far away from his home that the people there spoke an entirely different Indian dialect. What really got me about this part of the story is how the mass of people in the Calcutta train station just ignored 5-year-old Saroo, nobody caring to help this small child and even pushing him aside while he tried to beg for help at the ticket counter. From this point of the story to the time many months later when Saroo was finally rescued by an orphanage, is probably just fluke luck that Saroo even survived, especially since he was only 5 years old.

The remainder of this movie has to do with Saroo with his adoptive family in Austrailia, his mother played by Nicole Kidman father by David Wenham and his girlfriend played by Rooney Mara. After 25 years and a singular moment in Saroo’s life, he realizes that he had to find his family in India, using of all things, Google Maps. Lion is an amazing true story of survival, the acting and story are outstanding throughout. I highly recommend this film.

It simply does not get any better than this movie. Not with the writing and originally this was a play written by August Wilson, not with the stark, depressing and heartbreaking story and not with the acting, which is simply the best I have ever seen. One unique dimension with this movie is the fact that the two stars Denzel Washington and Viola Davis performed the play Fences on Broadway so they have an insight and memorization of the complex dialogue to a degree that is far greater than within any normal film ever produced. You have the impression that both of these great actors actually became the people they were playing on screen as their familiarity with the characters is so profound.

Even with the trailers for this movie, it seems everybody already knows that both Viola Davis and Denzel Washington will win academy awards for their performances. The only question is, the Academy might make Viola Davis a supporting actress nominee, even though her time on screen mandates the best Actress nomination. The reason for this will probably be because of Jessica Chastain in Miss Sloane, which is also reviewed within this blog, who also gave a great performance in her role. There is a scene in this movie where a bombshell event is revealed and Viola’s acting in this one scene could arguably be the best ever performed in any movie. Denzel Washington also directed this masterpiece film and he will also get the best director nomination and the movie will be nominated for best picture. Given the amazing quality of this production, Fences just might win every major award this year, this movie is just that good.

The story of Fences is about the 1950’s in Pittsburgh and a black family in that era where Troy, played by Denzel Washington could have been a great baseball player but he is black and he was born at the wrong time to ever get into professional sports as a black man. He also came from a bad childhood and had to leave home at 14, then spent some time in prison and now, rather than being happy rich and famous as a major league baseball player, he is living in a ramshackle house and is a garbage man living paycheck to paycheck barely surviving. This story is not only a story about a poor black family in the 1950’s, it is about way too many millions of people, who are miserable and suffering because of circumstances, bad luck, being poor, being born into the wrong family or born at the wrong time, like so many young people in their 20’s today. Real life is a five day week grind and if your miserable 5 days a week, 8 hours a day, that is a big part of your existence and your misery way too often is impossible to forget, even for a short period of time. Monday is always right around the corner.

For Troy, his memories of his greatness as a baseball player exist even in how he talks to his wife, his 2 sons and his best friend. Everything is about being “in the batter’s box”, getting the “full count” and one, two or three strikes. How many great athletes just never get their chance at being who they desperately want to be for reasons that very often are just out of their control, or just out of their reach. Life is horribly unfair to way too many people and this movie shows this harsh reality better than any film I have ever seen.

If you’re miserable in your job or even being tortured by some sick moron who you work with day after day, very often you will bring all this pent up anger and misery home, and take it out on your own family. This is the case with Troy’s younger son Cory, played extremely well by Jovan Adepo. The other issue here is that Troy is jealous of his son’s youth and much brighter future including a possible football scholarship, but Troy goes out of his way to sabotage that, even refusing to sign a form to allow Cory to talk to a college recruiter. The arguments and fights between Troy and Cory are some of the most emotional and best acted in this movie and on two occasions Cory says what we are all thinking. Troy does not want his own son to ever do better than he did and especially not in sports. This is the opposite of what a parent is supposed to want for his children, but not in the case where so much anger and bitterness over so many years in Troy’s unhappy life exists. As far as Troy sees life, “If I am miserable then everybody in my family is going to be miserable too”. I know this aspect of this story first hand in my own childhood with my own father.

Another aspect of this story is Troy’s brother Gabriel, played by Mykelti Williamson who is brain damaged due to a war injury. He has the mind of a child and is frequently causing Troy problems with having to bail him out after being arrested for vagrancy and disturbing the peace. Troy was only able to buy his house only because of 3000 dollars given by the government for Gabriel’s brain injury.

After all is said and done about the movie Fences, it is impossible for me to ever give a higher recommendation than I now give this film. It is the best acting I have ever seen, and the most real life story I have ever seen on screen and in my opinion by far the best movie this year. Fences represents the entire reason why we go to the movies. To realize that we are not alone and other people have gone through the same things we have gone through in our own lives.