To me, a great movie is one that shows me people, places or events I would never see otherwise, and affects me emotionally and makes me think in the process. Great movies like Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List or Lawrence of Arabia help me visualize history more clearly than the text printed on pages.
This afternoon we saw a movie called 127 Hours, which dramatizes the experience of a young man named Aron Ralston in 2003. His story received a lot of news coverage, and eventually Ralston wrote the memoir this movie is based upon.
I remember parts of the Ralston story from headlines at the time, and was surprised when I heard someone was making a movie about it. I was even more surprised to discover the film met the criteria for greatness mentioned earlier.
Because of the subject matter, I can't recommend 127 Hours to everyone. Parts of it are extremely intense, to put it mildly, and there are probably many people who should see it and won't because of that aspect. For me, though, it was 94 minutes well spent.
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