Why number one you ask?

Rating: 10/10 (5 April 2016)

This film is number one on the IMDb top 250. This is not the greatest film of all time but this is a film so impossible to hate. It is, as one reviewer wrote, the best film for the worst parts of your life. No film is even comparable to Shawshank when going strictly off of inspirational powers, Rocky is the only other answer that is stupid but its still wrong. I am mocked by my friends for my taste for the dark (taxi driver, once upon a time in America, in the bedroom and the war zone just to name a few favorites) but this film is the only film I have ever seen (again, maybe Rocky) that has ever made me proud to be human. This is truly the role that has defined Morgan Freeman's career (has he really played a different character since?) and the subtleties of Andy Dufresne are endless. He is a stoic character but one of the most likable, most believable and most beloved in film. It is a film built on the little things for much of its two and a half hours, and there are so many beautiful little scenes. We learn to love these characters, when the are dragged through the mud so are we, and when they triumph we are every bit as elated. The world is a nasty and ugly place that will beat you down if you let it, so don't let it. Andy never lost hope. 'Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.' That is what makes the human race so exceptional, for better or worse, we have a hard time giving up. Slaves rarely killed themselves, Holocaust Jews rarely killed themselves, in the darkest of times we somehow find a reason to believe they will end. To give up on faith and hope is to give up on your humanity. Get busy livn' or get busy dying'. That's' goddamn right.