I thought I'd discovered this movie

Rating: 10/10 (2 July 2012)

I'd never heard of "The Shawshank Redemption" when I tuned in to it about 15 minutes in on one of my satellite channels, sometime around 1997 or so.
It mesmerized me, and the last 20 minutes astounded me. The twists, the musical score, the final scene. Amazing.
I recall doing some searches (in those pre-Google days, probably with Alta Vista) to find out if anyone else had ever heard of this film. I found out that they had. It turns out a whole lot of people discovered this film as a "sleeper," on DVD or cable or satellite.
My favorite movies of around that time, seen in theaters, had been "Pulp Fiction" and "Heat." I didn't see "Forrest Gump" until around 2000 or so, and didn't care for it much. A good year for films.
Given the comments in the past half year or so (that I've gone back through), I suppose "Shawshank" will fall below some other films. There seems to be a a trend toward making "Hey, it's not all that!" (That is, it's not all that good, it's lousy, it's overrated, etc.)
Whatever, it's a great film. And when I happened to see it late one night on my satellite system, I thought I was the first to realize how great it was. It took several years for me to spot the high ratings on IMDb and to read that it had become a cult classic favorite.
(Ditto for "The Big Lebowski," which for a while I thought I was the only fan of. Now it's a subject of festivals and midnight watchings, sort of like "Rocky Horror" once was. I saw "Rocky Horror" in 1976 at the World Science Fiction Convention in Kansas City and thought it was not very entertaining.)
For me, the last 20-30 minutes is just the best. One twist after another, all seamlessly done. And a compelling musical score. Unforgettable.