The Blind Side (2009)

Sandra Bullock won her Oscar for playing Leigh Anne Tuohy, a rich, white, Christian, conservative southerner who is amongst the heroes of this film, and when you type that sentence out, and realize how rare that is in contemporary cinema, you can kind of understand why so much of the Right has a problem with Hollywood. This movie of course is an exception however, it is rare to see such an overtly Christian movie get such a main stream and widely accepted release. The Tuohy family took in a poor black boy named Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron, who is so this character that it is kind of hard to imagine him playing anyone else) and changed his life, gave him a family, made sure he got an education, and helped him discover his natural talent at Football, he has now been in the NFL for roughly a decade. This is a nice, inspiring film, I liked it, it even dealt with the 'white savior complex' ambiguity of the main narrative head on, and that impressed me. The Tuohy family after a little tiny bit of initial reluctance take Michael into their family with lots of love and enthusiasm. My biggest complaint about the film is that Jae Head's S. J. Tuohy is just way too cutesy, and I had a hard time keeping straight what age he was supposed to be. ***1/2