National Drinks
Caesar
Canada
David Bowie
2016
A lot of movies begin with poetic quotations, but ____ opens with a statement presented as fact: “War is a drug.” Not for everyone, of course. Most combat troops want to get it over with and go home. But the hero of this film, Staff Sgt. William James, who has a terrifyingly dangerous job, addresses it like a daily pleasure. Under enemy fire in Iraq, he defuses bombs.
Michael Schumacher
F1
2010
Drake
Port wine
Portugal
Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria
1914
___ is a masterpiece, pure and simple, deep and true. It tells the story of an aging fight trainer and a hillbilly girl who thinks she can be a boxer. It is narrated by a former boxer who is the trainer's best friend. But it's not a boxing movie. It is a movie about a boxer. What else it is, all it is, how deep it goes, what emotional power it contains, I cannot suggest in this review, because I will not spoil the experience of following this story into the deepest secrets of life and death. This is the best film of the year.
Million Dollar Baby (2004)
Radek Bonk
Hockey
2005
Feist
Mate
Paraguay
Malcolm X
1965
___ tells interlocking stories of whites, blacks, Latinos, Koreans, Iranians, cops and criminals, the rich and the poor, the powerful and powerless, all defined in one way or another by racism. All are victims of it, and all are guilty it. Sometimes, yes, they rise above it, although it is never that simple. Their negative impulses may be instinctive, their positive impulses may be dangerous, and who knows what the other person is thinking?
The result is a movie of intense fascination; we understand quickly enough who the characters are and what their lives are like, but we have no idea how they will behave, because so much depends on accident.
Crash (2004)
Bryant "Big Country" Reeves
Basketball
2003
Ouzo
Greece
John Wayne
1979
The Nobel Prize winner John Forbes Nash Jr. still teaches at Princeton, and walks to campus every day. That these commonplace statements nearly brought tears to my eyes suggests the power of ____ the story of a man who is one of the greatest mathematicians, and a victim of schizophrenia. Nash's discoveries in game theory have an impact on our lives every day. He also believed for a time that Russians were sending him coded messages on the front page of the New York Times.
A Beautiful Mind (2001)
Johnny “Ugly” Dickshot
Baseball
2018
Jessie Reyez
Pisco sour
Chile
Julius Caesar
44 BC
___ is about two men trying to live public lives that are the radical opposites of their inner realities. Their attempts threaten to destroy them, either by implosion or fatal betrayal. The telling of their stories involves a moral labyrinth, in which good and evil wear each other's masks.
The Departed (2006)
John Devitt
Swimming
2014
Brett Kissel