The Soloist

The Soloist is a familar story - a reporter finds a man on the street who is homeless. He takes an interest in him, the man has a great past and the question is "How did he get here?". We've seen this setup before in movies. What makes this one different?

The acting, first of all. Robert Downey, Jr. ('Ironman') is such a great actor. Watching him is a treat, and definitely worth the price of admission. He conveys so much with only a change of facial expression.

Jamie Foxx ('Ray') is the other star of this movie and he does a very good job. He plays a schizophrenic who started life as a young man who has a pure gift for music. What happens along the way to mess that up is what the story shows us.

Mental illness, homelessness, basically the "untouchables" of society - this movie shows us all of those. It's not pretty. But as a beautiful balance there is this wonderful music of Bach and Beethoven. The contrast of the soothing music and rough, gritty real world is striking. It makes for a very watchable, very thought provoking, very interesting film.

We liked his one and gave it a '3'. We did leave with the feeling that we'd seen it before, there are similarities between this and other movies like it. But it's still a very good effort.

Pueblo Tinseltown was nice and quiet, with fresh popcorn!