The Blind Side

This refreshingly heartfelt drama is based on the life of Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron), who grew up neglected and impoverished but went on to become an American football star. Sandra Bullock won an Oscar for playing Leigh Anne Tuohy, the gun-toting, wealthy, white southern Christian who bucks convention to shelter, educate and love the homeless black teenager. This could have easily slid into melodrama, but instead is a charming, relatively unsentimental drama that focuses, in a straightforward manner, on how good deeds change lives at all levels. Once viewers grow accustomed to the enormous physical differences between Bullock and Aaron - who nevertheless convince as eventual mother and son - this inspiring film will burrow in and work its magic, as Tuohy makes Oher a part of her family and uses tough love to encourage him to succeed. Oher's miserable start in life shouldn't have happened, but it did - and The Blind Side is a film that shouldn't work, but does.