Anthony Ford

The Shawshank Redemption was easily the best movie released in 1994. What should have been a runaway favorite for every Oscar category it was nominated for, it was singularly robbed by Forrest Gump for Best Picture that year. Freeways boasted billboards everywhere yelling "Gump Happens," and no one ever heard of the movie with the weird name. The cast was sterling, and unstoppable. Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman and James Whitmore top a cast that was singularly perfect in every respect. An intricate, well-told story of a man who was wrongly sent to prison for a murder he didn't commit, no other movie even came close that year. After the Oscar nominations were announced. Warner Brothers re-released it to theaters and it made a fair chunk of change on the second go-round. It's a movie that will never get old, no matter how often you watch it. It's on a lot of peoples' lists of their favorite movies of all time over a quarter-century later. If you haven't seen this movie, it's time you did. Very few cinematic stories are told nearly as well as The Shawshank Redemption. And if you don't find yourself in tears at the last scene of the movie, you've got a heart of stone. No matter how many times I have seen it, I'm always wiping my eyes when the credits roll. I recommend this movie without any reservation. Frank Darabont, a first-time director, knocked it out of the park in a movie that elaborated on a Stephen King short story and made it much more than the author ever imagined. It's in my top five movies. And that's doing the other four movies in my top five a big favor in ranking them with it.