Four nights a week at Cedar Crest, residents gather to watch current and vintage movies. Each movie night has a slightly different personality, but they all have one thing in common: Both the people who pick out the films to show and those who watch them love the movies. They know what they like, and they’re not afraid to mention what they dislike.

Here are some reviews by Cedar Crest residents of recent DVD releases:

The Bucket List
Warner Home Video

The Bucket List is promoted as a comedy. While it has some comic moments, it is, instead, a wonderful movie aimed at adults and full of sentiment delivered flawlessly by two of the best actors of our time—Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman.

It was truly uplifting for most of the Cedar Crest residents, who applauded at the end. For this to happen is a considerable achievement for a film about two men given less than a year to live who decide to go out by fulfilling their wishes instead of brooding. The subject would normally be a depressing one. In this film, it is not.

—Monty Kuttner

The Great Debaters
Genius Products (TVN)

The film The Great Debaters with Denzel Washington, Forest Whitaker, Denzel Whitaker, and other notable actors played to an appreciative audience at the Thursday Night Movie. This film is based on true events from the 1930s and recreates the stories of a remarkable debate team at Wiley College, in  Marshall, Tex., and its coach, who leads them through a series of victorious debates against more notable college teams. One member of the team is a precocious 14 year old, James Farmer Jr, played by Denzel Whitaker, who grows up to be a founder of C.O.R.E., the Congress of Racial Equality— a very influential organization in the civil rights movement.

The film is an exciting and inspiring one showing how one group of black students reached the heights of success under the leadership of a brilliant English teacher, who himself was one of America’s leading poets and activists, Melvin Tolson.

—Anita Berkowitz