The Soloist

Who: Liz
What: The Soloist
Where: my living room
Why: I thought it looked interesting

I found this movie to be a little slow, but a lovely story of how sometimes we try to help someone and we take it too far. Robert Downey JR plays a columnist for the LA Times who runs into a homeless man one day outside the office playing a violin. Jamie Foxx does a fabulous job portraying the homeless man who has some mental issues. He portrayed Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, and Downey, JR played Steve Lopez, I believe this is a true story.
Nathaniel grew up playing the cello and was so good, he ended up going to Julliard. He had to drop out though, due to his mental issues. The story doesn’t really go into how he became mentally challenged, but it doesn’t really matter.
Downey gets very involved with him. He writes a column about him and a woman writes in and donates her old cello to him. (The violin wasn't really his instrument of choice). But since the cello is a pretty nice instrument and valuable, Mr Lopez feels that he should not be living on the street and brings him to a homeless shelter to live. He gets a conductor to come listen to him and really goes all out for the guy. Some things happen in the relationship and in the end, he learns that he really just needs to be Nathaniel’s friend.
There was a lot of music in this movie, so if you are a fan of Beethoven and Bach, you will enjoy it. I enjoy a true story and so I would recommend this film.