[Tyson]

Preamble
It's a Wonderful Life - how I've avoided you.... One of the few movies on the AFI 100 Years 100 Movies list I haven't seen yet.  Or had I?  This movie has so permeated our culture, that I honestly thought I had seen it.  Really I just threw it on the blu ray player to review/verify that I really had seen it.  Turns out I was wrong - I had never seen any of it, not even a little bit.  Which was great, because what I thought was going to be a stupid, kitschy movie turned out to be a really compelling experience. 


Haiku

This is the young George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) who's smart, capable and full of ambition.  He's too full of life and smarts to stick around his small town and the small bank that his dad runs.  He's going to get out and build great things:





One last dance before he leaves.  He realizes he has feelings for town beauty Mary Hatch, but not enough to keep him around:





Then his dad has a stroke and dies.  George takes over the business because otherwise he leaves the entire town in the clutches of this slumlord (and general all-around @sshole) Mr. Potter:





So now he's stuck in this small town now, working at the exact job he swore he'd never take, while his brother goes off to war and becomes a war hero.  On the bright side, George marries Mary and pretty soon their family looks like this (obviously they had a LOT of sex):





He nearly loses his business due to a trumped up run on the bank that was engineer by Mr. Potter.  Which would have sucked, giving up one's whole life, only to lose in the end to a jerk like Potter:





In fact a few minutes later, a different scheme of Mr. Potter's DOES work and George really is in the process of losing the business, and everything he sacrificed will have been for NOTHING!!!  Oh, time to throw himself off the bridge and just end it all:





Luckily there's this angel here to save him by showing George what things would have been like if George's 'meaningless' life had never happened (hint, its shitty):





George rushes home with new appreciation for his life and everything (and everyone) in it.  Lo and behold, half the town is there with cash enough to save the bank! 






Conclusion
I have to say this film looked absolutely beautiful in it's blu-ray remaster.  Putting it up on the 100" screen upscaled to 4k was just awesome.  If I were a younger man, I'd scoff at the sentimentality of this film.  But as someone that has been through some sh!t over the years in my own life, the central message of learning to appreciate what you have and not regret the path not taken really resonated with me.  Great movie!

[bobbyhamil]

   every few years we have to have a movie like this,all corn and syrupy in it's original
      ver. but hollywood has made people cynical with all the scandals and such going on
       that nobody clean is left out there.






.

[Tyson]

   every few years we have to have a movie like this,all corn and syrupy in it's original
      ver. but hollywood has made people cynical with all the scandals and such going on
       that nobody clean is left out there.

Hollywood has always been like it is now.  In the past it was just brushed under the rug and it's not anymore. 

I'm not sure what any of that has to do with It's a Wonderful Life, though....

[fredgarvin]

A life black and white
The angel held a drama
Curtain fell to smiles

[Goosepond]

You youngsters make me laugh! 

I'm old enough to have seen this many times, along with The Wizard of Oz (you know the old one with Judy Garland!).

But for a while now, a lot of these really old B&W movies have lost their interest for me, like Mickey Rooney in the Andy Hardy series and his musicals with Judy.

But slowly, I every now and then watch one and sometimes the interest is back. Who knows what getting old does to the old brain???

Gene