Las Vegas, NV 2006: The University of Nevada Las Vegas Bookstore proves to be the perfect respite for beautiful minds visiting the city of glitz and glitter.

Trent Ling’s all-time “Top 40 Movie Chart” ranks his critically chosen winners from his personal, unique, inexplicable, logarithmic, and long-deliberated mosh process.  Out of order, charted films up through 2012 will be revealed on this website. Enjoy! Visit “Movies” for more.

TWL Score: 6.8 (2001; Rated PG-13; 135 Minutes)

Story:

Based on the true story of Nobel Prize-winning Economist and mathematician, John Nash (played brilliantly by Russell Crowe), this Oscar-winning Ron Howard film so perfectly depicts the frailty of even the most impressive of brains.  Intelligence and wit often bring excessively high costs, for which only trust and submission can ultimately pay the freight.  Those well behind the intellectual pace would likely never know of these common and intense struggles of the brilliant.  A Beautiful Mind allows all to commiserate over these little-documented royal battles.

Top 40 Catapults:

1.   Crowe’s incredible turn as Nash takes his audience on a splendidly conflicted journey.  Quirky, sad, intense, and awkward, Nash cannot conceive of or attain peace of mind despite his undeniable and overshadowing genius.  The ironic suffering elicits sympathy and support from filmgoers, but nothing seems capable of getting the utterly impressive Nash back on the rails.  He must hit a brutal rock bottom, first.

2.   As a life-affirming development, neither the swift nor the strong, and neither the smart nor the resourceful, will be able to parlay their gifts into enduring meaning without a certain charm, surrender, and self-effacement.  A Beautiful Mind shows and shares the rare reconciliation of gift, calling, and demand.  Remarkably, Crowe and Howard get relative numbskulls in the crowd to cheer heartily for this mental giant from another league.

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