Jesse Singer articles

When Celine Dion finally admitted, “I can’t do this anymore,” it was a breaking point. And the story behind that moment is heavier—and longer—than most people realized.

No ranking, because that’s a whole other argument—and that’s not the point here. The point is simple: pick the 30 best films from the best movie decade. And here they are (again, in no particular order)…

The Baby Boomer generation spans from 1946 to 1964, which is how one generation can pretty easily cover two completely different musical childhoods. These are the songs older Boomers remember—and still adore—while what younger Boomers remember about them is…absolutely nothing at all.

For years, these films were treated as common knowledge. They played on TV, sat on shelves, and came up in conversation without explanation. Boomers didn’t recommend them—they assumed you'd seen them. Millennials, meanwhile, grew up just far enough removed that the assumption could no longer be assumed. And the result is a long list of “classic” war movies that quietly (and sadly) skipped an entire generation.

Johnny Lewis rose to fame on the hit series Sons of Anarchy, playing a character surrounded by chaos and violence. Off camera, his life followed an even more troubling path—one marked by documented instability, court warnings, and missed intervention.

Ryan Grantham wasn’t a celebrity—but he was recognizable. Over more than a decade, he appeared in films and TV shows that millions of people watched. His career wasn’t flashy or headline-making. But what followed would make headlines around the world.

To viewers, Elizabeth Montgomery looked like she had it all. On Bewitched, she smiled through chaos and made every problem disappear. But the woman behind the magic was carrying fractures most fans never saw—and the fantasy hid a life quietly unraveling long before it ended.

For years, Rusty Hamer felt safely permanent on American television. On Make Room for Daddy, he became the version of childhood viewers trusted and assumed would always be there. What audiences saw was a happy, funny son. What they never saw was how completely things collapsed once the cameras stopped.

Some movies are a chore. The pacing is off. The writing is clunky. The ideas are better than the execution. You spend most of the runtime wondering who signed off on this. And then the ending hits—and suddenly you get it. These films didn’t magically become good, but their final moments were strong enough to justify sitting through the rest.