Watch Healing Hands Full Movie' title='Watch Healing Hands Full Movie' />From epic blockbusters, to indie comedies or mindmelting foreign dramas with the Movie Machine, well be charting the best movies of 2. I had no idea whether healing would help, but Nick couldnt pop painkillers for ever. HEKP3rNzE/hqdefault.jpg' alt='Watch Healing Hands Full Movie' title='Watch Healing Hands Full Movie' />Here are the best 100 movies that you must see. Jeff Baumans struggle is at the heart of StrongerStronger, which opens here on Friday, is a paradox commercial entertainment that recreates the struggles of a trauma survivor while insisting that you and I will never fully understand what he went through to survive. Its dedicated to the private experience within a very public tragedy, and as long as its doing that, the movies on solid ground. As powerful as they are shown to be in their respective films, these superheroes are so much more powerful in the comics. A biography of the eighteenth century Viennese physician, Franz Anton Mesmer, who used unorthodox healing practices based on his theory of animal magnetism. The movie, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, tells the story of Jeff Bauman, who survived the loss of both legs in the Marathon bombing. Its only when the gaze widens that the problems begin. Unlike last years Patriots Day and better for it the focus is on one individual rather than an entire city starring Mark Wahlberg. Jeff Bauman was in the crowd watching the Boston Marathon on Boylston Street when the first pressure cooker bomb went off on April 1. The Big Bang Full Movie Part 1 more. There to cheer for his on again off again girlfriend, Erin Hurley, Bauman had both his legs shattered by the blast hes the victim being helped by Carlos Arredondo, the man in the cowboy hat, in one of the attacks most iconic images. Watch Healing Hands Full Movie' title='Watch Healing Hands Full Movie' />AdvertisementStronger is less about event than aftermath the screenplay by John Pollono, based on the 2. Bauman and Bret Witter, treats the bombing as a blank spot in the films consciousness that only gradually gets filled in by flashbacks. Its an effective conceit that puts the focus on an ordinary guy coping with a life that has suddenly become horribly unique. Jake Gyllenhaal plays Bauman, and its a good choice the actor can be mightily eccentric when the role calls for it, but here he dials it down and creates a gangly, affable overgrown kid, a chicken roaster for Costco who hasnt moved out of his mothers house, literally or emotionally. Scott GarfieldLionsgate and Roadside Attractions via APTatiana Maslany and Jake Gyllenhaal in Stronger. Gyllenhaals excellent, but, playing his girlfriend, Tatiana Maslany star of TVs Orphan Black is something special. Its through Erin that we watch Baumans medical and psychological battles in the first weeks after the bombing, and Maslany has a still, empathetic presence that can bring tears to your eyes shes the movies soul. Bauman and Hurley eventually married and had a child, which were told, and are now divorcing, which were not. Get The Weekender in your inbox. The Globes top picks for what to see and do each weekend, in Boston and beyond. Every movie needs its conflict, though, and in Stronger thats the growing gulf between Bauman and his family, who are presented as a squabbling, dysfunctional clan from Chelmsford who cant understand why Jeff wont accept or profit from his mantle as a hero. Full of haht, theyre a cringe inducing albatross around his and the movies neck. The elegant British actress Miranda Richardson lets her hair down to play Jeffs blowzy Ma Clancy Brown is a gruff, estranged dad whos always running his mouth and comic and local legend Lenny Clarke is on hand for extra Boston movie bona fides. Bauman, whos played by Jake Gyllenhaal, didnt want to be part of a two dimensional tale that glamorized what it was like to lose his legs. Hes fine. Theyre all fine. And its interesting and good that Stronger fights upstream against the easy inspirational uplift that can swamp our attempts to come to grips with tragedy. The implication of the title one of them, anyway is that Jeff Bauman had to be stronger than a trite, necessary public slogan like Boston Strong to come out the other side. That offers of appearances on Oprah and chances to throw out the opening pitch at Fenway were mostly for us, for our sense of normality, rather than for him. That no one who is called a hero ever really feels like one and that the ones doing the calling never fully understand this. But by using Baumans relatives to personify the tension and by loading that family with every beeah swilling, Sawx loving, F bomb dropping yo, bro clich in the book, director David Gordon Green overplays his hand. Clichs exist for a reason, obviously, and Jeff Baumans family and friends probably do, in fact, talk like this. But fidelity isnt the issue here emphasis is. Were much more than the sum of our accents and team jerseys in Massachusetts, even as filmmakers from away, seeking narrative shortcuts, serve up our most reductive parts and call it authenticity. Two decades ago, with Good Will Hunting, this seemed like a novelty. In Stronger, it plays as self parody. Advertisement. Does the movies Bauman family have to be two dimensional to allow Jeffs processing of trauma to take on three dimensional shape You could argue that the movie will play better outside New England, since itll dovetail with how other parts of the country see us rather than how we see ourselves. In any event, Stronger eventually folds its hand and indulges in the cathartic, sentimental public healing it has mostly resisted up until then. Those final sequences are moving but mawkish more emotionally real is the penultimate scene in which Bauman meets the man who saved his life, Arredondo Carlos Sanz, in a hushed rapprochement between two people who have shared a moment the rest of us will never penetrate. Here and in the scenes with Maslanys Erin, Stronger comes into focus in intimate close up. The rest gets lost in the crowd. Ty Burr can be reached at ty. Follow him on Twitter tyburr.