The simple conceit of the Up series has created is an invaluable document of human life, one of the most extraordinary documentary filmmaking efforts ever undertaken.

If my life doesn’t turn out quite the way I’d have liked, I might blame it on my relatively content, uneventful childhood. I didn’t get adopted by a pair of aging siblings on Prince Edward Island, didn’t get to play around bombed-out sections of London during the Blitz, never swam with the whales in New Zealand. Growing up sure looks like it’s a lot more exciting, and more meaningful, in the movies. Bless Me, Ultima is just the sort of coming-of-age tale that makes me realize my own Generic-American upbringing — devoid of any particular ethnic flavor — was colorless. Which reminds me, yet again, how grateful I am to live in a world and an era overflowing with stories that allow us to peer into lives that we’ll never ourselves lead. That’s true even when I wish a story were told more effectively than is this film.

In Snitch, Dwayne “You Probably Still Call Me ‘The Rock’” Johnson plays John “Can You Think of a More Generic Character Name?” Matthews, a father who volunteers to help bring down a drug lord in order to get a hard-nosed U.S. Attorney (Susan Sarandon. Yes, that Susan Sarandon) to reduce the prison sentence facing his teenage son, who was arrested for holding a package full of the drug ecstasy for a drug-dealer friend. Five lessons from the film, which was “inspired by true events”: