Which 2009 film did our
readers like best? See the results of our
online poll—plus read film reviews, hear
episodes of our Movies for Grownups® radio
show, and watch trailers for all of our award
winners—at
aarpmagazine.org/
moviesforgrownups.
Kim Basinger and Joaquim de Almeida
in TheBurningPlain;Helen Mirren in The
Last Station;Meryl Streep, Steve Martin,
Alec Baldwin, and Lake Bell in It’s Complicated;a
soldier and William Knight in The Way We Get By.
BEST MOVIE FOR
GROWNUPS
Invictus
Directed by
Clint Eastwood
From the moment the
camera sweeps over a scene
of two rugby teams in South
Africa, playing on their
school ball fields—the white
kids on a lush grass expanse,
the black kids on a scrubby
wasteland—we know we are
in for an artisan’s look at the
social scars Nelson Mandela
inherited when he became
president of the country in
1994. As Mandela, the as-
tonishing Morgan Freeman
inhabits the role, his bowed
frame and halting steps a
constant reminder of the
man’s 27 years in a cramped
cell. The statesman’s deci-
sion to use rugby to unite
his splintered country was
just one strategy of many
in real life, but here it takes
center stage as Eastwood,
the consummate storyteller,
makes a game—brutal and
all but unfathomable to
American audiences—an
allegory for what tough,
dirty work the business of
nation building can be.
Helen Mirren
The Last Station
How much longer can Helen
Mirren keep redefining
screen sexiness? As Sofya
Tolstoy, the love-starved
wife of Leo, she tries to
seduce her celibate hubby,
and, well, if he wasn’t going
to do anything about it, a
good number of guys in the
theater would have been
more than willing to. It’s a
ferocious performance by
Mirren as a woman deter-
mined not to be scorned.
• WE ALSO LOVED Ellen
Burstyn, Lovely, Still;
Meryl Streep, Julie&Julia
and It’sComplicated.
Jeff Bridges
Crazy Heart
As booze-soaked country
singer Bad Blake, Bridges
infuses his character with
a weary humanity that has
us rooting for his redemption long before Blake
realizes he’s in need of it.
Growling, whining, and
cussing through his miserable life, Blake would be
downright insufferable
without Bridges’s good
nature—and his surprisingly nifty way around a
country tune.
• WE ALSO LOVED Daniel
Day-Lewis, Nine;Robert
De Niro, Everybody’s Fine;
Morgan Freeman, Invictus;
Viggo Mortensen, TheRoad.
BEST
SUPPORTING
ACTRESS 50+
Kim Basinger
The Burning Plain
Tragedy is beautifully written in Gina, the sad wife
and mother who risks
everything for an affair.
Basinger yields just enough
glimpses of Gina’s state of
mind to let us hurt for her.
• WE ALSO LOVED Judi
Dench, Nine;Marcia Gay
Harden, Whip It;Susan
Sarandon, TheLovely
Bones; Imelda Staunton,
Taking Woodstock.
Alec Baldwin
It’s Complicated
Somewhere along the line,
Alec Baldwin became that
guy—the guy who, when
