BEST MOVIES
FOR GROWNUPS®
BEST MOVIE
FOR GROWNUPS
The Descendants
DIRECTED BY ALEXANDER PAYNE
Is there any brand of 50-plus
angst this funny, tragic film
does not dissect? There’s
love and loss, disappoint-
ment in others (and others’
disappointment in us), per-
sonal betrayal, and the urge
to reveal lifelong secrets—or
keep them to ourselves, even
when they’re clawing to get
out. George Clooney gives the
performance of his career as
Matt, whom we find sitting
mournfully at the bedside of
his comatose wife—unaware
his life is about to be shat-
tered by a shocking revela-
tion. Through it all, Matt is
driven by one motivation: to
do the right thing
sans
whin-
ing. Clooney and Payne share
an uncanny knack for that
wistful smile in the face of
havoc—and for conveying the
peace that comes from living,
from seeing disasters come
and go, and from knowing
that, one way or another, this
too shall pass.
WE ALSO
LOVED:
The Artist, Extremely
Loud and Incredibly Close,
Midnight in Paris, War Horse
,
and
Win Win.
ACTRESS
Glenn Close
ALBERT NOBBS
Everybody has two stories,
says Close, explaining why
she persevered for 30 years to
film this story of a Victorian-
era Irishwoman who spent
her life posing as a male wait-
er. “There’s the story that
The First Grader
Here’s the news from
Kenya: Oliver Litondo,
a longtime Kenyan
TV newscaster who
sometimes dabbles in acting, breaks your heart and
sends it soaring in the true story of Kimani Maruge,
an 84-year-old man who enrolled in a remote Kenyan
elementary school so he could learn to read. From
his tentative first moments at his small desk to
his haunted eyes as he recalls his family’s murder,
Litondo’s Maruge is a man who won’t give up on
life, even when it has seemingly given up on him.
WE ALSO LOVED:
George Clooney,
The Descendants;
Mel
Gibson,
The Beaver;
Gary Oldman,
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy;
and Kevin Spacey,
Margin Call.
ACTOR
Oliver Litondo
THE FIRST GRADER
people perceive outwardly,”
she says, “and there’s
our
sto-
ry, looking from the inside out.”
The miracle of Close’s perfor-
mance is how she ushers us
behind Albert’s guarded
expression so that we,
too, experience her
perpetual terror of
being exposed…and
share her secret
passions.
WE ALSO
LOVED:
Ellen Barkin,
Another Happy Day;
Helen Mirren,
The
Debt;
Meryl Streep,
The Iron
Lady;
and Tilda Swinton,
We Need to Talk About Kevin.
DIRECTOR
Stephen Daldry
EXTREMELY LOUD AND
INCREDIBLY CLOSE
Albert Nobbs
SUPPOR TING ACTOR
Christopher
Plummer
BEGINNERS
A cancer-stricken father
(Plummer) reveals to his son
(Ewan McGregor) that he is
gay. The story is told from the
young man’s perspective.
But it’s Plummer as the
father—twinkly-eyed with
delight at his newfound
liberation—who gives
Begin-
ners
its energy. We want to
spend all evening with him,
and we understand the pro-
found sense of emptiness
that engulfs the son’s heart
when Dad is gone.
WE ALSO
LOVED:
Jeremy Irons,
Margin
Call;
Ben Kingsley,
Hugo;
Max
von Sydow,
Extremely Loud and
Incredibly Close;
and Christoph
Waltz,
Water for Elephants.
A troubled young boy ven-
tures into the world of grown-
ups to make sense of his
father’s death on
9/11—and learns that
grownups are as
clueless as he is.
Daldry tells his story
from two perspec-
tives: that of a des-
perately confused,
tender-aged innocent and
that of life-weary adults who
manage to see past their own
sorrows to offer a child their
gift of clear-eyed kindness
and hard-won wisdom.
WE ALSO LOVED:
Woody Allen,
Midnight in Paris;
George Cloo-
ney,
The Ides of March;
Cameron
Crowe,
We Bought a Zoo;
Ter-
rence Malick,
The Tree of Life;
and Martin Scorsese,
Hugo.
SUPPOR TING ACTRESS
Vanessa Redgrave
CORIOLANUS
What, your high school
English class didn’t cover
this obscure Shakespearean
swords-and-shields epic?
Watch Redgrave’s breathtak-
ing turn as the titular general’s
mother, trying to persuade
her son not to sack Rome—
pleading, bullying, shaming—
and you’ll forget all about that
guy Macbeth.
WE ALSO LOVED:
Ellen Burstyn,
Another Happy
Day;
Judi Dench,
J. Edgar;
Allison Janney,
The Help;
Janet
Mc Teer,
Albert Nobbs.
WRITER
Woody Allen
MIDNIGH T IN PARIS
We’ve long suspected that
Woody Allen would be happi-
est rubbing shoulders with
Ernest Hemingway and
Gertrude Stein in 1920s Paris.
Sure enough, here he dis-
patches Owen Wilson as his
proxy, and the result is Allen’s
funniest and most imagina-
tive film in nearly a decade.
WE ALSO LOVED:
Alexander
Payne,
The Descendants;
Eric Roth,
Extremely Loud
and Incredibly Close;
Roger
Simon,
A Better Life;
and
Steven Zaillian and Aaron
Sorkin,
Moneyball.
MOVIE FOR GROWNUPS
WHO REFUSE TO GROW UP
The Muppets
DIRECTED BY JAMES BOBIN
Does Kermit the Frog have
an AARP card? (He’s 56,
after all.) He makes a hand-
some leading “man,” and
this charming comedy, jam-
packed with more Muppets
than you can shake a pig at,
effects a jubilant juncture of
those who grew up with the
PRODUC TION DESIGNER: JESSE NEME TH AT THE WALL GROUP; ILLUSTRATIONS B Y CHRIS O’RILE Y; ADDI TIONAL PHOTO CREDITS ON PAGE 67
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