For personal reasons, The Manor may have been one of those “too soon” movie choices for me to watch on a cold, dark October night. The story of a family dropping their elderly mother off at a nursing home because of her looming health issues, sent a chill of very recent recognition through me. When …
The best and worst thing about Youth is that it’s like a long stay at a posh, idyllic resort in the Swiss Alps. The scenery is beautiful, the days are languid, and every once in awhile you encounter a new person or learn some snippet of a stranger’s life story. More often, it’s your own …
There aren’t a lot of sweet movies these days, and by “sweet” I don’t mean sentimental or family friendly. I mean nice movies about regular folks. Elsa and Fred is a pleasant exception to this phenomenon as well as a delightful vessel for two of the most talented actors of our time: Christopher Plummer and …
In every life there comes a point when things stop working. Maybe it’s the way you live or how you’ve always supported yourself. Maybe it’s more fundamental, and your body or mind start to give in. In the case of Craig (James Cromwell) and Irene Morrison (Genevieve Bujold), everything begins failing at once, leaving them …
Filled with spectacular art direction and ever-clever writing, Up tells the story of elderly balloon vendor Walter Fredricksen (voiced by Ed Asner), who decides to fulfill a life-long promise to his late wife, Ellie, by embarking on the adventure they never managed to take together. (In a dialogue-free sequence that I can only describe as …
Oh dear. I think I just watched a movie about myself in middle age, and it’s not pretty. I’m going to turn out like Grace Beasley (Kathy Bates), married to a stick-in-the-mud like Max (Dan Aykroyd) who thinks he wants more excitement than I can offer. At age sixty, I will still be consoling myself …