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Attitudes about Aging

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30Jan

Familiar Touch

When Canadian actor/director Sarah Polley chose an Alice Munro short story about a woman with dementia entering an aged care home as the focus for her first feature film (Far From Her, Polley, 2006), critics remarked that it was unusual—and courageous—subject matter for a young woman making her directorial debut.
30Jan

When Fall is Coming

In a scene towards the end of When Fall Is Coming, one character observes wearily of her son, “he wants to do right, but always does wrong.” It is the perfect summation of the motivations and actions of virtually every character in Francois Ozon’s film.
11Mar

The Substance

The Substance joins a provocative history of films that have tackled the fate of women as they age in (and out of) the entertainment industry.
11Feb

Thelma

The “elder odyssey” has been described as a long-standing tradition that can be traced throughout cinema history (Shary & McVittie, 2016). This narrative form often combines the “road movie” or journey film with a quest for some kind of resolution or redemption for the aging central protagonist. I
11Oct

Perfect Days

If you have ever wondered if it is possible to make an absorbing 2-hr film where the central protagonist cleans toilets for a living, doesn’t speak for an hour, and not much happens, Perfect Days (Wenders, 2023) answers that question.
10Oct
Figure 1. Jane Curtain, Harriet Sansom Harris, Ben Kingsley, and Jade Quon in Jules.

Jules

Jules is an entertaining and engaging film. It also has, embedded within it, a refreshing regard for human oldness. On the face of it, the film shows the typical societal attitude toward older individuals. Milton and his acquaintances are often ignored or mildly tolerated. However, scattered here and there within the film are little gems of age acceptance.
30Sep

What We Leave Behind

“Grandpa was a mystery to me as a kid. I didn’t know how to talk to him. He’d smoke a lot and bring me milk fudge and tamarind candy.”
18Sep

Advanced Style

Advanced Style is a documentary, released 6 years after Ari Seth Cohen, an urban photographer, started a blog by the same name at just 26 years old.
03Sep

The Prospector

The Prospector is a beautifully photographed, novel, and instructive visit with Ernie Laszlo, an older resident of the historic California gold country in Mariposa, California.
03Sep

Fast Forward

Preparing for the physical changes that aging will bring is not something most of us think about. Accepting the physical changes that aging will bring is not something most of us want to think about either.
03Sep

Age of Adaline

Age of Adaline is a well-crafted film that presents viewers with a fantasy that many entertain—living without aging.
10Aug

The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey

With its central premise of a pharmacological solution for memory restoration, the Apple TV series The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey (Bahrani et al., 2022) is the most recent and detailed exemplar of the second narrative category.
30Nov

80 for Brady

“It’s better than I expected it to be.” That’s what I said to my wife after we finished watching 80 for Brady. From the preview clips (which one should never trust), I expected some ditzy rendition of four older women friends taking a trip to see their hero, Tom Brady, play in the Super Bowl.
19Oct

Good Luck to You, Leo Grande

With an acerbic script by British writer Katy Brand and Australian director Sophie Hyde at the helm, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande has a modest premise.
19Sep

Juniper

New Zealand feature film Juniper (Saville, 2021) represents an intriguing variation on the form. 
13Jul

Old

Old can be interpreted as a parable of the inevitable trajectory of human life on this earth. The film obviously plays on humanity’s nearly universal fear of aging and dying.
Movies About Aging and Elderhood