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All Film Reviews

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06Sep

Going in Style (2017 remake)

Allow me to start this review on a personal note. In reviewing films for this journal, I have tried to find those films that present aspects of elderhood in an insightful or credible way, and that are often not well known. Such films, I’m finding, are harder and harder to come by. So, for this review, I decided to dip into the pool of more mainstream films that may simply be fun to watch without having much to meaningfully “say” about elderhood.
06Sep

Faces Places

What happens when close-up pictures of human faces are enlarged and displayed in public spaces? Faces Places is a film that invites viewers along on a road trip to see the answer to this question. Agnes Varda, a well-known French filmmaker, who at 89 is still making films, teams up with a prolific and anonymous (but internationally known) 33-year-old street artist/muralist, called JR...
11Jul

Diane

Diane is one of those rare films that reflects human life as it is—in all its personal complexity—rather than one of the more commonly gratuitous films that present excessively dramatized/glamorized views of life as many wish it to be.
11Jul

Grow Old Along With Me: The Poetry of Aging, Part 1

The prime motive behind this important and revealing video was the desire of filmmakers Anne Macksoud and John Ankele “to make a positive contribution to the issue of aging by finding wise and vital elders who would guide us through the process” (Anne Macksoud, Personal Communication, June 14, 2019).
11Jun

95 And 6 To Go

In 95 And 6 To Go, videographer Kimi Takesue introduces us to her grandfather, Mr. Tom Takesue, a 95-year-old Japanese American and resident of Hawaii. Videographer Kimi has returned to Hawaii to provide him with “support and assistance” due to the recent death of his wife, Ethel.
11May

Revolutionizing Dementia Care

Gerontologists are becoming increasingly aware of the advent and growth of the person-oriented model of care for individuals diagnosed with dementia or related conditions. Our On Film and Digital Media team has shared previous reviews of wonderful documentaries illustrating individually tailored applications of such care as creative role involvement, personalized music, and painting (Scheidt, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2019, respectively).
11May

The Wife

The title of this film might foster assumptions about the underlying dramatic conflict that is at the film’s core, namely, a growing resentment on the part of a traditional wife standing behind the accomplishments of a husband who is a successful writer. The film itself does not quickly dismiss those assumptions.
11Feb

The Kominsky Method

Humor can sometimes be a helpful diversion in dealing with uncomfortable emotions—but humor that is flippant and tin-eared is not. If I were confined to one adjective that best defines the new Netflix comedy, The Kominsky Method, it would be “flippant.”
11Feb

Quilts in Women’s Lives

Quilters. What comes to mind? If you do not quilt and know little about those who do, perhaps you see an image of a frail old woman wearing a lavender dress with a lace collar. She is seated in a rocker and stitching with needle and thread (Fons, 2018).
11May

Tell Them Who You Are

Tell Them Who You Are is an entertaining and richly integrated film about the search for disclosure between an adult son and his iconic father, now in his 80s. The father, Haskell Wexler, is a preeminent and prolific cinematographer who worked on many critically acclaimed films throughout his long career, including American Graffiti and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
11Apr

Alzheimer’s: Every Minute Counts

By contrast, the opening of Alzheimer’s: Every Minute Counts presents a staccato march of sound bites invoking dire scenarios. “Alzheimer’s is an epic disease.” “It’s going to sink the health care economy.” “This disease will take us down.”
11Apr

Living with Alzheimer’s and Dementia

Living with Alzheimer’s and Dementia is introduced by singer Kathy Mattea who, after noting the struggles and challenges dementia brings to individuals and families, asks “How can you continue to live fully even with that diagnosis, and how can we as a community better support those who are living with dementia and their care partners?”
11Feb

Marjorie Prime

Memory, and its loss, is a well-worn theme in many films, including several that explore the loss of memory due to dementia. But Marjorie Prime presents us with a new and intriguing supposition regarding the future of personal memories.
31Jan

The Babushkas of Chernobyl (reviewed by Rick Scheidt)

There is a magnetic attraction in the stories of elders, who by choice or happenstance, face unique, and extreme life scenarios that exceed the imaginations of those of us who live securely under the thicker part of the normal curve. The Babushkas of Chernobyl is a riveting watershed for gerontologists.
11Jan

That Evening Sun

That Evening Sun, based on a short story by William Gay, tells the story of an old Tennessee farmer’s struggle to reclaim his farm and home. Widower Abner Meecham (Hal Holbrook) ends up in a nursing home after slipping on a patch of ice and breaking a hip.
Movies About Aging and Elderhood