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All Film Reviews

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31Jan

Cyber-Seniors

Cyber Seniors documents an important program that illustrates the combined efforts of younger and older adults to bridge the “digital divide.” In a light-hearted and humorous fashion, the film introduces us to an intergenerational program designed to increase internet and social media use among elders who continue to observe computer technology from afar.
31Jan

I Won’t Go

Oli Truss is a single older housebound woman in her nineties who lives alone in her rural home somewhere in Britain. As a child, videographer Georgina Hurcombe was her neighbor. She recalls the animals running around on Oli’s property and how “she used to teach me math after school.” That was 15 years ago.
31Jan

Edith + Eddie

The opening moments of Edith + Eddie lead us to believe we are entering a story about the nature of love shared between newly-weds Edith, age 96, and Eddie, age 95. Videographer Laura Checkoway was attracted by the growing internet attention received by “America’s oldest interracial newly-weds.” Edith is black; Eddie is white.
31Jan

Tracing Roots: A Weaver’s Journey

Tracing Roots is a thoughtful, revelatory, beautifully photographed artistic mystery involving a close association between two journeys separated by hundreds of years. The first journey was taken in the Pacific Northwest sometime between 1720 and 1853 AD by an 18-year-old indigenous male on an overland walking trip (Hebda, Greer, & Mackie, 2012).
31Jan

Forever, Chinatown

Emmy-nominated Forever, Chinatown is the most enchanting and salutary documentary film I have ever viewed. Director James Chan explores the remarkable psychological and physical embodiment of “sense of place” exuded by the artistic creations of 81-year-old artist Frank Wong.
21Jan

My Father’s House: A Journey of Love and Memory

At one point in this remarkable film, 89-year-old Dr. Peter Reimann, accompanied on piano by daughter Hannah Reimann, sings this brief German art song from Schubert’s Die Winterreise No. 15. The Raven (Die Krähe).
21Jan

“He Wouldn’t Turn Me Loose”

Introductory training on elder abuse often begins with a brief definition like this one: “Elder abuse, also known as elder mistreatment, generally refers to any knowing, negligent act that causes harm or creates a serious risk of harm to an older person by a family member, caregiver, or other person in a trust relationship (Office of Justice Programs [Office for Victims of Crime], 2017)."
21Jan

Dying Wish

The defining theme of Dying Wish is offered at its outset by 80-year-old retired surgeon Dr. Michael Miller, who suffers from late-stage terminal cancer: “I’m Michael Miller. Soon I will discontinue drinking and eating and drift into death in days.
11Dec

Bubbeh Lee and Me

This ingenuous film documents a visit that videographer Andy Abrahams Wilson made over two decades ago to see his widowed grandmother, Bubbeh Lee, over the Jewish Holidays in Florida. At the outset, Wilson explains that at the time of the filming, he had been making this trip for several years, wondering if each visit might be the last.
11Oct

The Farewell

When a lie becomes part of carefully orchestrated communication in the service of the perceived good of the lie's recipient, is it justified? The Farewell presents this question within a scenario that is also complicated by the differing societal assumptions expressed in Eastern and Western cultures.
11Oct

Grow Old Along with Me: The Poetry of Aging – Part 2

Few poets celebrate aging as exuberantly as Robert Browning in Rabbi Ben Ezra: “Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made.” Browning’s optimistic sentiments are purposefully embodied in the title and content of this lovely film produced by videographers Anne Macksoud and John Ankele.
06Sep

What They Had

In the opening scenes of this captivating film, an older woman gets out of bed in the dark, gets partially dressed, and walks out of the house in a light jacket into a snowy night. The shot holds on her walking down the street for several seconds until she disappears into a shower of heavy snowfall. A wife/mother has disappeared, setting off panic on the part of her husband and children.
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).
Movies About Aging and Elderhood