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Intergenerational

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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.
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

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.
10Oct

I, Daniel Blake

Shot and directed in such a way as to feel very much like an unscripted documentary, I, Daniel Blake has a feel of immediacy that places the viewer right alongside the characters in the film, experiencing and feeling what they are living.
02Apr

Beginners

Beginners opens with two silent shots—a close up of a vase of semi-fresh daisies and then a vacant living room with several boxes stacked to one side. In the next scene, also mostly silent, a young man removes some shirts from a closet, folds them, and places them in a box.
04Jun

The Intern

Not often does a film as entertainingly watchable as The Intern carry within it a positive regard for the multigenerational nature of human life in the 21st century. Generational chasms may still exist in big sectors of our culture, but films like The Intern may help reduce their size. Not that The Intern is a didactic “message” film; far from it. It is light on its feet and simply fun to watch as it unfolds the story of a successful but harried young executive learning to accept, and then trust, the help of an older worker.
17Mar

Grandma (reviewed by Thomas R. Cole, PhD)

Grandma opens with the epigram “Time Passes, that’s for sure.” The film takes place in a single day and takes the form of a mini-road trip on which Elle (Lilly Tomlin)—a grandmother in her 70s who has just cut up her credit cards and is broke—sets out with her pregnant granddaughter Sage (Julia Garner) to find $630 for an abortion and make it to her late afternoon appointment at a women’s health clinic.
04Dec

Angel’s Perch

Angel’s Perch opens with a close-up shot of a young woman sleepily protesting having a cell phone camera recording her. The person with the camera responds “We’re going to want to remember these things someday.” Then, taking out a family heirloom ring, he proposes to the suddenly wide awake woman.
07Apr

Philomena

Back in the mid 50s in Ireland, when she was a teenaged unwed mother to be, Philomena Lee was banished from her family and sent to a convent to have her child. She and the other young women sent there for the same reason were allowed contact with their babies for 1hr a day.
07Dec

Starlet

Starlet is a rich and insightful film that traces the development of an unlikely friendship between two women separated by 64 years of life. Jane (Dree Hemingway), a 21 year old who is adrift and newly finding her way in Los Angeles, first meets Sadie (Besedka Johnson), an 85 year old crusty-tempered widow, at Sadie’s yard sale where Jane buys an old but decorative thermos to use as a flower vase.
08Aug

Assisted Living

Assisted Living is an engaging film—part fiction, part documentary—that takes us into the nitty-gritty of life in a long-term care facility in the United States. The film is unusually rich and perceptive in its portrayal of images and themes associated with aging in an institutional setting. It is the creation of a 22-year-old film student.
Movies About Aging and Elderhood