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Retirement

Going in Style

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2017, USA, 96 min

Director Zach Braff’s remake of the quiet, thoughtful, 1979 comedy-drama ups the cat-and-mouse maneuvers, raises the stakes and modernizes the story line. Brooklyn friends Joe (Michael Caine), Albert (Alan Arkin) and Willie (Morgan Freeman) decide to rob the mega bank that has taken their pension money, after they’ve been laid off from their longtime factory jobs. What ensues is more laugh-heavy than the original, sometimes to its disadvantage—Christopher Lloyd’s superfluous appearance as a forgetful member of the friends’ social circle is flat-out ageist, a series of worn stereotypes presented as cheap comic relief . But the main characters’ comradery and their refusal to be marginalized by society make for a pleasing, moving effort. 

Going in Style 

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1979, USA, 97 min.

New York City retirees Joe (George Burns), Al (Art Carney) and Willie (Lee Strasberg) are at the point where spare time has become a burden. Their days are spent idling in the local park or in their drab apartment; excitement is treated like a dietary restriction. So when Joe casually mentions they should rob a bank—it’ll provide a dose of adrenaline and is a shrewd fiduciary strategy!—Willie and Al agree. Then reality sets in. Director Martin Brest wisely eschews easy jokes for a meditation on mortality. The robbery and its aftermath invigorate Joe but aren’t a tonic for Al and Willie, who become overwhelmed by the audacity of their act. By rejecting easy solutions for the loss of purpose that can come with aging, Brest fashions a bittersweet gem. The entire cast is game, especially Burns, who shelves his famed mugging to deliver a terrific performance. 

 

Umberto D.

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1952, Italy, 89 min. 

Seventy years after its release, director Vittorio De Sica’s understated, brilliant character study remains a treasure to be savored. Umberto Domenico Ferrari, a retired civil servant, who lives with his beloved dog, Flika, faces an increased cost of living that outdistances his meager pension. As a result, he is cast out into the world, looking to pay his debts, which range from selling off his belongings, to asking for loans, to considering suicide. De Sica did not get theatrical or heavy-handed in presenting the story of an old man’s struggle to retain his pride and quality of life in a world that won’t allow it—nor of the dog whose presence is his sole source of hope. Adding to the film’s poignancy is its dearth of trained performers, which enhances the heartbreaking reality De Sica chronicles. Carlo Battisti, then 70, who is memorable in the title role, was a university lecturer who had not acted before. Filmed in black and white with English subtitles. 

 

Redwood Highway

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2013, USA, 90 min.

Prickly Marie (Shirley Knight) has reluctantly settled into comfortable isolation in a retirement community, content to live a life of cantankerous indifference. Then her soon-to-be-wed granddaughter leaves a voice-mail message, disinviting her from the wedding—and from her life. A humbled Marie decides to go to the wedding anyway, lacing up her hiking shoes and walking the 80-mile trip via Oregon’s busy and bucolic Redwood Highway. The winding odyssey allows Marie to meet kind souls—a widowed woodworker, a tavern owner/single mother—but, more importantly, to make amends for the present and settle the past. Sampling the good in the world permits Marie to open herself up to life. It doesn’t have to be hard all the time. Knight’s spirited and vulnerable performance is a marvel and far from the movie’s only asset. Director/cowriter Gary Lindgren’s unabashed belief in the kindness of strangers and in older people’s ability to keep growing creates an infectious character study that will delight everyone.

All About Eve

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1950, USA, 138 min.

One of the true classics of American cinema. This backstage drama is as tart and smart and relevant as it was during its initial release in 1950. Wide-eyed ingenue Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter) becomes the assistant to aging Broadway superstar Margo Channing (Bette Davis), but Channing’s circle of friends senses a radioactive presence slinking into their insular world. Eve schemes and backstabs her way from understudy to star, using her youthful energy as a cudgel. But she is blithely unaware that the life she craves is cynical and bitter—the antithesis of her exuberant façade. Director-writer Joseph Mankiewicz’s drama is more than a shrewd showbiz satire. One of cinema’s first depictions of ageism, the film tells us that experience is disregarded, and yet the glow of youth is but a shallow, short-lived weapon. The movie predicts this story won’t end with Margo and Eve. Sadly, more than 60 years later, it’s true. Nominated for 14 Academy Awards and the winner of six, including best picture.

Unforgiven

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1992, USA, 131 min.

This is the masterpiece that escalated Clint Eastwood’s rise into the cinematic pantheon. Struggling as a farmer, widowed with two children, long-retired gunfighter Bill Munny (Eastwood, who also directed) agrees to help a big-talking kid (Jaimz Woolvett) track down two desperados who maimed a whore. Their travels take the two men and Munny’s old friend Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman) to the town of Big Whiskey, WY, where the sheriff (Gene Hackman) wants to exercise his own brand of justice. Unforgiven is a quietly profound reflection of how life cannot bend to our will. All of our acts, even from long ago, have repercussions—and we have no control over the narrative. There’s a reason why Bill Munny does not ride into the sunset but into a blinding rainstorm. He is who he is. The same applies to us. Winner of four Oscars, including best picture.

Central Station

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1998, Brazil (subtitled), 106 min.

Central Station is a film about possibilities, second chances and discovery. Dora, a cynical, lonely, aging women sits at the central train station in Rio de Janeiro, writing letters for illiterate people hoping to reconnect with loved ones. Indifferent to her clients, Dora arbitrarily decides to send some of the letters while discarding others. When a woman who paid Dora to write a letter to her son’s long-missing father is run over by a bus outside the station, the child, Josue, pleads with Dora to take him to his father. Forced to confront her detachment, Dora commits to returning Josue to his missing parent. Thus begins Dora’s journey of rediscovery. Be sure to follow the ways in which Josue and Dora change each other and, in so doing, discover the possibilities in their own futures.

The Intern

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2015, USA, 121 min.

The Intern is a Nancy Meyers movie, for sure—all sunny skies and characters with straight teeth living in Brooklyn brownstones straight from Architectural Digest. At first glance, it’s another one of Meyers’ puddle-deep salutes to woe among upwardly mobile seniors (It’s Complicated, Something’s Gotta Give). But the longer you stay with it, the more Meyers wins you over with her tale of two colleagues falling into a friendship. Of course, it helps to have Robert De Niro and Anne Hathaway obliterating the artifice. Read more…

About Schmidt

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2002, USA, 125 min.

Upon retiring, Warren Schmidt (Jack Nicholson) finds his life beginning to unravel. His wife (Jane Squibb) dies suddenly, resurrecting a troubling secret, and Schmidt’s underachieving daughter (Hope Davis) is on the brink of marrying a numbskull (Dermot Mulroney). In the hope of restoring order, Schmidt drives his new RV from Nebraska to Denver for the wedding and inadvertently embarks on a difficult, necessary journey of self-discovery. Director/cowriter Alexander Payne’s bittersweet comedy-drama is essential viewing for its unglamorous, insightful look at personal growth—which is not solely the domain of the young—and for Nicholson’s humane and stunning performance. Holstering his rebel charisma, the great actor plays an ordinary man finally putting the pieces of his long life together in this sobering, but ultimately redeeming, film.

Quartet

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2012, UK, 98 min.

At the tea-house-quaint Beecham House, a residence for retired musicians, the inhabitants are preparing for their annual concert. This event is extra special because it promises the reunion of a famous, long-disbanded, vocal quartet. Maybe. Jean Horton (Maggie Smith) has an enormous ego that she wields like a sword. Jean’s ex-husband, Reginald (Tom Courtenay), harbors a hatred for her that has strengthened with time. Wilf (Billy Connolly) is a compliment away from a sexual harassment suit. Cissy (Pauline Collins) suffers from dementia. Dustin Hoffman, in his directorial debut, gives his wonderful cast the freedom to work. That is a treat. So is seeing a film that reveals that artistic talent—and the ability to forgive—do not atrophy as the years mount.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

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2011, USA, UK, United Arab Emirates, 124 min.

Seven elder Britons in various states of spiritual and physical pique head to India for the proverbial fresh start. Their new home, the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, is a fresh coat of paint away from being charmingly dilapidated, but it’s a spiritual charger for these boarders, who pursue lost loves, new careers and independence. A surprise hit when it reached US theaters in 2012, John Madden’s stirring, thoughtful comedy-drama features sumptuous cinematography and an emotional authenticity that will enchant adults of all ages. The glittering cast, which includes such pros as Tom Wilkinson, Judi Dench and Maggie Smith, brings depth to each role. You can relate to these people. Followed in 2015 by a disappointing sequel, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

Youth

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2015, Italy, 124 min.

Retired composer and living legend Fred Ballinger (Michael Caine) is whiling away his days at an upscale Swiss resort, reveling in his apathy as he gets spa treatments and discusses the rigors of aging with his lifelong friend, once-great filmmaker Mick Boyle (Harvey Keitel), another octogenarian, who is working on a movie he deems to be his masterpiece. Director-writer Paolo Sorrentino’s (The Great Beauty) garish, ephemeral parable twists and turns like a dream and has the narrative flow to match. Some viewers will disdain the opaque dialogue and pretzel-like plot behind a tired, defeated man’s attempt to find happiness and meaning in the now. However, Sorrentino’s ability to portray the foolishness in venerating the past—while trying to lay siege to the present—makes the occasionally indulgent, carnival-like flourishes worth enduring. We have to keep living, whether we like it or not. Youth is a movie you feel as much as you watch.