Photo by Jessica Day
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Movies for Grownups 2004
By William R. Newcott and The Editors, March-April 2004
A sexy woman over 50? A midlife crisis with no convertible? A contented housewife? A movie that makes you think? You’ve got to see it to believe it!
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Our third annual Movies for Grownups Awards once again asks the burning
question: Is there a flicker of life after 50? Answer: You bet your sprockets
there is. Here's your ticket to this year's winners of the coveted
La Chaise d'Or trophy.
Best Movie from 2003
Mystic River, Directed by Clint Eastwood
Around the time the movie's action starts shifting back and forth
between scenes of a child's First Communion and the discovery of her older
sister's dead body, you know for sure that it was a good idea to leave the
kids at home. That fearless juxtaposition of innocence and horror is just one
of the elements that make director Clint Eastwood's Mystic River the
year's most visually riveting, emotionally scorching, grown-up movie.
Grim, of course, doesn't automatically make a great film. Grim we've
seen lots of times. But taking the grit of a down-on-its-luck South Boston
neighborhood, crunching in three badly dysfunctional boyhood friends, churning
it all together with a grisly murder or two or three…and somehow
concocting from those acrid ingredients a human drama that is alternately
harrowing and heartbreaking, well, that's not moviemaking. That's
alchemy.
Eastwood directs so subtly that you forget there's anyone behind the
camera (a trait echoed by the score, which he wrote). If there's a single
special effects shot in the whole movie, we missed it. Brian Helgeland's
screenplay examines each troubled character more deeply than a whole-body MRI
scan. And stars Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, and Kevin Bacon seem so wearied by
life, so weighed down by the awful secrets they bear, that they could at any
minute physically collapse under the load.
Powerful stuff—and if someone hasn't already spoiled the
vertigo-inducing plot twists for you, we're not going to do so here. We
were gratified to see so many critics agree with us that Mystic River is the
perfect movie for grownups. In the words of Boston reviewer David
Brudnoy—who rates special mention here, since the movie was shot in his
own backyard—it's a gift for that "movie-going cohort of adults
craving movies aimed at adults."
Runners-up: House of Sand and Fog for daring to avoid a
Hollywood ending; Lost in Translation for showing that you can survive
middle age without being pitiful; A Mighty Wind for reminding us that
our eccentricities can actually sweeten with age; Seabiscuit for a hero
who does not kill anyone.
Best Actor
Bill Murray, Lost in Translation
Bill Murray has played a dim-witted greenskeeper (Caddyshack), a
multiphobic basket case (What About Bob?), an egomaniac TV weatherman
(Groundhog Day), and a bring-'em-back-alive ghostbuster (twice). So
for this exquisitely multilayered role as a has-been action-movie star in the
throes of a midlife crisis, we first considered honoring him with our Breakaway
Performance Award (see below).
But Murray so dominates this movie—towering over the Tokyo setting
like some self-absorbed Godzilla—that we couldn't resist giving him
the top prize. Director Sofia Coppola knew he was perfect for the part, saying,
"I stalked Bill Murray for eight months!"
At first, Murray seems to be recycling his old characters—even his
karaoke bit here is an echo of his classic Saturday Night Live lounge
singer act. But look again: Murray is playing his old personas as they are 30
years or so later: the bravado muted by realization of his limitations, the
self-deprecating jokes, once ironic, now bearing a tinge of real
self-awareness.
Runners-up: Albert Finney as a tale-spinning patriarch in Big
Fish; Anthony Hopkins as a college professor with a secret in The Human
Stain; Tommy Lee Jones as a determined grandpa in The Missing; Ben
Kingsley as a tragically proud Iranian immigrant in House of Sand and
Fog.
Best Actress
Diane Keaton, Something's Gotta Give
It's not billed as a superhero flick, but in Something's Gotta
Give Diane Keaton accomplishes the impossible: in the most disarming turn
by any actress this year, she swoops down and steals a movie from Jack
Nicholson.
Her unearthly powers: the same wrinkle-nosed smile that devastated Woody
Allen in Annie Hall; the comedic timing that made her a perfect foil for
Steve Martin in Father of the Bride; the fresh-faced sexuality that
proved her undoing in Looking for Mr. Goodbar. As Keaton draws from the
well of characters that have enriched her career, poor Jack is putty in her
hands. And, frankly, he seems to like it.
Don't dismiss Keaton as a comic lightweight, however. She also produced
2003's gut-wrenching Columbine-inspired movie Elephant. And there
was even a semiserious notion behind her brief—and hilarious—nude
scene. As she told director Nancy Meyers, "Somebody my age has to be naked
in a movie!"
Runners-up: Geraldine McEwan as the scariest nun ever in The
Magdalene Sisters; Helen Mirren as the unsheathed leader of the Calendar
Girls; Catherine O'Hara as a contented superstar
folksinger-turned-housewife in A Mighty Wind.
Best Documentary
Concert for George, Directed by David Leland
A year after George Harrison's death, a few thousand
friends—including Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and Eric
Clapton—filled Royal Albert Hall with music, laughter, and tears. One of
the year's most life-affirming movies.
Runners-up: Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary (chilling
interview with the woman who took the führer's dictation); The Fog
of War (Robert McNamara, against footage of Vietnam, looks at the camera
and says, "We were wrong").
Breakaway Performance (50 and Over)
Eugene Levy, A Mighty Wind
Who'da thunk that Levy—whose characters on TV and in some 40
movies served as poster boys for the clueless unhip—would turn in this
nuanced performance as an emotionally damaged folk singer? Oh, but don't
get us wrong—he's as funny as ever, too.
Runners-up: Michael Caine for his twanging South Texas good ol'
boy in Secondhand Lions; Kurt Russell for his sullen turn as an
all-but-irredeemable cop in Dark Blue.
Best Foreign Film
Nowhere in Africa (Germany), Directed by Caroline Link
Yes, we know it won an Oscar last year—but it didn't turn up in
theaters until last spring. So now, go rent this visually stunning, emotionally
draining story of a Jewish family that flees 1938 Germany and settles on a farm
in Kenya—only to find they can't escape the tragedy that swallowed up
those they left behind.
Runners-up: Autumn Spring, Czech Republic (an old man refuses
to take life seriously); The Barbarian Invasions, Canada (a dying
man's family and lovers say goodbye); Russian Ark, Russia (a drama
in one continuous shot).
Best Movie for Grownups Who Refuse to Grow Up
School of Rock, Directed by Richard Linklater
If only we could all share our passions with the unbridled fervor of Jack
Black, who in this comedy stops just short of speaking in tongues as he
preaches his frenetic gospel of rock 'n' roll. Playing a washout
rocker-turned-schoolteacher, he electrifies a classroom of nerdy kids—and
us, as well.
Runners-up: Finding Nemo, a warm-blooded fish story; Kill
Bill: Vol. 1, stylish mayhem with no social significance in sight.
Best Movie Time Capsule
Down With Love, Set Decoration by Don Diers
The pink business suits! The vast apartments with spindly "modern"
furniture! The kooky beatniks! This is the 1960s we remember—not from
real life, but from those Rock Hudson/Doris Day comedies. "It was
determined early," says Diers, "that the design would become a
distinct character in the film."
Runners-up: A Mighty Wind, for its dead-on evocation of
'60s folk-rock culture; Seabiscuit, for capturing not only the look
of Depression-era America, but also the country's desperate craving for
hope.
Best TV Movie
Angels in America (HBO), Directed by Mike Nichols
Only a subject as compelling as the 1980s AIDS epidemic—and a script
as intellectually demanding as Tony Kushner's (from his play)—could
draw us in for six hours. Sobering and spiritual, Angels refuses to blink at
either the pain of death or the reasons for living.
Runner-up: My House in Umbria, in which Maggie Smith,
magnificent as usual, portrays a terrorist bomb victim who invites her fellow
survivors to her Italian villa.
Best Screenwriter (50 and Over)
Jim Sheridan (With Naomi and Kirsten Sheridan), In America
For his painfully intimate script about raising his family in New York City,
he had his now-grown daughters first write their own 100-page screenplays about
their experiences living in the family's Hell's Kitchen tenement.
"I wasn't even mentioned in either one of their scripts," the
writer-director recalls. His synthesis, though, created a priceless look at
children living in an adult world.
Runners-up: Nancy Meyers, daring to explore love over 50 in
Something's Gotta Give; Anthony Minghella, faithfully tracking the
odyssey of Cold Mountain; John Sayles, giving an authentic voice to his
all-woman cast in Casa de los Babys.
Best Intergenerational Movie
Secondhand Lions, Directed by Tim McCanlies
An awkward city boy (Haley Joel Osment) is dropped off with two South Texas
good ol' boys (Michael Caine and Robert Duvall). He helps smooth their
rough edges (especially their habit of shooting at salesmen), but they have
wisdom to share, too. "In this youth-driven culture, I don't think
generations are around each other enough," writer-director McCanlies
says.
Runners-up: Bend It Like Beckham (soccer kicks up a family
conflict); In America (sorrow and happiness seal a family's love);
Whale Rider (generations accept tradition and change).
Best Grownup Love Story
Something's Gotta Give, Written and Directed by Nancy
Meyers
Granted, Diane Keaton is a bit young for Jack Nicholson. She's 58;
he's a Neanderthal. Even so, they seem so…dare we say
it…sexy. When, after a romantic night, they need eyeglasses to check the
time, you know this is for real. As Meyers says, "I'm not going to
write a movie about people this age and have them act like they're
32."
Runners-up: Love Actually's Alan Rickman and Emma
Thompson; A Mighty Wind's Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara.
Best Director (50 and Over)
Joel Schumacher, Phone Booth
He took a story that was first pitched decades ago to Alfred Hitchcock,
hired a then-unknown actor as his star, set virtually all the action within a
three-square-foot area, and shot the whole movie in 10 days. Schumacher's
advice for a younger director who might try to imitate his feat?
"Don't do it," he says. "This movie works, but it's pure
luck!"
Runners-up: Clint Eastwood, great and gritty with Mystic
River; Alan Rudolph, still shunning the studios to make indie classics such
as The Secret Lives of Dentists; Ridley Scott, keeping us guessing with
Matchstick Men; Jim Sheridan, proving that family knows best with In
America.
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