Movies for Grownups Awards 2007

Sutherland came very close to passing up the part of Ronald—a man who becomes determined to commit suicide. “I was very, very profoundly depressed for a bunch of reasons,” Sutherland says. “Ronald, this character, invaded my person. My father had Parkinson's, my mother died with dementia, and I was pretty familiar with the depression that accompanies people who feel that termination of their life is the most generous thing they can do for the person they love.” Yet the film had an unexpected effect. Says Sutherland: “Almost as soon as I started to work on the picture, my depression disappeared, and I haven't been depressed since. So Ronald cured me.”

Runners-up: Gabriel Byrne, Wah-Wah: As a divorced dad living in Africa with a deeply troubled son, Byrne is a man cast adrift at home and in the world…Samuel L. Jackson, Freedomland: Beneath rumpled clothes and an ill-fitting hat, Jackson brings new life to one of the movies' most durable characters, the world-weary cop…Peter O'Toole, Venus: The “ick” factor could be high in this tale of an aging thespian smitten with a twentysomething cutie, but O'Toole's charm renders him bulletproof…Jack Nicholson, The Departed: Few things are scarier than casual brutality. When Nicholson's gangster pulls a ring off a severed hand and gives it to his lackey while saying, “Send it to his wife,” we want to run for the exits.

Best Director 50 and Over
Clint Eastwood, Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima

We don't usually honor anyone for two films in the same year, but the sheer audacity of Clint Eastwood's vision for his bookend movies about the World War II battle for Iwo Jima—one from the American side, one from the Japanese—is simply too monumental to ignore. Flags of Our Fathers is ingeniously gritty and complex, yet Eastwood's crowning achievement is Letters From Iwo Jima. Filmed in Japanese with English subtitles, the movie burrows into the rocky tunnels that honeycomb Iwo. Harrowing as the battle scenes are, the film shifts to heartbreaking as the Japanese soldiers reminisce about life back home and finally come to realize they have been abandoned by their commanders. These films stand as not only Clint Eastwood's greatest directorial accomplishment but also two of the most nuanced and striking war movies ever.

Runners-up: Stephen Frears, The Queen: It could have been played as a burlesque or with mock solemnity. But Frears gets his sneak peek at Britain’s royal family just right…Peter Greengrass, United 93: With mind-blowing restraint, Greengrass navigates the torrent of emotion and pain from 9/11 to create the bravest movie of the year…Bill Condon, Dreamgirls: He takes a 1980s musical set in the 1960s and infuses it with new life…Martin Scorsese, The Departed: Still in pursuit of his first Academy Award, Scorsese pours his lifeblood into this cops-and-crooks story—and sheds a few gallons of other people's, too.

Best Screenwriter 50 and Over
William Broyles Jr. and Paul Haggis, Flags of Our Fathers

It took two of the screen's most accomplished writers to wrangle this complex vision of Iwo Jima, depicting both the bloody battle for a rock in the middle of the Pacific and the struggle back home to sustain Americans' support for the war effort. Their account reminds us that a nation’s greatest battle can be with its own sense of resolve.

Runners-up: Susan Seidelman, David Cramer, and Florence Seidelman, Boynton Beach Club: With their boldly written romantic comedy about love and sex among the 60-plus, they show, in Susan Seidelman's words, “older people getting to be funny and sexy and sad and silly and moving—all those things that Meg Ryan got to be in When Harry Met Sally”…Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy, For Your Consideration: Their cast improvised the lines, but the writers constructed the skeleton of this story, a fable about the persistence of dreams…Richard Russo, Keeping Mum: Serial killers don’t often make for great comedy, but Russo is a master of that unique British brand of dark humor…Shawn Slovo, Catch a Fire: The daughter of anti-apartheid activists, she brings blunt authenticity to this tale of South African terrorism.

Best Comedy for Grownups
Little Miss Sunshine, directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris

“Everybody!” shouts this movies desperate dad, Greg Kinnear, to his family after they've been pulled over by a cop. “Just pretend to be normal!”

It's a tall order—this is one oddball crew. But the wonderful thing about the wildly dysfunctional family in Little Miss Sunshine is how their quirks, conflicts, and unexpected camaraderie seem to echo the weird chemistry that uniquely defines every family. It’s funny, tragic, jaw- dropping, and sometimes difficult to watch. Just like life.

Runners-up: Failure to Launch Even if your grown kid was Matthew McConaughey, you'd want him to move out someday, right?…For Your Consideration Hollywood is an easy target for satire; adding humanity to the mix is harder…Keeping Mum Bodies buried in the backyard have never been more amusing, nor a village full of eccentrics more endearing… Thank You for Smoking Christopher Buckley's subversively funny book about a tobacco lobbyist makes a perfectly subversive movie.

Best Foreign-Language Film
The Lives of Others (Germany)

As an East German officer (Ulrich Mühe) spies on a playwright, he is drawn into the life, love, and hidden passions of his target. Writer-director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck questions whether any of us are capable of minding our own business.

Runners-up: Le Petit Lieutenant (France): It's a cops-and-killers film noir, plus the target audience actually knows what noir means. The French have long trusted featured roles to 50-plus actresses, and here the great star Nathalie Baye turns in an arresting performance (sorry!) as a police commandant…The Syrian Bride (Israel): The simple story of a young woman from the Golan Heights who plans to marry a Syrian runs deep with currents of politics and family crisis…Volver (Spain): Pedro Almodóvar's magical ghost story brings a deceased mother back to advise and comfort her daughters…Water (India): Maddening and inspiring, a woman's battle against a system that marginalizes widows echoes the rise of modern India.

Best Documentary
51 Birch Street, directed by Doug Block

As the director's parents speak to the camera about their 54-year marriage, we ask, “Why am I watching this?” Then we're told Block's mother has died. Then his father marries his secretary from 40 years ago. Then Block finds his mom's secret diaries. And then things really get interesting. The question is, how much do you really want to know about your parents?

Runners-up: 49 Up Michael Apted's every-seven-years look at a group of British men and women finds them all facing middle age…An Inconvenient Truth The biggest thaw of all turns out to be in Al Gore, who's disarmingly charming in this global warming lecture film…Mr. Conservative: Goldwater on Goldwater The one-time presidential candidate’s granddaughter, C.C. Goldwater, gives us a fresh and surprisingly personal look at a man who changed the face of American politics…Wordplay Crossword puzzles are exciting. Really.

Breakaway Accomplishment
Terry Bradshaw, Failure to Launch

“I am not a movie star!” Terry Bradshaw insists. Maybe not, but the Hall of Fame quarterback and FOX NFL Sunday host comes awfully close in this, his first major film role (we won't count his two cameos as himself in a couple of Burt Reynolds's old Cannonball Run movies). He's riotously exasperated as a dad with a stay-at-home son (Matthew McConaughey)—but the real eyeopener is the tenderness of his performance with the wonderful Kathy Bates as his wife. A couple more roles like this and Bradshaw may have to take back his protest.

Best Intergenerational Movie
Akeelah and the Bee, written and directed by Doug Atchison

Some of us were a little skeptical about a movie produced by Starbucks. But if at times Akeelah and the Bee seems to be a big, sweet Venti Caramel Macchiato of a film, it's also a compelling portrait of generations pulling together to help an 11-year-old girl go from ghetto to greatness in a national spelling bee. Plucky Akeelah (Keke Palmer) finds a hero in a gleefully grumpy neighborhood professor (Laurence Fishburne) who bears a personal burden of his own.

Runners-up: Aurora Borealis Depression, dementia, and suicide are the solemn themes of this story about a young man's last-ditch effort to relate to his grandfather…Brooklyn Lobster The Giorgio family (headed by Danny Aiello and Jane Curtin) struggle to save the seafood shop that's been part of their identity for more than 65 years…Little Miss Sunshine It puts the fun back into dysfunctional family…Quinceañera Rejected by their families, a pregnant Latino teenager and her gay cousin find shelter in the home of their great-granduncle. (Warning: Our runners-up all have well-earned R ratings for sexual and language content.)

Best Grownup Love Story
Blythe Danner and Tom Wilkinson, The Last Kiss

You might have skipped this one; the trailers focused totally on the onscreen romance of young stars Zach Braff and Jacinda Barrett, ignoring the rich relationship of Danner and Wilkinson as Barrett's character's parents, whose marriage seems to be in deep trouble—she's been having an affair. Be advised: this is a mature-themed film that treats temptation honestly—so when their daughter's boyfriend stumbles into infidelity, too, each parent has a heart-to-heart with one of the twenty-somethings, conferring deep, lived wisdom about long-term love and loyalty that only real grownups can have earned.

Runners-up: Louise Fletcher and Donald Sutherland, Aurora Borealis She's given her life to care for her ailing husband; he'd do anything to give her a life of her own…Sally Kellerman and Len Cariou, Boynton Beach Club He's endearingly nervous and she's yearning for affection in this touching version of love at 60-plus…Kristin Scott Thomas and Rowan Atkinson, Keeping Mum The preacher has forgotten to minister to his wife, and she's looking for love with a golf pro. It takes a murderous mom and the Song of Solomon to reunite them… Naomi Watts and Edward Norton, The Painted Veil They're a little young, but their sad drift apart and unexpected rediscovery of each other trace the arc of many a grownup love story.

Best Movie Time Capsule
Hollywoodland, production design by Leslie McDonald

Take any frame of the richly textured Hollywoodland and you are immersed in the clothes, cars, and atmosphere of the 1950s. But at its heart Hollywoodland, the story of the mysterious death of TV Superman star George Reeves, reverberates with that 1950s sense of a nation holding its breath before its next great leap into the future—and the first hint that the optimism may be tinged with disappointment and unexpected tragedy.

Runners-up: Bobby Sideburns and protest songs abound, but it’s the hopes and anxieties of the characters that capture the essence of America on the night RFK was shot…Flags of Our Fathers All but lost to popular history, the national fatigue that threatened U.S. involvement in World War II dominates the home-front half of Clint Eastwood's epic…Glory Road Imagine, if you can, a world where African Americans were a rarity in college hoops…The Queen The decade since Di's death melts away.

Best Movie for Grownups Who Refuse to Grow Up
Lassie, directed by Charles Sturridge

Who'd have expected the best family film of the summer would also be one of the best films of the year? In a season of overwritten superheroes and gimmicky thrills, Lassie charmed and delighted, thanks not only to one well-trained pooch but also to an inspired cast, including the aristocratic-but-rascally Peter O’Toole and the wonderfully understated Peter Dinklage (The Station Agent). With its epic scope and intimate character studies, Lassie saved us all from a deep, dark well of summer mediocrity. Now we know how Timmy felt.

Runners-up: Charlotte’s Web Engaging, funny, and sad, it's exquisitely faithful to E.B. White's book. As Charlotte's voice, Julia Roberts spins a web of warm reassurance…Nacho Libre Jack Black’s wrestling padre is joyously adolescent and contagiously optimistic…Nanny McPhee As a gnarly nanny, Emma Thompson proves that if you wait long enough, inner beauty will always show itself…Night at the Museum Frantic, funny, and a great motivator to get kids interested in visiting a real museum. Mickey Rooney, of all people, is a hoot as a pugnacious night watchman.