It's awards season and AARP The Magazine has once again picked the best films for the older audience with its annual Movies for Grownups® Awards. Robert Redford is the recipient of the Movies for Grownups Lifetime Achievement Award and Tom Hooper's The King's Speech nabbed this year's top honor for overall "Best Movie for Grownups." The complete list of winners can be found online at www.aarp.org/movies and in the March/April issue of AARP The Magazine, the definitive voice for 50+ Americans and the world's largest-circulation magazine with nearly 35 million readers, in homes January 24.
Recognized as a bellwether for the Academy Awards, AARP The Magazine's Movies for Grownups® Awards are also known for their unique, offbeat categories, including "Best Grownup Love Story" (Annette Bening and Julianne Moore for The Kids Are All Right), "Best Buddy Picture" (Unstoppable) and "Best Movie for Grownups Who Refuse to Grow Up" (The Karate Kid).
"AARP The Magazine is proud to celebrate the 10th anniversary of one of our most successful franchises that celebrates movies with performances and filmmaking that have distinct relevance to the 50+ audience," said Nancy Perry Graham, Vice President and Editor of AARP The Magazine. "In addition to these wonderful films, we're thrilled to present this year's Lifetime Achievement Award to Robert Redford, a film icon who has captivated audiences for decades with stellar performances in countless films including The Way We Were, All the President's Men and The Natural, and Oscar-winning directing in Ordinary People."
Additional top honors went to Colin Firth, "Best Actor" for his poignant depiction of a man struggling with a stammer as the role of King George VI in The King's Speech; Lesley Manville, "Best Actress" for her vivacious, self-involved performance as Mary in Another Year; John Malkovich, "Best Supporting Actor" for his quirky, dimensional character in Secretariat; Phylicia Rashad, "Best Supporting Actress" for her wise portrayal of Gilda in For Colored Girls; and Danny Boyle, "Best Director" for his riveting and impressive film, 127 Hours.
"Our readers rely on us to cut out the kid stuff and put dynamic, character-driven films in their queues," said Bill Newcott, AARP The Magazine editor and host of AARP's weekly "Movies for Grownups®" radio show. "We find the movies we know our audience will love and alert them year-round through reviews in print and online as well as through radio and social media commentary."
Before voting on this year's winners, the editors of AARP The Magazine spent more than 100 hours screening 2010's eligible Hollywood studio and independent films. Additionally, readers were invited to participate and vote for their pick for "Best Movie for Grownups" online. After thousands of online votes, the 2010 Reader's Choice Award went to the box office hit The King's Speech.
The 10th Annual Movies for Grownups® Award winners are as follow:
Best Movie for Grownups: The King's Speech
A wondrous mix of inspired direction, breathtaking performances, and a compelling true human drama, The King's Speech is darn close to perfect. The audience meets the king of England's second son (Colin Firth) in the 1930s, when he reluctantly visits a no-nonsense speech therapist (an astonishing Geoffrey Rush) for treatment of a persistent stammer. The task turns epic when the prince, thrust onto the throne, must address his nation as it goes to war-and overcome not only his speech disability but also the terrible secrets that triggered it. Seldom in film have the currents of history and the eddies of human frailty been so gingerly interwoven.
Runners-Up:
Best Actress: Lesley Manville, Another Year
You want to throttle flighty, self-involved Mary. Sure, she's had a rough time, what with her husband leaving her when she's so needy and all. Yet five minutes into Lesley Manville's X-ray-like performance as Mary, you can simultaneously understand why the ex-hubby was drawn to her (her bubbly vivaciousness, her hot-blooded yearning for affection) and why he later headed for the hills (ditto).
Runners-Up:
Best Actor: Colin Firth, The King's Speech
His heartrending depiction of a man struggling with a stammer would be remarkable enough, but Firth invests the role of King George VI with searing humanity. Embodying shame, bitterness, and vulnerability, Firth inhabits the man's entire lifetime, transmitting it to us with subliminal power. Screen acting gets no better than this.
Runners-Up:
Best Supporting Actress: Phylicia Rashad, For Colored Girls
Rashad's character, Gilda, seems determined to keep her distance from us. She is an observer-the apartment manager who watches the comings and goings of director Tyler Perry's cast in this adaptation of an Obie-winning play. But read Rashad's face, and study her eyes-they brilliantly reflect every broken heart, every shattered life, that passes her door.
Runners-Up:
Best Supporting Actor: John Malkovich, Secretariat
The role of Lucien Laurin, the veteran trainer who helps Penny Chenery (Diane Lane) groom her racehorse for Triple Crown immortality, is the ideal channel for Malkovich's trademark quirkiness. But the actor also radiates immense capability and horse sense.
Runners-Up:
Best Director: Danny Boyle, 127 Hours
Here's an insane task: Make a movie in which the hero amputates his own arm-and keep the audience from running screaming from the theater. Miraculously, seasoned storyteller Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire, Trainspotting) pulls it off (so to speak).
Runners-Up:
Best Comedy For Grownups: City Island
Who's got a secret? Just about everybody in this gem. Andy Garcia is the prison guard who secretly wants to act, Julianna Margulies is his neglected wife who's growing a bit too fond of the young man hubby brought home for dinner one night-and as for their kids, well, if Mom and Dad only knew....
Runners-Up:
Best Grownup Love Story: Annette Bening and Julianne Moore, The Kids Are All Right
If love stories are about people muddling through the thicket of commitment, recalibrating their relationship as life throws its curve balls, and fiercely protecting those they love, then it's hard to come up with one more real-and raw-than Bening and Moore as the "Momses." The couple's happiness is put at risk when their children seek out their biological dad.
Runners-Up:
Best Documentary: Waste Land
The story of Brooklyn artist Vik Muniz, 49, and the breathtaking art he creates with the trash pickers of Rio de Janeiro is mesmerizing, heartbreaking, and enthralling.
Runners-Up:
Breakthrough Achievement: Helen Mirren, RED
The First Lady of the Cinema, playing a spy forced out of retirement, kicks a heap of bad-guy butt. Best moment: at the trigger of a machine gun the size of a Buick.
Best Buddy Movie: Unstoppable
Denzel Washington is the engagingly grizzled veteran train engineer; Chris Pine is his eager young conductor. As they desperately try to keep their runaway train from killing thousands, the youngster learns to respect the lessons of experience, and the old fella rediscovers the value of youthful exuberance.
Best Intergenerational Movie: Flipped
Defying our kids-know-best culture, Reiner's young hero (Callan McAuliffe) turns to his grandfather (John Mahoney) for the wisdom of experience, the comfort of love. The result is as magical a screen relationship as you will see.
Runners-Up:
Best Movie for Grownups Who Refuse to Grow Up: Karate Kid
Admit it: Someone bullied you at least once. And oh, if only you'd had someone like the ageless Jackie Chan to pat you on the head, explain that true strength is in calm maturity...and then show you how to kick the guy in the head.
Runners-Up:
Best screenwriter: John Wells, The Company Men
GENE (Tommy Lee Jones) [reviewing proposed layoffs]: "All I see are people who are over 50, with enough young ones thrown in to protect us against litigation." HR HATCHET GUY: "We're not breaking any laws, Gene." GENE: "I guess I always assumed we were trying for a higher standard than that."
Runners-Up:
Best Foreign Film: Farewell
As the KGB bureaucrat who leaked the list of his agency's spy network to the West, Sergei Gregoriev-and the French engineer who was his courier-helped end the Soviet Union. Director Christian Carion tells their story as a nail-biting spy drama played against the gathering gloom of an imploding empire.
Runners-Up:
Visit www.aarp.org/movies to read the full lineup of the 10th Annual Movies for Grownups® Award winners.
18.01.2011 | Editor's blog
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