Bill Newcott - 100 Must-See Movies for Grownups

100 MUST-SEE MOVIES FOR GROWNUPS

By Bill Newcott

AARP

Copyright 2015 by AARP. All rights reserved. AARP is a registered trademark.

E-book produced by RosettaBooks.

Author: Bill Newcott, Creator, AARP Movies for Grownups
Director, AARP Books Division: Jodi Lipson
Creative Director: Scott A. Davis
Director of Photography: Michael Wichita

Credits: Top to bottom, left to right: SOME LIKE IT HOTCourtesy Everett Collection; PINOCCHIOWalt Disney Co./Courtesy Everett Collection; THE GODFATHERCourtesy Everett Collection; THE SHININGWarner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection; GONE WITH THE WINDCourtesy Everett Collection; 12 YEARS A SLAVEJaap Buitendijk/ and Fox Searchlight Pictures. All rights reserved. Courtesy Everett Collection.

Published by AARP, Washington, D.C.

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ISBN e-Pub edition: 9780795345050

When AARP launched the Movies for Grownups Awards in 2002, the mission was simple: to point our readers to movies that spoke in a unique way to the 50-plus audienceand to encourage filmmakers to produce more of them. Since then, Movies for Grownups has expanded into a franchise that includes weekly reviews and entertainment blogs at AARP.org, the annual Movies for Grownups Awards gala in Beverly Hills, the Movies for Grownups Film Festival in Los Angeles, a nationwide radio show, a TV series, regional theatrical previews of upcoming films, an evening of films cohosted with Robert Osborne on Turner Classic Movies, and the Movies for Grownups Seal, recognizing new films of special interest to the 50-plus audience.

Weve grown, and the original mission remains precisely the same, but wed hate to suggest that grownup movies began in 2002. In this book, were proud to present a list of 100 Must-See Movies for Grownups that includes films dating back to the dawn of film itself.

This list is as subjective as they come, of course. Even now I can hear my film school friends bellowing, Wheres Eisenstein? Wheres Buuel? Three Hitchcock movies?!? I cant say I shed actual tears over the films I had to leave off, but my fingers did hover tentatively a few times over the delete button. You will find, though, a pretty good mix of popular classics and relatively obscure films that you really ought to check out.

The list includes every film that has won our Best Movie for Grownups Award, and for each film youll also find a quote from the script. Some quotes are familiar; in most cases Ive skipped past the classic quote to find something a bit more evocative of the film in question. Feel free, as you watch the films, to pour yourself a drink when each one pops up. And to react. You can find me at twitter @billnewcott.

Popcorn ready? Then Action!

Marauding hordes, clashing armies, vast and exotic landscapes from the start, epic movies have plucked viewers from their comfy theater chairs and plunked them into the middle of places and events that defy imagination. Often those movies aim purely to dazzle the senses; the Grownup ones try for something a bit deeper.

Gone With the Wind(1939)

Directors: Victor Fleming, George Cukor (uncredited), Sam Wood (uncredited)

Tomorrow is another day.

With its romanticized vision of plantation life, today Gone With the Wind seems as enlightened as a minstrel show. But producer David O. Selznick actually consulted with the NAACP to mitigate the more outrageously racist sins of Margaret Mitchells book. Bolstered by Clark Gable at his Gable-iest and Vivien Leigh at her vixen-y apex, MGM managed to produce a magnum opus that was a lot smarter than it might have been.

Intolerance(1916)

Director: D.W. Griffith

Out of the cradle, endlessly rocking

The whole notion of basing a Hollywood movie on an abstract concepthumankinds eternal struggle against itselfwas mighty brave/insane in 1916. And if the three-hour-plus Intolerance primarily tests your tolerance for sitting, remind yourself of Griffiths ridiculously ambitious attempt to weave together four stories from vastly different historical eras, all told simultaneously. Modern prints come with musical soundtracks, but watch Intolerance with the sound off: You can almost hear the rhythm of Griffiths revolutionary, relentless cross-cutting technique.

Lawrence of Arabia(1962)

Director: David Lean

The trick is not minding that it hurts.

Hollywood had been playing the cast of thousands card for decades, but British director Lean managed to effectively wed the spectacle of a big-screen extravaganza to the intimacy of a psychological drama. Lawrence is as much about the inner workings of the complex mind of T.E. Lawrence (Peter OToole, in the most auspicious movie debut since Orson Welles in Citizen Kane) as it was about train wrecks, horseback armies and vast desert sandscapes.

Ran(1985)

Director: Akira Kurosawa

When [man] has cried enough, he dies.

These days, whenever the action starts in a war or sci-fi flick, the director seems determined to keep you disoriented with rapid cuts, jerky camera movements and deafening sound effects. For his epic retelling of King Lear, Kurosawa stages some of the most complex war scenes ever filmed, but not for one second does he fail to show us where we are, whos doing what, and why. His camera ranges from in-your-face close-ups to long shots from what seems like a mile away. Like no action director since, Kurosawa trusts his audience to keep up with the action.

Boy meets girl, boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl. Thats pretty much the Hollywood romance formula. But some films are less interested in the chronology of loveand the hormone-driven mechanics of itthan in the intangible elements that make love a uniquely human experience.