A Life Well-Lived

A Simple Life is a spare and gorgeously filmed movie that explores the end of life and who we consider to be our "family" when it really comes down to it. Maid Ah Tao has served a single household for four generations, culminating with the last bachelor son, Roger.  After suffering a stroke, Ah Tao decides to retire to an assisted-living facility where she comes to terms with her own mortality and where she and Roger begin to realize that their bond goes much deeper than as merely servant and employer.  HM

Movies for Grownups

One might ask, what is a grownup? I'm thinking it is a film lover who can't relate to the "boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy finds girl and they get married and live happily ever after" syndrome.  A film that addresses different stages of life. So, in my own mind, Best Exotic Marigold Hotel  definitely fits in the movies for grownups category.

When seven cash-strapped seniors decide to 'outsource' their retirement to a resort in far-off India, friendship and romance blossom in the most unexpected ways. Also larger themes are touched upon, old age, change and loneliness, with enough comedy to make it palatable!

After 25 years together, the members of a world-renowned string quartet learn that their beloved cellist may soon be forced to retire. But the news stirs up equally painful challenges when competing egos, harbored resentment, and  lust threaten to derail the group as they struggle to maintain harmony in their music, and their lives. This film just has it all, great music, wonderful acting and an intense story line. A Late Quartet is great!

Inspired by the bestselling book, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery, The Hedgehog is a film about what lies beneath the facade we all project in public. Paloma is a young girl bent on suicide on her twelfth birthday, despairing of the world and it's hypocrisies. When she learns that the grumpy building concierge is much more than she seems (she reads Tolstoy to her cat and other eccentricities) and an interesting Japanese man moves into the building, she finds unexpected allies. Just lovely, and the art direction in the film is a terrific added attraction.