AARP The Magazine Honors the Best Movies for the 50+ Audience With Movies for Grownups(R) Awards

AARP The Magazine Honors the Best Movies for the 50+ Audience With Movies for Grownups(R) Awards

Winning Films of 2008 in AARP The Magazine's March/April 2009 Issue

WASHINGTON, Jan. 26 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Frost/Nixon is the year's Best Movie For Grownups, according to AARP The Magazine -- whose annual Movies for Grownups(R) Awards have become a consistent bellweather for each year's subsequent Oscar winners. The drama -- based on the post-Watergate television interviews between British journalist David Frost and former president Richard Nixon -- was selected by the editors of AARP The Magazine, the definitive voice for 50+ Americans and the world's largest-circulation magazine with more than 34 million readers.

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Besides presenting honors for acting, directing, and writing to filmmakers 50 and over, the Movies for Grownups(R) Awards are known for their decidedly offbeat categories, including "Best Grownup Love Story" (Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson in Last Chance Harvey), "Best Buddy Picture" (The Family That Preys) and "Best Movie for Grownups Who Refuse to Grow Up" (Iron Man). All 16 categories are featured in the March/April issue of AARP The Magazine, available now, and online at www.aarpmagazine.org/movies.

AARP The Magazine is proud to provide a forum to celebrate movies that engage grownup audiences with challenging topics, thoughtful new approaches, and sterling work by actors, actresses, directors, and writers age 50+, all at the top of their game. Frank Langella won "Best Actor 50 and Over" honors for his riveting performance as Richard Nixon in Frost/Nixon; Meryl Streep was named "Best Actress 50 and Over" for her magnificently understated performance as Sister Aloysius Beauvier in Doubt; and Gus Van Sant was honored as "Best Director 50 and Over" for his ingenious filming of Milk.

"It is clear that Hollywood is paying attention not only to the tastes of moviegoers age 50+, but also to the enormous talent of filmmakers age 50-plus," said Nancy Graham, Editor of AARP The Magazine. "From drama and history, to musicals and biopics, actors over 50 took center stage on the silver screen last year and we're proud to recognize them for their hard work and creative achievements."

Overall, of the five actors selected as winners and nominees for AARP The Magazine's Best Actor 50 and Over -- a list created by the editors more than a month before the Oscars nominees were announced -- three turned up as Oscar nominees. Likewise, three movie directors appear on both lists. There's no doubt that the winners of the 8th annual Movies for Grownups(R) Awards will continue receiving accolades this awards season.

"It's no accident that so many of our winners and nominees reflect this year's Oscar list," said Entertainment Editor Bill Newcott, creator of the awards. "This year in particular, artists 50 and over have produced some of the finest work of their long careers. This signifies a renewed commitment on Hollywood's part not only to feature artists 50 and over, but also to create films that speak to a grownup audience. And over the past eight years, these awards have done much to help make both of those things happen."

After hundreds of hours spent screening the latest Hollywood studio and independent films, the editors of AARP The Magazine voted to select winners and nominees in each of the 15 categories. Additionally, readers of the magazine are invited to tell us their picks for Best Movie for Grownups at www.aarpmagazine.org/movies. The Web site also offers Entertainment Editor Bill Newcott's weekly Movies for Grownups(R) radio show and his latest reviews.

The 2008 Movies for Grownups(R) Award winners are as follows:

Best Movie for Grownups: Frost/Nixon

What the heck is it about Richard Nixon? Every time we think we've got a bead on the guy, we discover a surprising quirk, an unexpected quality -- good or bad -- that we never suspected. So it is with Frost/Nixon, director Ron Howard's breathtaking take on Nixon's historic 1977 TV interviews with British chat show host David Frost. Sure, it's only a movie, and yes, it's based not on a history book but on a Broadway play, but somehow, between Howard's restrained guidance and his stars' uncanny channeling of the individuals they play, we feel we are witnesses to something more than someone's version of history.

Runners-Up:
-- The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
-- Doubt
-- Married Life
-- The Wrestler

Best Actress 50 and Over: Meryl Streep, Doubt

The fact is, she had already created quite a sensation with her energetic leading-lady turn as Donna in last summer's Mamma Mia! -- but we couldn't resist Streep's magnificently understated performance as Sister Aloysius Beauvier in Doubt. Her face framed by a nun's habit, her voice rendered into a low Bronx growl, Streep is clearly utilizing every trick in the Big Book of Acting here -- all the better to breathe life into a character who is so confident in her uncanny instincts that she persists in accusing a popular priest of child abuse, despite little evidence to support her charge. Neither strident nor overbearing, Sister Aloysius, with her nervously darting eyes and the occasional shadow of a smile, eventually gains our confidence, whether she truly deserves it or not.

Runners-Up:
-- Frances McDormand, Burn After Reading
-- Catherine Deneuve, A Christmas Tale
-- Alfre Woodard, The Family That Preys
-- Annette Benning, The Women

Best Actor 50 and Over: Frank Langella, Frost/Nixon

Clearly, director Ron Howard knew exactly what he had in his leading man. And so he had the surpassingly good sense to simply stand back and let the camera run for Frank Langella's towering performance as Richard Nixon. Maddeningly pompous, pitifully insecure, Langella's Nixon smolders with the legendary mix of contradictions that define the real Richard Nixon as one of history's most intriguing figures. Langella reveals more of Nixon than a library of biographies ever could.

Runners-Up:
-- Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler
-- Clint Eastwood, Gran Torino
-- Chris Cooper, Married Life
-- Richard Jenkins, The Visitor

Best Supporting Actor 50 and Over: Bill Irwin, Rachel Getting Married

A powerful portrait of powerlessness, Irwin's father of the bride in Rachel Getting Married is a heartbreaking look at a man tortured by loss. A shattering chapter in his past is inevitably brought to the surface when his daughter Kym (Anne Hathaway) is released from in-patient rehab to come home for her sister's nuptials.

Runners-Up:
-- Bill Murray, City of Ember
-- John Malkovich, Burn After Reading
-- Dennis Quaid, The Express
-- Pierce Brosnan, Mamma Mia!

Best Supporting Actress 50 and Over: Christine Baranski and Julie Walters, Mamma Mia!

There's no way to separate the stars who play Meryl Streep's best pals in Mamma Mia! Baranski stops just short of stealing the show with her brassy broadsides. And while at first blush it seems a mistake to entrust Walters with the signature ABBA song "Take a Chance on Me," what she lacks in pipes she more than makes up in panache.

Runners-Up:
-- Kim Cattrall, Sex and the City: The Movie
-- Bette Midler, Then She Found Me
-- Debra Winger, Rachel Getting Married
-- Cloris Leachman, The Women

Best Director 50 and Over: Gus Van Sant, Milk

For his brilliant filming and ingenious casting decisions -- particularly the chameleon-like Sean Penn in the title role as America's first gay man elected to major office -- Van Sant's smartest move in directing Milk was to cast the city of San Francisco as itself.

Runners-Up:
-- Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire
-- Jonathan Demme, Rachel Getting Married
-- Ron Howard, Frost/Nixon
-- John Patrick Shanley, Doubt

Best Screenwriter 50 and Over: J. Michael Straczynski, The Changeling

He's forged a career as one of television's top writers of fantasy and science fiction -- creating the space series "Babylon 5" and numerous scripts for the latter-day version of "The Twilight Zone." And although The Changeling is based on a true story, Straczynski's tale of a mother's search for her kidnapped son -- and the citywide corruption it uncovers -- churns with an eerie sci-fi atmosphere and dizzying sense of disorientation.

Runners-Up:
-- John Patrick Shanley, Doubt
-- Eric Roth, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
-- Woody Allen, Vicky Christina Barcelona
-- Joel and Ethan Cohen, Burn After Reading

Best Grownup Love Story: Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson, Last Chance Harvey

He's short, 60-ish and miserable; she's gangly, 40-something, and adrift. Yet there was no more appealing couple on the screen last year than this superstar pairing, fumbling through the missteps and epiphanies of midlife love.

Runners-Up:
-- Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan, Mamma Mia!
-- Richard Gere and Diane Lane, Nights at Rodanthe
-- Harrison Ford and Karen Allen, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the
Crystal Skull
-- Richard Jenkins and Mary Steenburgen, Step Brothers

Best Comedy for Grownups: Ghost Town

The trailers threatened something awful -- a cross between Ghost and The Sixth Sense. But a super-smart script by David Koepp and John Kamps, and a perfect oil-and-water combo of Ricky Gervais as a dead-to-the-world dentist and Greg Kinnear as an actually dead lothario (back to resolve unfinished family business) make this most grownup comedy of the year also the funniest.

Runners-Up:
-- What Just Happened
-- Smart People
-- Baby Mama
-- Be Kind, Rewind

Best Intergenerational Film: The Visitor

In the breakout performance of his career, Richard Jenkins stars as a professor who plans to stay in his underused Manhattan apartment while attending a conference -- and finds a young illegal immigrant couple from Syria living there. Everyone is angry and distrustful at first, but soon the three forge an unlikely friendship, tentatively bridging cultural and chronological divides that resonate far beyond the apartment's four walls.

Runners-Up:
-- Rachel Getting Married
-- Gran Torino
-- The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
-- Smart People

Best Documentary: Man on Wire, Directed by James Marsh

Philippe Petit's 1974 tightrope walk between the unfinished towers of the World Trade Center was an audacious act of artistic daring. Revisiting the feat 35 years later through seldom-seen footage and new interviews -- and heartbreaking visions of post-9/11 Ground Zero -- we discover that, with the passage of time, an event that meant one thing then can take on a whole new kind of significance now.

Runners-Up:
-- Young @ Heart - Seniors singing their hearts out
-- Chris and Don. A Love Story - A celebration of a lifetime of
commitment
-- IOUSA - An examination of America's debt disaster
-- Flow - Our coming water crisis

Best Foreign Language Film: Edge of Heaven (German/Turkish)

A German film that swings back and forth between locations in Bremen and Istanbul, this drama follows characters of varied ages, nationalities, and faiths passing through each other's lives -- and often not connecting at all.

Runners-Up:
-- A Christmas Tale (French)
-- Late Bloomers (Swiss/German)
-- Silent Night (Plautdeutsch--Pennsylvania Mennonite)
-- The Class (French)

Best Buddy Picture: The Family That Preys

At first we don't have the vaguest idea why Kathy Bates, as matriarch of a big business family, and Alfre Woodard, as a working class mom, are lifelong friends. But as their families spiral into chaos, their own relationship deepens, and they satisfy their mutual need by taking off on a just-us-girls road trip.

Runners-Up:
-- Mamma Mia!
-- The Women
-- Soul Men

Best Movie for Grownups Who Refuse to Grow Up: Iron Man

Let's hear it for the middle-aged superhero! In the title role, Robert Downey, Jr. infuses his character with all the frustrations, insecurities, and regrets that go with having put in four decades or so on this planet -- and finds the best kind of therapy in a really cool flying suit.

Runners-Up:
-- Wall-E
-- Kung Fu Panda
-- City of Ember
-- Marley & Me

Visit www.aarpmagazine.org/movies to read the full lineup of the 2009 Movies for Grownups(R) award winners.

About AARP The Magazine

With more than 34 million readers nationwide, AARP The Magazine (www.aarpmagazine.org) is the world's largest circulation magazine and the definitive lifestyle publication for Americans 50+. Reaching over 24 million households, AARP The Magazine delivers comprehensive content through in-depth celebrity interviews, health and fitness features, consumer interest information and tips, book and movie reviews and financial guidance. Published bimonthly in print and continually online, AARP The Magazine was founded in 1958 and is the flagship title of AARP Publications.

About AARP

AARP is a nonprofit, nonpartisan membership organization that helps people 50+ have independence, choice and control in ways that are beneficial and affordable to them and society as a whole. AARP does not endorse candidates for public office or make contributions to either political campaigns or candidates. We produce AARP The Magazine, the definitive voice for 50+ Americans and the world's largest-circulation magazine with over 34 million readers; AARP Bulletin and AARP Bulletin Today, the go-to daily news source for AARP's 40 million members and Americans 50+; AARP Segunda Juventud, the only bilingual U.S. publication dedicated exclusively to the 50+ Hispanic community; and our Web site, AARP.org. AARP Foundation is an affiliated charity that provides security, protection, and empowerment to older persons in need with support from thousands of volunteers, donors, and sponsors. We have staffed offices in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

For more information or to schedule an interview with Editor Nancy Graham
regarding AARP The Magazine's Movies for Grownups Awards, please contact
Michelle Alvarez, 202.434.2555/202.390.0032 or malvarez@aarp.org.
First Call Analyst:
FCMN Contact:

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CONTACT: Michelle Alvarez, AARP Media Relations, +1-202-434-2555,
+1-202-390-0032, malvarez@aarp.org; or Meghan Holston, Coburn Communication,
+1-212-382-4450, Meghan.Holston@coburnww.com

Web Site: http://www.aarp.org/
http://www.aarpmagazine.org/movies

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