Movies

Joan Plowright plays an elderly widow who moves to a London hotel and develops an unlikely friendship with a young writer. A gentle, moving portrait of loneliness, dignity, and the surprising bonds that can form across generations.

Retired opera singers — played by Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Billy Connolly, and Tom Courtenay — navigate friendship, romance, and aging at a home for musicians. A warm celebration of passion, creativity, and love persisting into old age.

Judi Dench plays Philomena Lee, a woman searching for the son taken from her by Irish nuns 50 years ago. A story of maternal love, institutional cruelty, faith, and forgiveness — and an older woman with far more grit and wisdom than anyone expects.

Meryl Streep’s Oscar-winning portrayal of Margaret Thatcher — framed through Thatcher’s final years of dementia and grief. Whatever one thinks of her politics, the film raises profound questions about aging, legacy, identity loss, and the toll of a life in power.

Carey Mulligan delivers a quietly devastating performance as Felicia Montealegre — a woman who loved Leonard Bernstein fully knowing the complexity of who he was, and paid the price. A meditation on art, marriage, compromise, and aging in the shadow of genius.

Based on Amy Tan’s landmark novel, four Chinese-American women and their mothers explore the complex bonds between generations. A profoundly moving portrait of women’s lives across cultures and centuries, of survival, sacrifice, and the stories mothers and daughters tell each other.

A Chinese family gathers under the pretense of a wedding to say goodbye to their grandmother, who has been diagnosed with cancer but not told. A tender, cross-cultural meditation on death, family, and the stories we tell for love.

Helen Mirren portrays Golda Meir during the Yom Kippur War — an aging, cancer-stricken Prime Minister making impossible decisions under immense pressure. A portrait of leadership, courage, and the burden of power borne by a woman who would not stand down.

Regina King portrays Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress and the first to run for a major party’s presidential nomination. An inspiring portrait of a fearless woman who ran knowing she couldn’t win — because someone had to be first.

Julianne Moore won the Oscar for her portrayal of a linguistics professor diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s at 50. A shattering portrait of cognitive decline, identity, and the fierce effort to hold onto oneself. Essential for anyone navigating brain health concerns.

Da’Vine Joy Randolph won the Oscar for her portrayal of Mary Lamb — a woman in midlife processing grief with devastating, funny, unvarnished authenticity. One of the best films of recent years.

Women in an isolated Mennonite community secretly debate whether to stay and fight or leave everything they know after years of assault. A rare film that takes women’s moral and political reasoning utterly seriously. Oscar winner for Best Adapted Screenplay.

The four friends from Book Club are back, this time taking their long-awaited trip to Italy. A breezy, sun-drenched sequel that continues celebrating older women’s friendship, romance, and joie de vivre.

Diane Keaton, Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen, and Mary Steenburgen play four lifelong friends in their late 60s and 70s whose love lives are upended after reading Fifty Shades of Grey. Affirming of older women’s desires and romantic lives.

Cate Blanchett plays Lydia Tár, the first female chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, whose life collapses under the weight of her own abuses of power. A complex film that refuses to simplify its female protagonist.

Frances McDormand plays a woman in her 60s who joins van-dwelling nomads after losing everything in an economic collapse. An Oscar-winning meditation on loss, freedom, community, and living outside conventional expectations of how older women should exist.

Glenn Close gives a legendary performance as a woman who has spent decades suppressing her genius to support her Nobel Prize-winning husband. A film about what women sacrifice — and what it costs them.

Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, Rita Moreno, and Sally Field play four friends in their 80s who road trip to see Tom Brady at the Super Bowl. A joyful celebration of friendship, vitality, and women in their 80s having the time of their lives.

Emma Thompson plays a High Court judge dealing with a challenging case — a teenage Jehovah’s Witness refusing a blood transfusion — while her own marriage collapses. A sharp, emotionally complex portrait of a highly accomplished woman whose inner life is in crisis.

In late 18th-century France, a painter and her subject fall in love during the sittings. A luminous, sensual film about female gaze, desire, and the power of art to create and preserve love. One of the finest French films of recent years.

Based on Kurosawa’s Ikiru, Bill Nighy plays a reserved civil servant who learns he is dying and tries to discover what it means to truly live in the time remaining. A quietly devastating meditation on mortality, purpose, and whether it is ever too late to begin living.

Maggie Smith, Kathy Bates, and Laura Linney play Irish women who win a trip to Lourdes, taking along a long-estranged friend. A warm, funny, moving film about old wounds, forgiveness, faith, and female friendship in later life.

The story of Charles Dickens’ secret relationship with young actress Nelly Ternan, seen through the eyes of an older Nelly looking back on the years she lost in invisible servitude to a great man. A quietly devastating portrait of women’s historical erasure.

Glenn Close plays a mother trying to help her heroin-addicted daughter (Mila Kunis) stay clean for the four days needed to qualify for a monthly treatment injection. A raw, compassionate portrait of addiction and the devastating toll it takes on the mothers who love their children through it.