50 Top 10 Lists of 2007

Top 10 Movies (Richard Schickel)

#7. The Savages

Ravaged by dementia, Dad must be institutionalized. His adult children, obscurely damaged (largely by him, we are led to believe), must see to his needs. It's not a job either of them is up for. He (Philip Seymour Hoffman again) is an emotionally withdrawn college professor. She (Laura Linney) is an unproduced playwright pretending — all right, lying about — her needs and her achievements. These actors are unimprovable as, somehow, they find a certain decency under the pressure of their grinding familial chore, a reason to hope that slightly better days may be ahead for them once their duty has been done. Writer-director Tamara Jenkins is less interested in heroically inspiring us than she is in showing us the values to be found in the more modest forms of dutifulness.

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