by Nathaniel R
The AARP 'Movies For Grownups' Awards is now 20 years old. They'll be airing a PBS special on March 18th to celebrate their 20th anniversary. This year their favourites were Belfast with 8 nominations and West Side Story with 6. Their awards specifically honor filmmakers and actors over 50 which is why their acting lineups are generally a combination of actors with genuine Oscar buzz paired with random celebrity fillers. Though let's just say in their supporting categories they largely have no excuse for their lapses of taste since plenty of great roles / performances come from the over 50 set each year...
Unfortunately as with both awards serving specific communities (the NAACP "Image Awards" come to mind) or awards in niche categories that would require a lot of conversation and watching-hours to come up with great nominees (the Emmy "guest categories" come to mind) the AARP's nominations generally lean towards either laziness (this person is famous, therefore worthy!) or give off the impression that the nominating committees or voting bodies are only watching the highest profile stuff that is placed in front of them at the tail end of the year. So for each of their categories beyond best picture rather than commentary we're listing other things they could have easily chosen.
BEST PICTURE
BEST DIRECTOR
That's a solid enough lineup but it could have been better. Other directors over 50 they could have chosen include: Mike Mills (C'mon C'mon), Pedro Almodovar (Parallel Mothers), Joel Coen (Tragedy of Macbeth), Paul Thomas Anderson (Licorice Pizza), Asghar Farhadi (A Hero), Paul Verhoeven (Benedetta), Paolo Sorrentino (Hand of God), Ridley Scott (The Last Duel / House of Gucci)
BEST ACTRESS
They had extremely limited options this year since not a lot of women over 50 headlined movies (at least not in movies that were released in the US). The only other that comes immediately to mind is Tilda Swinton (Memoria) but this organization clearly doesn't watch a lot of challenging art films.
BEST ACTOR
Some eligible men they could have gone with but didn't: Hidetoshi Nishijima - Drive My Car (just turned 50), Nicolas Cage - Pig, Clifton Collins Jr - Jockey, Matt Damon - Stillwater / The Last Duel, Udo Kier - Swan Song, Daniel Craig - No Time To Die, or Vincent Lindon - Titane.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Some eligible options they didn't select: Ann Dowd - Mass, Martha Plimpton - Mass, Kathryn Hunter - Tragedy of Macbeth, Meryl Streep - Don't Look Up, Jayne Houdyshell - The Humans, Cherry Jones - Eyes of Tammy Faye, Diana Rigg - Last Night in Soho, Tilda Swinton - The French Dispatch, Frances McDormand - The French Dispatch, Charlotte Rampling - Benedetta
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Jared Leto turned 50 a couple of weeks ago so of course they chose him over superior options. Other eligible contenders: Jason Isaacs - Mass, Reed Birney- Mass, Troy Kotsur - CODA, Colman Domingo -Zola, Mark Rylance - Don't Look Up, Richard Jenkins - The Humans, Jeffrey Wright - The French Dispatch, Benicio Del Toro - The French Dispatch, Al Pacino - House of Gucci, Richard E Grant - Everybody Loves Jamie, and Tony Leung - Shang-Chi
BEST SCREENWRITER
BEST GROWNUP LOVE STORY
BEST INTERGENERATIONAL FILM
BEST BUDDY PICTURE
BEST ENSEMBLE
The Mass snub here is even more unforgiveable than it was at SAG given that they're supposed to be honoring actors over 50 in their awards!
BEST TIME CAPSULE
Time Capsule is a really strange honor to give Spencer given that it's purposefully make-believe and takes place in one weekend at one secluded local that's cut off from any sign of the real world or, thus, a time frame. It's an interesting idea for a category though.
BEST DOCUMENTARY
BEST FOREIGN FILM
Their selections here come from three different release years (2019-2021). What an extremely odd decision / lineup.
TV AWARDS
BEST SERIES
It's not every day that Succession and Ted Lasso have to compete with one another!
BEST LIMITED SERIES
BEST ACTRESS
Here's one TV lead actress award that Kate Winslet can't win; she's only 46!
BEST ACTOR
Awww. no Steve Martin? They didn't want the full Only Murders set?
Do you have a favourite category in their nominations?