The Father

#132 at the time of writing.

IMDB's Top 250 is brimming with big box office blockbusters that cine-nerds might be tempted to turn their noses up at, but I'm glad that it still has room for smaller films, especially when they're as artful and moving as this.

The Father feels more like a play than a film, and indeed was based on a stage play, although it's the little cinematic tricks that draw you in so completely to this tragic tale of fallen pride.

Anthony Hopkins plays an ageing man suffering from increasingly disorienting dementia, cared for by his daughter (played by Olivia Colman, whom I loved as a comic actor, and I love double since her breakout as a dramatic actor too). Throughout the film, The Father asserts his personality upon his beleaguered daughter or whomever else crosses his path, in a way that brought to mind my own grandfather. It is that universality, the inevitability of age and pride and deterioration, that makes this story so impactful.

By the end, when he finally breaks down, so did I. I sobbed inconsolably all the way home from the cinema. A poignant catharsis.

Anthony Hopkins' character in this movie is also called Anthony (and shares his birth date), which led me to suspend my disbelief so completely that I really started to worry about the mental state of the actor!

At age 83, Anthony Hopkins became the oldest recipient of the Best Actor Oscar for this role. Deservedly so. Olivia Colman was also nominated for an Oscar, having won Best Actress two years earlier playing a character with the same name (Anne).