date watched: April 19, 2009
location: AMC 13 in Lincoln Sq., NYC
More than anything, I liked the visual texture of the film. It's as if a dusty sheet had settled on the celluloid, which seems highly appropriate for a film that takes place in a nursing home. Maybe because the geriatric population is on the rise, or simply because we are looking for more emotional stimulation, old people in film are popular topics nowadays. As I've once heard, if you want to get any emotion from the audience, all you need is an old person and a puppy--which brings us movies like Is Anybody There? and Marley and Me. Even middle-age romance is a commonplace genre, as you can see with Last Chance Harvey (definitely one of the better ones) and Nights in Rodanthe (which I didn't even see). Even The Curious Case of Benjamin Button conducts many of its scenes in nursing home.
The most valuable achievement of Is Anybody There? is Michael Caine's performance. I don't know about anyone else, but even in the new series of Batman, I consider him the #1 hero, and NOT the man in the black leather bat suit. He can make any old tearjerker classy, and this film is no exception. So, my advice is, go watch it for Caine, if anything else.
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