Reviews
HAAG’s Older Tenants Voice Newsletter reviews books movies about older people, housing and homelessness, and we love to see when these issues are brought into the spotlight.
Undercover
Undercover is a feature length documentary about “the hidden face of homelessness”- older women. It follows ten older women across Australia who are either currently homeless or have been homeless, finding themselves in housing crisis due to a “life shock” like divorce, losing a job, rent increases, or illness. Like many of the older women… …
Posted in: Movie Reviews, Missing Middle, Older Women
Queen Bees
Set in a US retirement home, Queen Bees is Michael Lembeck’s latest Hollywood production. Helen, a fiercely independent older woman, unwillingly moves into a retirement village while her house undergoes repairs. Here she discovers a clique known as the “queen bees” – just like the popular kids in high school, they are mean and don’t… …
Posted in: Movie Reviews, Retirement Villages
Some Happy Day
Incredibly, another movie featuring older people’s homelessness has been released in cinemas, and this time it’s much closer to home, shot entirely in Melbourne. Some Happy Day explores the parallel lives of two women. Tina, who is sleeping rough on the St Kilda foreshore, and Frances, a social worker with nerves of steel yet mired… …
Posted in: Movie Reviews, Older Women
Amma Hófí
Amma Hófí (Grandma Hofi) is an Icelandic Christmas heist movie directed by Gunnar B. Gudmundsson that screened at the Scandinavian Film Festival. Hofi (Edda Björgvinsdóttir) and Petur (Þórhallur Sigurðsson) are residents in an underfunded retirement village come aged care facility, where they are forced to share a room due to lack of space. They live… …
Posted in: Movie Reviews, Retirement Villages
Swan Song
Swan Song, directed by indie film maker Todd Stephens screened at this year’s Melbourne Queer Film Festival. Set in the film-makers small home town of Sandusky, Ohio, the film features retired hairdresser Pat Pitsenbarger (76 year old German actor Udo Kier) as he escapes his oppressive nursing home to go on a mission to do… …
Posted in: LGBTQIA+, Movie Reviews
Some kind of heaven
Attending a cinema screening of the wonderful, Oscar winning ‘Nomadland’ which I reviewed in our last newsletter, I was incredibly excited to see a trailer for ANOTHER MOVIE ABOUT OLDER PEOPLE AND HOUSING. There aren’t a great deal of movies on the topic, let alone those that make it to our big screens. It felt… …
Posted in: Movie Reviews, Retirement Villages
Nomadland
Our regular movie reviewer Shane has had the unenviable task of finding movies to recommend on the subject of older people, housing, or homelessness. Its a tragically overlooked topic, and so he’s had to make some questionable choices – reviewing a cheerleading movie, a sitcom, a kids cartoon, and even a horror movie. But as… …
Posted in: Movie Reviews, Older Women
Relic
This must be the first horror movie reviewed in the HAAG newsletter, and I wonder how many of our readers even watch horror movies? I’ve never been a big horror fan, but started to watch a lot of scary movies last year; as the pandemic unfolded and lockdown seemed to stretch on indefinitely, mere supernatural… …
Posted in: Movie Reviews
Up
Since I started this column I have been asking people for suggestions for movies about older people’s housing to include, and many suggested Up, which I’d never seen. From talking to friends and looking online, I know lots of people love this movie and consider it one of the best movies from Pixar, the studio… …
Posted in: Movie Reviews
Golden Girls
Last night I watched an episode of The Golden Girls with my partner, who’d never seen it before. When I was a kid, I loved this show and watched it religiously, endlessly entranced by, especially, Dorothy Zbornak’s sharp, sarcastic wit – I don’t remember the exact context, but I still remember her snapping down the… …
Posted in: Movie Reviews
A Secret Love
Pat Henschel and Terry Donahue met at a hockey rink in Saskathewan, Canada, in 1947. Terry was on a break at the time from playing in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, the wartime alternative to men’s sports that inspired the Geena Davis and Madonna movie, A League Of Their Own. A Secret Love tells… …
Posted in: LGBTQIA+, Older Women, Retirement Housing
Poms
“The entry form says there’s an 18 and over category, and we’re over 18!” Poms (Zara Hayes, 2019) starts with Martha (Diane Keaton) moving from her home of 46 years into a retirement village, fending off insensitive garage sale shoppers and her own anxieties about the transition. Cynical, urbane Martha, in her jeans and khaki,… …
Posted in: Movie Reviews, Older Women, Retirement Villages