Life is too short for bad movies, so let’s see another good one: “Beginner” makes a great double feature with yesterday’s “Melancholia”, and it also allows for a strange pitch line: guy’s mother dies, father comes out as gay at age 75, then dies of cancer. How’s that for an entertaining night out?
Very good, actually! “Beginners” is an uplifting film, with people who are willing to enjoy that bit of life that they are given. Ewan McGregor sits in the middle of this, sometimes incredulously looking at all these people doing these liberating things: joining the gay pride movement (his father, played by Christopher Plummer), pretending to be dumb (his girlfriend-to-be, Melanie Laurent, of Inglorious Basterds fame), barking and whining until you are allowed to come to the party (his indeed very cute little dog). McGregor is rather passive in this, but he makes it all work together because it is his story of trying to understand, and as he is a person who needs to express himself through his art (mostly doodles with caricature-like sketches), we get to see a wide array of quite impressive visualizations that he produced to get a grip on what’s happening around him.
This is something really enjoyable: a movie about sadness, nostalgia and (yes, again) melancholia, that is entertaining and often funny. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/beginners/
thomas4cinema 
One Comment
Nice review! This was one of the better films that I saw this year. I am glad you enjoyed it. I was really impressed with Plummer and McGregor. Great work from both actors.