Philomena

Philomena (2013) starring Judi Dench, Steve Coogan. An unemployed journalist named Martin Sixsmith (Coogan) helps a retired nurse named Philomena Lee (Dench) search for the son she was forced to give up for adoption 50 years before, when she was a teenager. The search takes them to an abbey in Ireland, then on to America. The movie is a delightful examination of the contrast between their two personalities and world views, and it's all squeezed into an economical hour and a half. It was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actress for Dench. The film was based on a true story, and is an exemplar of how the evil nuns in Ireland took pregnant teens and virtually imprisoned them and then sold their babies (in this case, for a thousand pounds). It's a very clean movie, with scarcely a wasted word or a wasted motion. (English subtitles for the hearing-impaired are available on the disc. Closed captions are not.) Grade: A-