Can You Guess the Old Curmudgeon's Dark Secret?

The Sense of an Ending, Ritesh Batra’s adaptation of Julian Barnes’ Man Booker Prize-winning novel, will make you cry if you see it on an airplane. It’s slow and a little boring, but it captures a wonderful balance between polite British domestic drama, Classic Tale of an Old Person Trying Out Being a Good Person (It’s Not Too Late!), and a portrait of a nontraditional family who are dysfunctional but not unhappy. It’s hard to spend any real time around that kind of nuance and care without getting all verklempt. (Full disclosure: These are my favorite genres—especially the Old Person Trying to Do Better narrative, a motif mastered by movies like The Royal Tenenbaums.)