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‘Black Bag,’ ‘Bridget Jones,’ ‘Sinners’ Among Mid-Year Favorites for AARP’s Movies for Grownups
‘Nonnas’ and ‘Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning’ are also among our top picks
From dramas to comedies, here are our picks of the best movies released in the U.S. this year, from January to June.
AARP (Courtesy Everett Collection, 5)
Times are tough in Hollywood, but for grownups, things are actually looking up, with more on offer to stars and audiences over 50. The buzz behind every single contender for the 2025 best-picture Oscar was substantially driven by older audiences, and almost half of the year’s acting Oscar nominations went to talent that’s 50 and over, proving it’s never too late to be at the top of your career. Nor is it too soon to start hailing this year’s cinematic triumphs. From drama to comedy and back, here are our Movies for Grownups picks released in the U.S. this year, from January to June.
(From left) Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender are married intelligence officers searching for a mole in "Black Bag."
Focus Features/Courtesy Everett Collection
Black Bag
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In a witty, briskly efficient spy thriller by Traffic director Steven Soderbergh, 62, and writer David Koepp, 62 (Jurassic Park, Mission: Impossible), Cate Blanchett, 56, plays a sleek British intelligence agent involved in “black bag” work (covert operations). Somebody is leaking state secrets. Which spook is the mole, and what’s the motive? Is it her spouse (played by the cerebral Michael Fassbender)? Or some unusual suspects (Naomie Harris, Pierce Brosnan, 72, Tom Burke and Regé-Jean Page) who don’t suspect their dinner has been spiked with truth serum? It’s all as jaunty (and sometimes illogical) as a Howard Hawks detective flick.
Where to watch: Black Bag
(From left) Hugh Grant and Renée Zellweger reignite their onscreen romance in “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy.”
Universal Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection
Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy
Bridget (Renée Zellweger, 56), now a widowed mom, plunges back into the dating pool, pursued by a dreamy young hunk (The White Lotus’ Leo Woodall) while getting close with her son’s teacher (Chiwetel Ejiofor) — and encouraged by her ex (Hugh Grant, 64). It’s the best Bridget Jones movie since the first one, and on a more interesting topic: finding love and purpose once you’ve grown up. Bridget’s reunion with her old boss and beau (Grant) is touching as well as funny, and her dad (Jim Broadbent, 76) gives her wise advice: “It’s not enough to survive — you’ve got to live.”
Where to watch: Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy
(From left) Naomi Watts and Bill Murray form a posthumous bond over a dog in “The Friend.”
Bleecker Street Media/Courtesy Everett Collection
The Friend
Naomi Watts, 56, plays Iris, a novelist with a teensy Greenwich Village apartment and a distinguished, womanizing literary mentor Walter (Bill Murray, 74), who commits suicide and leaves her his Great Dane, who way outweighs her. Adapted from a 2018 National Book Award-winning novel, The Friend is a far smarter canine comedy than Marley & Me, with Watts sensitively capturing the grief amid the yucks. Also terrific are Carla Gugino, 53, as Iris’ friend (and Walter’s ex), and Ann Dowd, 69, as the sympathetic neighbor who warns Iris not to lose her rent-controlled, no-dogs apartment, and offers the best line about the incredibly winsome mourning pooch: “Zoinks! That’s a very sad pony.”
Where to watch: The Friend
IMF agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) holds on for dear life in “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning.”
Paramount/Courtesy Everett Collection
Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning
Granted, it’s impossible to find oodles of surprises in the grand finale of the Mission: Impossible franchise. When the president (Angela Bassett, 66) asks agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise, 62) to prevent the AI menace called the Entity from causing nuclear World War III, can he do it? Duh, though after an hour and a half you wish he’d hurry up. But that last hour or so pays off big time, with Ethan in peril in a sunken sub, driving cars thrillingly recklessly, even by Rome standards, and clinging by his fingernails to biplane wings. There’s even a hint of the wisdom of age in his age-proof character, and a satisfying old-pal camaraderie with longtime castmates Ving Rhames, 66, and Simon Pegg, 55.
Where to watch: Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning
(From left) Natalie Morales and Sonequa Martin-Green star in a very modern ghost story, “My Dead Friend Zoe.”
Briarcliff Entertainment/Courtesy Everett Collection
My Dead Friend Zoe
Bronze Star-winning U.S. Army paratrooper Kyle Hausmann-Stokes directs the most inspiring ghost story of 2025 so far, about traumatized Afghanistan War vet Merit (Sonequa Martin-Green), who’s haunted by the wisecracking shade of her fellow soldier Zoe (Natalie Morales). Ed Harris, 74, plays Merit’s stubborn Vietnam War vet granddad afflicted by incipient Alzheimer’s.
Where to watch: My Dead Friend Zoe
(From left) Lorraine Bracco, Talia Shire and Brenda Vaccaro are the titular “nonnas” who are whizzes in the kitchen. Vince Vaughn is the entrepreneur who starts a restaurant showcasing their talents.
Jeong Park/Netflix
Nonnas
If you liked The Book Club or 80 for Brady, you should flip for Nonnas, a far superior, heartwarming comedy starring four grownup acting legends. Vince Vaughn, 55, plays a guy whose late Italian-American mom taught him, “One does not grow old at the table.” He misses her cooking, so he starts a restaurant with grannies (“nonnas”) instead of trained chefs: a raspy-voiced grouch (Lorraine Bracco, 70), a widow who needs a new lease on life (Brenda Vaccaro, 85), a pastry chef (Susan Sarandon, 78) and an ex-nun (Talia Shire, 79). The women have nine Oscar nominations among them, and though they may not win more for this delicious confection, they’ll win your heart.
Where to watch: Nonnas
Paddington Bear (voiced by Ben Whishaw) goes on a South American adventure in “Paddington in Peru.”
BFA/StudioCanal/Courtesy Everett Collection
Paddington in Peru
Everyone’s favorite bear and his human family voyage to the Amazon and the Andes in search of Paddington’s Aunt Lucy (Imelda Staunton, 69), encountering a singing nun (Olivia Colman, 51), the wicked Hunter Cabot (Antonio Banderas, 64) and picturesquely scary landscapes. Take a child or grandkid, and you can explain to them the many cinematic references to The Sound of Music, Indiana Jones, Buster Keaton and Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, The Wrath of God.
Where to watch: Paddington in Peru
Lucy Liu and her family must deal with a pesky ghost in “Presence.”
Neon/Courtesy Everett Collection
Presence
Prolific Soderbergh and Koepp made another of the season’s best and briskest movies, this one in the ghost-drama genre. We meet a troubled family: a high-strung mom (Lucy Liu, 56), a frustrated dad (Chris Sullivan) and their kids, a jock son (Eddy Maday) and a daughter stressed by the death of her friend (Callina Liang). Inventively, it’s all seen from the point of view of the ghost who’s haunting their house. Soderbergh nails the tricky technical challenge through long, uninterrupted takes, forsaking his usual quick-cutting magic and achieving a new kind of magic.
Where to watch: Presence
Michael B. Jordan plays twin brothers who become entangled with racist vampires in Depression-era Mississippi in “Sinners.”
Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection
Sinners
In the year’s least expected $350 million hit and Oscar best-picture contender, director Ryan Coogler and star Michael B. Jordan (whose Creed and Black Panther flicks earned billions) try their hand at a vampire movie. Jordan plays two roles, twins who rob some Chicago gangs and return to their hometown, Clarksdale, Mississippi — the birthplace of the blues — to invest the money in a new juke joint that summons the spirits of Black musical geniuses past and future. It’s a rip-roaring success, but Ku Klux Klansmen plan to kill them all, and a pack of clever KKK vampires who can sing immortal Irish folk songs incredibly well want to chomp them. It’s an action film, an art film, a deep meditation on Jim Crow America and the Great Migration, a superb musical and the most original vampire flick ever.
Where to watch: Sinners
Joan Chen and a costumed friend dance up a storm in “The Wedding Banquet.”
Bleecker Street Media/Courtesy Everett Collection
The Wedding Banquet
This reboot may not outdo Ang Lee’s 1993 classic, but it has something the original didn’t: more emphasis on intergenerational characters. Korean immigrant Min (Han Gi-chan) needs a green card, but his sweetheart (Bowen Yang) won’t marry him. So their gay friend Angela (Kelly Marie Tran) agrees to marry him platonically, in exchange for expensive IVF treatment for her sweetheart (Lily Gladstone). They’re good, but the grownups steal the show: Min’s grandma (Youn Yuh-jung, 77), who sweeps in to insist on a traditional Korean wedding, and Angela’s pro-gay mom (Joan Chen, 64), who seizes the spotlight and proves it is possible to dance more embarrassingly than Elaine on Seinfeld.
Where to watch: The Wedding Banquet
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