I couldn’t be happier to see that The Savages (2007) has finally made it to HBO. I consider it a small, modern, underrated masterpiece. Writer/director Tamara Jenkins hits all the right beats, mixing comedy with a raw bleakness that always feels authentic. It’s an actor’s showcase, to be sure — Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney give stripped-down, vulnerable performances — but Jenkins frames the action with a naturalistic eye, and times the comedy with wry restraint. Most of that comedy comes from Hoffman and Linney’s overeducated, neurotic blather — they’re part-time playwrights and full-time siblings dealing with their estranged father’s decline into dementia. It’s the funniest sad movie I’ve seen this decade, or maybe it’s the saddest funny one. I can’t quite tell. Watch it — if only to remind yourself why Laura Linney is the best American actress (lucky for her, that group excludes Cate and Kate) working today.
