The Savages (DVD)

20th Century Fox This sad, nuanced indie comedy-drama stars Philip Seymour Hoffman and an Oscar-nominated Laura Linney as a brother and sister who rarely see each other, and who see their spiteful elderly father, Philip Bosco, even less. When Bosco's declining health forces the siblings to install him in a nursing home near Hoffman's house, they revive their relationship. But instead of having a neat, formulaic plot, Tamara Jenkins' film is a series of anecdotes – unsentimental, uncomfortably funny, but always wise and sympathetic – about the ways they deal with a grim situation. Nicholas Barber