Twice in a Lifetime (1985)

On the night of his 50th birthday, Gene Hackman goes to a bar without his homebody wife Ellen Burstyn and flirts with the younger, new barmaid Ann-Margret. Despite, or maybe because of, thirty years of marriage with his wife and having three now adult children together, he finds himself falling for Ann-Margret and beginning an affair. It’s a bit exasperating to watch Hackman disintegrate his long-time family unit without much thought, but in parallel, it also shows how people get stuck in patterns without much thought to their happiness or the direction their life is going. I enjoy watching films set locally so I can try to guess the neighborhoods they were filmed in, that is as long as it’s not really Vancouver or some other city pretending.

Oscar Nomination: Best Actress in a Supporting Role