The Road Articles

James McAvoy, Christopher Plummer in The Last Station (top); Viggo Mortensen in A History of Violence (bottom) AFI FEST 2009 has selected Christopher Plummer, who’ll turn 80 next December, and Viggo Mortensen, 51, as this year’s tribute honorees. Sponsored by the Skirball Cultural Center, Plummer’s tribute will precede the screening of The Last Station, in which he plays Leo Tolstoy, on Tuesday, Nov. 3. Mortensen’s [...]

Director John Hillcoat, screenwriter Joe Penhall, actor Viggo Mortensen attend a photocall for The Road during the Times BFI 53rd London Film Festival at the Mayfair Hotel on October 16. Photos: Ian Gavan/Getty Images Viggo Mortensen Viggo Mortensen

A handful of Friday highlights at the 2009 The Times-BFI London Film Festival: The Road, based on Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, sounds like the perfect Thanksgiving movie: "An unnamed man (Viggo Mortensen) and his young son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) travel alone through a post-apocalyptic landscape, ravaged by an unspecified catastrophe. Ash and soot hang in the air, it is cold enough to crack stones, and [...]

BEST ACTOR George Clooney, Up in the Air A professional downsizer finds the frequent-flying love of his life while having to come to terms with his long-lost humanity. Matt Damon, The Informant! A pathological liar helps the FBI nab his employer, a dishonest agribusiness conglomerate. Daniel Day-Lewis, Nine (with Marion Cotillard) In this musicalized remake of Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2, Daniel Day-Lewis plays the old [...]