Sound Advice From Our Favorite Movie Dads

Father's Day is a holiday to celebrate all of the beloved father figures in your life.

So this year, we’re lending our ear to let our favorite film pops give us advice on life, love, and the little things in between.

Beginners

In Mike Mills’ Beginners, Oliver (Ewan McGregor), who is just starting a new relationship, flashes back to his life with his father Hal (Christopher Plummer) for how to handle his new feelings. Hal, who came out and found love in his seventies, has no time to waste with insecurity. As Rolling Stone writes, Plummer—who won an Academy Award® for his performance—“is simply stupendous, refusing any call to sentiment as he shows us Hal's resonant lunge at life.” His fatherly advice is simple and pragmatic.

Watch Beginners now on Apple TV and Amazon!

A Serious Man

In the Coen brothers’ Academy Award®-nominated A Serious Man, Lawrence Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) wants to be a good father. “It's semi-autobiographical,” explains Joel Coen to the Minn Post. “The story takes place in a community very much like the one that we grew up in.” But he is quick to add their dad wasn’t “anything like the character in the movie.” As Gopnik seeks advice from his Rabbi, he makes it clear that, despite everything, his son (Aaron Wolff)—who is about to have his Bar Mitzvah—and daughter (Jessica McManus) are never far from his thoughts.

Watch A Serious Man now on Apple TV and Amazon!

The Place Beyond the Pines

Sometimes, being a father isn’t in what you say, but in what you do. In writing The Place Beyond the Pines, writer-director Derek Cianfrance told IndieWire that, “I came up with the idea about becoming a parent, which is very personal for me…All my fears of being a parent went into this movie.” For Luke (Ryan Gosling), a motorcycle stuntman turned bank robber, the few moments he gets to spend with his infant son and the child’s mother (Eva Mendes), change his and his son’s life in ways neither of them will comprehend until much later.

Watch The Place Beyond the Pines now on Apple TV and Amazon!

Downton Abbey: A New Era

In Simon Curtis’ Downton Abbey: A New Era, the Crawley family steers into the future by letting go of outdated roles and responsibilities. As most of the family travels to the South of France to explore a villa that the Dowager Countess (Maggie Smith) has mysteriously inherited, Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) stays home to oversee the estate and the film production company who are shooting their new motion picture on the grounds. Before they leave, Robert Crawley, 7th Earl of Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) tells his daughter Mary that she is no longer simply safeguarding the ancestral estate, she is "the captain now.”

Watch Downton Abbey: A New Era now on Apple TV and Amazon!

The Holdovers

As The Holdovers demonstrates, sometimes the best father is simply the person willing to stand up for you when no one else will. In this Academy Award®-nominated film, directed by Alexander Payne and written by David Hemingson, three very different people—curmudgeonly classics teacher Mr. Hunham (Paul Giamatti), troublemaking student Angus (Dominic Sessa), and a cook whose son recently died in the Vietnam War, Mary (Da’Vine Joy Randolph)—spend the holiday recess together in an empty New England prep school. When Angus, abandoned by his family, struggles to accept some hard truths about his father, Hunham steps in to support the young student in his uniquely erudite and hilarious way.

Watch The Holdovers now on Apple TV and Amazon!