LIVING

Here is the decision in full. LIVING is a small, beautiful film, and Bill Nighy's performance carries it to real heights. It celebrates something worth celebrating: a man who, told he has about a year left, finally chooses to live a life of meaning and purpose. The story is heartfelt, gentle, and uplifting — a genuine four-star piece of work.

But it earns its cautions. A strip-club sequence brings lewd dancing and rear female nudity. Two characters get very drunk in one scene. There's brief foul language. And for all its tenderness toward death, the film never turns to the God who conquered it — its comfort stops at this life.

So: if you're an adult who can weather that material and want a moving meditation on living with purpose, this is worth your evening — but watch it at home, where you control the room. If you're choosing for children or young teens, choose something else.

In 1950s London, Mr. Williams (Bill Nighy) has spent his life as a stoic civil servant in the county Public Works department — never late, precise, and quietly monotonous. Then he learns he is terminally ill, with about a year to live.

For the first time, he takes stock. He takes time off. And he befriends a former colleague named Margaret, who is everything he is not: passionate, joyful, alive to the world. As Margaret's spirit begins to reach him, Williams sets out to do something that matters before the end — and that is where we'll leave you.

Four stars, and here's what they mean. LIVING is simple but beautiful, a heartfelt look at the human condition that never overstates itself. It's a British remake of Akira Kurosawa's iconic 1952 film, and it honors that source with restraint and warmth.

The reason to watch is Bill Nighy. As Williams, he carries the movie to new heights with an incredible performance — the whole film rests on his face, and it holds. Around him, the story of a dying man learning to live unfolds gently, never sentimental, never forced. This is craftsmanship of a high order, and it earns every one of its stars.

LIVING carries a light moral worldview: it celebrates life, and it prizes living with purpose and meaning. That's a good thing to prize, and the film is sincere about it. A man who spent decades merely existing decides, at the end, that his days should count for something — and the movie treats that awakening as beautiful.

But the film's comfort has a ceiling. Themes of death run through the whole story because of Williams's illness, and the discussions around death are gentle and humane. What they never do is turn to Scripture. The film has no regard for how the Bible speaks of death and life, and so it's marred by some pagan elements — its hope reaches only as far as a meaningful life, never as far as the God who raises the dead. That gap is the real cost here, more than any single scene.

Williams learns to live because he knows he's dying. Scripture asks the same question and answers it further: "Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom" (Psalm 90:12). Numbering our days is where LIVING stops. The gospel says the numbering is the beginning, not the end — for the God who made us has "put eternity into man's heart" (Ecclesiastes 3:11).

LIVING is a lovely, superbly acted film about a man learning, too late and yet just in time, that his life should mean something. It's also a film with a strip-club scene, drunkenness, and a hope that stops short of heaven. So here's our answer, the same one we opened with: wait for home — adults only. Planning family movie night instead? Start with our latest family-friendly picks.