The first question that arises when viewing Away from her is how Sarah Polley, the 28-year old Canadian actress who has directed the film can know so much about aging, the onset and progression of Alzheimer’s disease, and the way the two elements of a couple can rub against each other like pebbles on the beach until the edges are smooth, yet retain so many seemingly washed-away memories and resentments.

The biggest problem with 300, Zack Snyder’s retelling of the Greco-Persian battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C., is its audience. Or, rather, two specific segments of that audience, to wit: a) Iranians, not happy at the humiliating—for them—last stand of the 300 Spartan warriors against the Aechemenid king Xerxes’ vast army. Chatrooms have been buzzing with furious bitching, much in the spirit of the Kazakhs taking offense at Borat and the Islamic Republic’s official protests at Persepolis, another graphic novel brought to the screen and much lauded at the recent Cannes Film Festival. b) Serious film critics, who have been analyzing and criticizing 300 as they would Carl Dreyer’s Passion of Joan of Arc or Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane.

What is it about those fabulous mid-fifties icons? The three whose names instantly come to mind—James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, and the young Elvis—are as idiosyncratic as can be, unique, sans pareil, but remain evanescent. Stars from the previous decade were glamorous, talented, and they had heft. We love Cary Grant, Gregory Peck, Bette Davis or Katherine Hepburn but we don’t feel sorry for them. But the three named above carry with them a fragility, a loneliness, an otherworldly lack of fulfillment that keeps them in our hearts and minds half a century later. Of course, around the bright lights of the three-star pantheon of the mid-fifties shone lesser individuals who, in their heyday, were as famous and as beloved, though relegated to obscurity by our short memories.