The Descendants15

The new film by Alexander ‘Sideways’ Payne, The Descendants stars George Clooney as Matt King, the heir of a prominent Hawaiian land-owning family whose life is turned upside down when his wife is critically injured in a water-skiing accident. Accustomed to being the ‘back-up parent’, Matt suddenly finds himself centre-stage in the lives of his two young daughters, while at the same time being forced to decide the fate of a vast plot of unspoiled land his family has owned since the 1860s, and coping with the revelation that his wife held secrets he never imagined… Rooted in Clooney’s beautifully understated performance, Payne’s film is exquisitely sad and irresistibly funny all at once – the 2012 Oscars race starts here.