Mr. Holmes [dir. Bill Condon]

Mr. Holmes may not be part of the Arthur Conan Doyle canon, but it is a heartfelt tribute to his famous detective, and a moving meditation on old age and senility.

This film's Sherlock Holmes (Ian McKellen) is a nonagenarian living out his days with his bees in Sussex, cared for by a widowed housekeeper (Laura Linney) and her precocious young son Roger (Milo Parker). Fighting to counter his increasing forgetfulness (he scribbles people's names onto his shirt cuffs to remember them), Holmes is desperately looking at alternative medications to slow down the erosion of his intellectual edifice (the beekeeping originates from his quest for "royal jelly", the foodstuff generated for the queen bee). While otherwise prickly and sardonic, he seems to appreciate the company of the fan-struck and eager-to-learn Roger, developing a strong bond with the boy. Holmes is also trying to write down the 'true' story of his last case before it is forever lost from his mind.

Folks looking to get their fix of the detective from Doyle's stories or from any of the recent spinoffs may be disappointed here. After living through two world wars and the atomic bomb, Sherlock Holmes is an older man, far more fragile and vulnerable, and this is a story of his twilight years. Conan Doyle's sleuth was once famous for saying "Crime is commonplace, logic is rare." In this tale of lambent retrospection, Holmes finds that a heartfelt human connection is rarer still.

It is to the credit of the script (Jeffrey Hatcher, based on the book A Slight Trick of the Mind by Mitch Cullin) and Ian McKellen's performance that this sentiment is conveyed with minimal pandering - the "crisis" towards the end has a slightly manufactured feel, but I'll let that go because it was so good till then. The pastoral setting (interspersed with flashbacks to London with a relatively younger Holmes) and poignant musical score add to the impact. This is a wonderful coda to the celebrated existence one of the most beloved fictional creations of all time.