The title of this understated slice-of-life drama is presumably ironic - the Savages of the title, siblings Wendy (an Oscar-nominated Laura Linney) and Jon (Philip Seymour Hoffman), are anything but uncivilised. Both are typically middle class and each is undergoing a mild midlife crisis: he is a college professor struggling with a book, while she is a wannabe playwright locked in an unsatisfactory affair with a married man. The pair are reluctantly reunited by the need to find their estranged father a new care home, and ghosts from their past almost emerge. The performances are a quiet delight, with Hoffman predictably fine as the rumpled academic who just wants to get the awkward situation over with so he can return to the sanctuary of his office. Director Tamara Jenkins's screenplay finds odd flashes of humour in the inevitably depressing situation, but the everyday nature of the subject matter and its relatively flat presentation make it a little too downbeat for its own good.

A sister and brother face the realities of familial responsibility as they begin to care for their ailing father.