One of the facts of life is that I'm getting older. For those who insist that "we're not getting older", we're getting better", I beg to differ. Take two titans of the 20th century, both of whom lived to a grand old age - Leo Tolstoy and Winston Churchill. I've recently seen two films, The Last Station, a story of the last days of Leo Tolstoy who is played powerfully by Christopher Plummer, and The Gathering Storm, the more-or-less historical account of the years leading to World War II and the ascent to power of Winston Churchill played to perfection by Albert Finney. Politically, there is little in common between them: Tolstoy is an anarchist and Churchill is a Tory. But in other ways there is much similarity: both have incredibly large egos; both are beastly to their wives and their families; both are unremittingly selfish and both have objectionable personal habits. Other then that, they have a vivid sense of their place in history and an near-mystical appreciation of the responsibility they have to fulfill. I enjoyed both films very much. But I disliked the faint conclusion that getting old means becoming unreasonable or insufferable. Perhaps these presentations serve a purpose when they remind me that fame, fortune or power is never an excuse to become an angry, frustrated and unreasonable old man.