I looked at the American Film Institute's list of the "100 Best American Movies of the Past 100" years--published in 2008--and the only one that has an aging theme is a film that few think of first as having an aging theme--The Godfather.

This 100 winners were selected from 400 nominees, and among that larger group were several movies that fit the aging category, but none of them made the final cut--the aforementioned Harold and Maude, The Hours, Driving Miss Daisy, On Golden Pond, Atlantic City, and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? As I said, movie making and watching is a young person's game.

Next, I looked at Time Magazine's "All-Time 100 movies," and here I hit a bit more pay dirt. Compiled by Richard Corliss and Richard Schickel, this list did include one movie in which old age is a central focus, a film by Akira Kurosawa, Ikiru. Released when Kurosawa was only 42, he lived on to age 88 and made two films, Rhapsody in August and Madadayo when he was 81 and 83 that dealt in part with themes of aging and life's closure.

So what's the problem? Are there just not that many movies with aging themes? Or do we simply overlook them when we make up our lists?

Not fearing to tread where no man or woman has gone before, here's my Top-10 Old People films--followed by a list of some worthy and unworthy that did not make the cut.

10. Where's Poppa? (1970) directed by Carl Reiner, starring George Segal, Ruth Gordon, and Trish Van Der Vere. As a psychologist who works with the elderly, I have a special affection for this movie that I saw well before I imagined I would ever be working with anyone like Mrs. Hocheiser who has serious dementia, and is always asking, "Where's Poppa?" Gordon Hocheiser (Segal) begins the film by trying to scare her to death wearing a gorilla suit. She's too out of it to take notice. He's concerned that his girlfriend (Van Der Vere) will leave him, thinking Mrs. Hocheiser as mother-in-law is not worth the bargain of George. In the back of his mind, he would like to put Mama in a nursing home, but has as much difficulty even saying the word, "Nursing home," as the witches in Harry Potter have saying Voldemort. This is a great black comedy, and it holds up. This is my Ruth Gordon pick over the more precious Harold and Maude.

9. Driving Miss Daisy (1989). I wanted to keep this off the list, directed by Bruce Beresford. I always resist the idea of art or entertainment that is good for you, but this film is just good. And who can resist the bravura performances of Jessica Tandy and Morgan Freeman? Plus, as a psychologist who works with old people, it's quite common for me to deal with people struggling with giving up their driver's license. This film-although it marks the progress of civil rights in the south-is in the end a film about friendship. It's apotheosis is when between two seemingly different, but not so different, people have this exchange: Miss Daisy Wertham, stuck in a nursing home says to here chauffeur Hoke Coburn: "You're my best friend."

8. Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1933). Get out the hankies. Starring Robert Donat and directed by Sam Wood. This film is classist, Victorian in attitudes, but it gets me every time. And who is more beautiful than Greer Garson? Mr. Chipping is an aging headmaster of a British Public School who recollects his 58 year teaching career, his disappointments, his love for his wife who transforms him from cold austerity to somewhat warm fuzzyness. Of course his wife dies in childbirth, but he muddles on. On his deathbed someone says it's a pity he never had a child and he responds, ""I thought you said it was a pity... pity I never had children. But you're wrong. I have thousands of them ... thousands of them ... and all boys." As I said, get out the hankies.

7. A Christmas Carol. (1951) Of all the adaptations, this is my favorite, starring Alistair Sim as Scrooge. I'd watch it every year, when my gentile friends were at Midnight Mass. Thinking about the story makes me wonder if It's a Wonderful Life could be sued by Dickens for infringement. At bottom, this is a story about redemption in old age, as well as a Victorian's indictment of a society that lacks a social conscience.

6. The Godfather (1972) Francis Ford Coppola's look at an aging gangster's plans to transfer control of his crime family to a new generation. Along the way, he has to come to grips with burying one of his sons while reluctantly making his heir a son for whom he envisioned another path. Take out the crime, and it looks at universal themes of aging, legacy, generational change, and providing for one's family.

5. 8 ½ (1963). Frederico Fellini. Not all films abut aging are about old people. Here a middle-aged film director who is creatively blocked from completing his next movie. It's title comes from the fact that Felllini considered himself to have made six films, two shorts, and a collaboration with another director-making this his 8th and one-half film. I wonder if he had in mind the musical composer's superstition following Beethoven of nine symphonies and then you die. This film follows the protagonist, a film director (Marcello Mastroianni, of course) trying to make a new film, beset by his pressures of his past and present life. Among the series of hallucinations and dreams that torment him, my favorite is when he is thrown together with all the women of his life-his mother, girlfriends, wives, and mistresses. What a nightmare!

4. Atlantic City (1980). Louis Malle directed an aging Burt Lancaster in a role about an aging low-life gangster gofer who hangs on by running numbers and servicing-in every sense of the word-a gangster's widow. This is the underside of The Godfather shot in a tired and worn Atlantic City undergoing its transition to the bright lights and hopes of becoming a gambling mecca. Chance and Susan Sarandon present him with the opportunity for riches and excitement that were missing from his youth. Old dogs can do new tricks.

3. Wild Strawberries (1957). Ingmar Bergmann. Need I say more? Okay, I will. An aging professor travels to a university to receive an honorarydegree. Along the way, dreams, hallucinations, and encounters of the road make him realize his life has been cold and meaningless. In thinking about this film, I realize that two of Bergmann's greatest films, this one and The Seventh Seal, are essentially road pictures. Never thought of Bergmann that way before.

2. Ikiru (1952) directed by Akira Kurosawa. It stars Takashi Shimura, who many might remember as the head samurai in The Seven Samurai, or the woodcutter in Rashomon. Here he plays an aging bureaucrat-check out the teetering towers of files in his office-who learns he has terminal cancer. Reexamining his life-a common theme in films about aging-he decides to step out of his rut, and in a courageous move for a bureaucrat decides to make it his legacy to build a playground for a group of mothers who have petitioned him-the type of petition that usually winds up in one of the towers of files.