The indie film “Any Day Now” contains none of the ingredients that the big studio films seem to insist upon.  There is little sex, no violence or special effects, and a setting that focuses on  a few years in the lives of a handful of people. Yet the film redefines what it means to be a hero and inspires you to search for moments in your own life when you rode into battle hopelessly outnumbered, your heart at the vanguard.  For the great majority of viewers, the  heroes  of  Any Day Now make you despair that you would inevitably fall short of their example, but they also give you the formula in case you find yourself in a similar position: take a worthy cause, side

Life  will suddenly confront you:  “Look at me, do you still want me–even if I am like this?”  Michael Haneke, the Austrian director of “Amour,” a French film, suggests that when life poses such a question, we answer “Yes, I still want you.”  He also suggests that Love is capable of confronting us: “Look at me, will you give up everything for me?” and that we might answer “Yes, because there’s nothing without you.” His movie has a pace to match the deliberate  movements of the elderly subjects he follows; this is not an action film. Yet it is the most honest film you will see–perhaps for the rest of your life. It’s a film about an elderly couple who were connoisseurs and teachers of 

I have chosen to be particularly paradoxical or perhaps simply obtuse today. I am going to write a review about a film I refuse to see. A friend, knowing my love for movies, asked if I had seen _____________, the latest self-help film, this one along the lines of What the Bleep Do We Know and The Secret. I had seen both of those films and more or less decided I was done with the genre. Though films that pass for New Age infomercials often contain some useful suggestions with regard to how one might live life more happily, I don’t need to read the books or watch a movie to get the same information. Besides, there’s a part of me that suspects a terrible

We have all encountered persons whose demeanor could be said to be neatly reflected in one of the four seasons. Some souls are so chilling in their outlook and so despairing in the barrenness of their emotion that we feel certain they belong to Winter.  Others are hopeful and flexible and nourishing; they think to the future, perhaps as Eliot suggests “mixing memory and desire.”  These, entrepreneurs among them, must surely belong to Spring. The children of Summer are the lightest, of course.  They practically float through life upon clouds. They seem to get their energy from the Sun. Smiles don’t wrinkle their faces, though frowns do. They experience rain as a chance to shower, and look up into it while others turn their heads