2014’s Best Films (May Already Have Come)
The following was originally published in Word and Film.
Let’s be honest: In the dog days of summer, most of us crave popcorn movies that won’t tax our wilted brains. Gross-out comedies and smash-’em-up action pictures are the order of the day, and really, there’s no shame in that. Some of them, like Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, are pretty great. (Not so much Tammy or Transformers: Age of Extinction.) Some of them, like Snowpiercer, are even pretty smart.
But for those craving complicated, grown-up cinematic fare – the sort we can mull over for an afternoon while the rest of the world melts away – 2014 has already produced its fair share of memorable films. And it’s worth catching up on them before the autumn’s rush of “Oscar-consideration” movies begins. Distributors tend to release their most artistically adventurous films (that is, the ones likely to alienate the conservative Academy) earlier in the year.
Here are the five best movies of 2014 so far. Continue Reading →
Dog Day Afternoon
I just spent an hour in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park hugging an enormous golden retriever—soft and gentle and boundlessly sweet—who’d mosied over to my blanket from his mom and dad’s. When I first noticed him he was wriggling in the grass, cycling his legs in the air, and I thought: that guy really knows how to enjoy a summer afternoon. They were a couple about ten years older than me, and something about the way he planted himself between them after he was done rolling around suggested they’d had him instead of kids. When the dog–honest to God, his name was Wrigley–approached me, I asked if it’d be ok to say hi and they said so long as I could “handle a snuggler.” I could, and the two of us sat together for a while, his torso leaning into mine until I just went ahead and wrapped my arms around his neck. Both of our noses twitched as we inhaled the 
good smells of 5 pm sunshine in the July grass, the barbecue the Korean family was cooking on the other side of the trees, and after a beat we began to match our breaths. Finally he nudged me with his head, and I took the hint and buried myself in his neck.
I love my cat beyond measure but there’s something so wonderful about a visit with the right dog. As the three of them were leaving, I said, “Oh, he’s such a nice person,” and the woman replied, a little conspicuously, “Well, he did used to work as a therapy dog.” Okay, lady.
A Birthday for the Birds
To get to downtown Boston from suburban Newton without a car was a real pain in the mid-70s–to get anywhere from Newton without a car was a pain, really–but my father Bernie told my mother Sari that a second car was wasteful and on this point, as on so many others, he would not budge. His disdain for waste was also the reason he initially fought having the second child she was now carrying. Overpopulation was a real problem, he’d told her, and he’d stuck to that policy until he read a bunch of articles arguing for the superior adjustment of children with siblings. Then, he set about impregnating my mother with a zeal that was more clinical than impassioned. Or so she suggested to her best girlfriend Miriam later while I listened, “all big eyes and big ears,” as my mother always said when she realized she’d said something taboo in front of the kid.
Now every morning he zipped off to his assistant professor job in his used Toyota (so fuel-efficient he’d crowed when she’d protested its drabness), and left her high and dry with the kid and her swelling stomach.
Even on her birthday, as it turned out. This morning she’d awoke to his daily note and, of course, no car. He’d left early for work and had “fixed his own breakfast to give her a break,” as he’d written in his spidery block letters. “Happy birthday, sweetie!!” Well. The two exclamation points mollified her until she scanned the day’s list. Every day he gave her a list—go to bank, get groceries, take Lisa to park—and every day she completed it with a plodding resignation. Today she saw he’d scheduled a biannual physical for the kid. Continue Reading →