Stephen Simon | pg.2

Filmmaker Chris Brickler’s passionate, mesmerizing, humorous and touching “Song of Songs” is a paean to love in all its wonderful, messy, complex glory. What distinguishes it from so many other love stories is its empathy for those who fall in love and then find themselves “bewitched, bothered and bewildered” by the everyday challenges of being in love.

“Reign Over Me,” now available on DVD, is my favorite film so far in 2007. Powerful, haunting and profoundly moving, the film is a testament to the power of friendship and the extraordinary healing potential of the human heart.

I decided very early on that I wanted to make the kinds of films I had grown up loving: spiritual films like “It’s a Wonderful Life,” “Lost Horizons,” and “The Portrait of Jennie.” The first film I made, “Somewhere in Time,” was written by Richard Matheson—who also gave me the galleys to his book “What Dreams May Come.”