I’ve started spending a lot of time with this wonderful German woman. We aren’t dating, as it’s nothing that serious. But we do spend a lot of time together.

Much of it has been spent in the theater. I’ve always enjoyed movies, but never made an effort to go out and watch them. She does. In the last 4 weeks, I’ve watched more movies than I had in the previous year. That’s a good thing.

There are movies like Skyfall, which is a Bond movie in the classic sense of it. It’s fun. Sure, there’s no real depth to it, but who cares, it’s a Bond movie. But most of the movies we’ve watched have been deeper. Movies like Argo, a somewhat accurate rendition of the C.I.A./Canadian capers that smuggled 6 Americans out of Iran. Movies like Cloud Atlas and Life of Pi, adventures in meta-stories that force the viewer to think about the deeper questions of life. I love that kind of philosophical contemplation. And finally, movies like Flight, which isn’t about flight at all, but instead a character study in functional alcholism.

They’ve all been superb. More than once, I’ve sat at the end of the story thinking “wow.” In some cases, the film isn’t easy to watch, but I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend them just the same. I look forward to the next round of cinema, and I find myself wishing that Pullman’s 8-plex was just a little bit more, just a couple screens that could show more movies that I want to see. As I said while traveling home tonight, “I really like movies that don’t have numbers in them.” I’ve been seeing quite a lot of those and hope to see a lot more in the weeks and months to come.