VITAS Support Group

You’re invited…VITAS Caregivers’ Mid-Month Movie

(January to December, 2008)

This offering is free and open to the public; it is intended to be a therapeutic social opportunity for persons who have experienced a significant loss and who are now alone or feel alone and isolated. Following the movie there will be open group discussion relating to the film’s portrayal of grief and loss as well as personal sharing of grief experiences for those desiring to do so. Showtimes are at 11:30a.m. & 3:30p.m.

Registration one week before is strongly encouraged. Please call Brian T. Butler, VITAS Bereavement Services Manager, 414.454.3118

July 17

Director: Herbert Ross

Starring: Sally Field, Dolly Parton, Shirley MacLaine, Julia Roberts

Dolly Parton plays the goodnatured beauty-shop owner, while Shirley MacLaine is the cantankerous town eccentric, decked out in grungy overalls and speaking fluent Trash. Well-to-do Sally Field bravely endures several assaults to her sensibilities, not the least of which is the illness (and subsequent death) of daughter Julia Roberts.

August 21

Director: Tom Shadyac

SStarring: Robin Williams, Daniel London

The fact-based story of an unconventional physician who attempted to heal patients with laughter, based on his own book and mixing equal doses of scatological humor and pathos. Robin Williams stars as Hunter Adams, a troubled young man who commits himself to a mental institution in the late 1960s. His experiences there convince Adams to become a doctor, and he enrolls in medical school, where he is appalled at the cold, clinical professionalism that alienates patients from their caregivers.

September 18

Director: Steve Stockman

Starring: Sally Field, Ben Chaplin, Tom Cavanagh

Director Steve Stockman takes the helm for this semi-autobiographical comedy drama about an estranged family that comes together for one last goodbye and finds their assumedly brief farewell inexorably dragged out for two excruciating weeks. Aging matriarch Anita (Sally Field) is dying, but before she goes, she has requested that her four grown children travel back home to visit their ailing mother on her deathbed.

October 16

Director: Mike Nichols

Starring: Emma Thompson, Christopher Lloyd

MMike Nichols directs Emma Thompson in this made-for-cable adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama by Margaret Edson. Thompson plays Vivian Bearing, a college professor who teaches a course on English poetry. Vivian learns that she has advanced ovarian cancer and only a short time to live, which gives her a sudden and dramatic insight into the importance of kindness and compassion.

Directors: Steven Ascher, Jeanne Jordan

Starring: Stephen Heywood, Jamie Heywood

The unusual response of two brothers to devastating news sets the stage for this documentary. Stephen Heywood was 29 years old and had a solid job building houses, as well as a steady girlfriend, when he received word from his doctor that he'd been diagnosed with Amyotropic Lateral Sclerosis, a fast-spreading motor neuron condition also known as "Lou Gehrig's Disease." ALS robs its victims of the ability to control their muscles, and no cure has been discovered at this time.

December 18

Director: Jeannot Szwarc

Starring: Christopher Reeve, Jane Seymour, Christopher Plummer

An elderly woman approaches a young playwright, Richard Collier (Reeve), on his first triumph in 1972 -- all she says to him is "Come back to me" and leaves him with a watch that contains a picture of a ravishing young woman. Eight years later, he visits the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island and comes upon a photograph of the same woman, whom he discovers was an actress who made an appearance at the hotel in 1912.