NOTE: The following (including the comment thread) contains spoilers about scenes in the film Let the Right One In. Blood on her lips, eyes wide with lust, Eli stares at Oskar and commands him to run. Oskar is confused. To seal a child’s contract of friendship—a “blood bond”—he’s carved open his hand with a knife.…

NOTE: The following contains references that might be considered spoilers about the conclusion of the film Penelope. I can’t stop thinking about Christina Ricci’s nose. Let me explain. On a date last week, Anne and I watched a tricky little fairy tale called Penelope. The film made only a cameo appearance in theaters, then vanished…

Be sure you get tickets for two of this month’s new releases: Frost/Nixon and Doubt. Both films were adapted from celebrated stage plays by their original playwrights. Both are dramatic, intense, and powerfully acted. And you’ll find that each follows a crusader obsessed with exposing the ugly truth by wringing an admission of guilt from…

In a photograph from her recent wedding, my friend Tara stands on one side of the empty dance floor. On the other, Bryan, her groom, leans forward in his chair. Tara is about to reach out her hand in a gesture of invitation. No doubt about it—he’s ready to respond. Their gazes are locked in…

Last week, on what felt like the last day of summer, I walked into my soon-to-be-demolished backyard. It’s a beautiful place, and the realization of its imminent demise provoked an unexpected surge of emotion. My wife Anne and I pay very low rent on a wonderful 1920s house in Shoreline, Washington, and every morning we…

I tried to write about Shotgun Stories without mentioning you-know-who. It’s become such a cliché. A talented new artist captures a sense of the sacred and the profane in the American South, and before you can say “Christ-haunted” or “Southern Gothic,” there she is! It’s almost as if the standard-bearer of the genre created the…

Do you buy modern art? No, I’m not asking if you purchase contemporary artwork. I’m asking: Do you buy modernism as a legitimate form of artistic expression? Or do you think those who spend a fortune on Jackson Pollock canvases have been duped? Amir Bar-Lev’s documentary My Kid Could Paint That raises that question, and…