LETTING GO AND HOLDING ON: As we walked back from seeing Kid with a Bike, my friend and I passed a car with a bumper sticker reading, "I believe in unicorns, good men, and other mythical creatures." I joked that it was especially appropriate for the movie we'd just seen, a Belgian drama about a boy trying to find someone to parent him. But the movie isn't at all cynical or harsh. The kid is really lost and angry, and it's hard to watch him being rejected by his father, or remoraing himself to a hairdresser just because she was minimally kind to him once. The story is hard, and even the hope in its ending comes through the boy's defeat and resignation as well as through his foster mother's tender acceptance. Very, very recommended if it's playing near you.

A LOT OF THINGS THAT AREN'T BARBARISM ALSO BEGIN AT HOME, MORRISSEY!: Ta-Nehisi Coates is hosting a really interesting discussion of spanking, discipline, class, fatherhood, love, race, assimilation... and stuff like that. With bonus gayosity!

SEAN COLLINS'S REVIEW OF THREE SHADOWS. (My review.)