* Longtime readers know that I'm not much of a "law and order" guy, but one thing that does tend to flip the "Oh my god, hang them all" switch in my reptilian brain is listening to a pedophile brag about what he's done. Which is what makes Deliver Us From Evil so completely disturbing. The central figure in this documentary about the Catholic Church's long cover-up of pedophile priests is now walking free in Ireland, allowing him to speak frankly to the camera about his past. He occasionally gestures towards guilt and periodically makes brief references to the fact that he's destroyed many lives—but by and large he seems totally self-involved and unrepentant. This is an incredibly shocking and heart-wrenching film, probably doubly so if you grew up Catholic.

* Who the #$&% is Jackson Pollock? is also quite good, I think—it's something of an art history mystery concerning the discovery of a possible Pollock by a dumpster-diving truck driver in a thrift store in Texas. As is usual in these sorts of things, the academic establishment comes off quite badly, completely ignoring all manner of scientific and forensic evidence in favor of their gut feelings about what a Pollock looks like.

* Inside Deep Throat is also pretty interesting, though it's only been a few days and I can hardly remember anything from the movie that I didn't know before I watched it. (Except that Deep Throat had a plot. I had no idea!) If nothing else it's worth seeing for yourself just how far we've backslid into puritanism over the last thirty years—not that Deep Throat is some lost feminist treasure, but simply that our cultural attitudes towards sex remain completely #$&%ed up.

* Notes on a Scandal and The Queen, two worthy movies from Oscar season, have just come out on DVD. Blood Diamond was good too, and just about our last best hope of ever getting people to stop buying diamonds. The prize, though, surely goes to Forest Whitaker as Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland, which is genuinely excellent.