Few things can screw up the delicate balance of cohabitation like a visit from family, especially when they practically crawl into bed with you. That's the premise of 2 Days in New York, a bawdy comic bash in which French writer-director- actress Julie Delpy shows how closeness can leave bruises. She plays Marion, a photographer we met in Delpy's 2 Days in Paris (2007), in which Marion's brief visit with her French family puts a rift between her and her Gotham guy, Jack (Adam Goldberg). Now Marion pulls a reverse. Her gallery opening sparks a visit from her Paris family, including dad Jeannot (Delpy's real-life dad, Albert), sister Rose (co-screenwriter Alexia Landeau) and Rose's loose-cannon boyfriend, Manu (Alex Nahon).

Jack is gone, replaced by Mingus (Chris Rock), a journalist with a radio show and a short fuse when it comes to occupying the cramped space he shares with Marion's son by Jack and his daughter from a previous relationship. Delpy is boundlessly appealing. And Rock is acerbic fun, notably in the imaginary debates he stages with Obama. But the frenzied cross-cultural gags take the piss out of the real subject: how blood ties can turn love into a battlefield.

“Let My Love Open the Door”

A peppy, hopeful love song, "Let My Love Open the Door" became a U. S. Top Ten hit for Pete Townshend in 1980, anchored by the kind of repeating synthesizer figures that he'd used in some of the Who's recordings in the previous decade. Although Townshend brushed the song off as "just a ditty" in Rolling Stone shortly after its release, in 1996 he revealed it was about love of the holiest sort. "It's supposed to be about the power of God's love," he remarked. "That when you're in difficulty, whether it's major or minor, God's love is always there for you."