Casey Affleck, whose acting has won him an Oscar nomination for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, makes his directing debut with a riveting experiment. It's a speculative documentary about his brother-in-law Joaquin Phoenix, who quit movies in 2008 to become the bearded, pudgy rapper JP that David Letterman teased unmercifully on TV. I'm not sure I believed a word of this film. Actors who melt down on camera are usually, well, acting. But I couldn't take my eyes off I'm Still Here. Affleck's provocative, postmodern take on JP as half-joke, half-victim is the damnedest plunge into the dark heart of our "reality" culture since Sacha Baron Cohen invented Borat. My guess is it'll knock you sideways.

“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."