Film

Virginia Woolf thought the movies should tell their own stories. Nearly a century of literary adaptations have proven her both right and wrong. This year was no exception.

It's not the first time critics have announced the death of cinema, or harkened nostalgically to past golden ages. But judging the digital revolution in moviemaking is about more than counting critical hits and misses, or lamenting a decline in dramatic realism.

Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow's new film on the hunt for Osama bin Laden, is getting heat for its depiction of torture and how instrumental it proved in bin Laden's eventual killing. But critics are missing the larger point—the best reason for the use of torture in Zero Dark Thirty is that it complicates our picture of the "good guys."

Yung Chang's newest documentary, The Fruit Hunters—based on a book by Adam Leith Gollner—explores the crazy, globetrotting subculture of exotic fruit fanatics. Fanatics like Yung Chang, and Adam Leith Gollner.