Childlike faith can wrestle with other views and engage them. And the God who entered into debate with Job and allowed challenges from Moses certainly can accommodate questions about divine existence. It’s a pity that others cannot.

The Golden Compass opens Friday, Dec. 7, in the United States. Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, published in 1995, was selected by judges of the Carnegie Medal as one of the 10 most important children’s novels of the past 70 years.

As Dan increasingly interferes with his daughter’s romance, she later accuses him of being “a Murderer of Love.” For those of us who have been around long enough to ignore some of our own best advice, Dan in Real Life is an excellent romantic comedy.

Nikolai’s hidden secrets seem reminiscent of the great Russian novelist’s words—“Even if only one good memory is left in our hearts,” Dostoyevsky wrote, “it may also be the instrument of our salvation one day.” In this tale, salvation is purchased with blood.

Few people ever find their soul mate. For most, it never happens. For some, it occurs only once. That’s the premise behind a new musical, which is both one of the year’s best films and what director John Carney calls “a musical for a You Tube generation.”

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