It's here, in a keenly captured Forest Hills, Queens, land of low-lit bars and manicured lawns, that Roadie soars as a gently comic drama about living the dream - or trying to.

Cedar's idiosyncratically brilliant script also has a moral question at its heart: Is lying to spare someone's feelings ever justified? Surely the Talmud has a thing or two to say about that.

There's still tremendous vitality here, and Wheatley's avoidance of yet another Guy Ritchie gabfest is a pleasure in itself.

Return is almost too underdramatized to seem like a piece of today's zoomy entertainment, but its anxieties-the bare cupboards, the vague sense of purposelessness-are at the heart of the American experience for many. It's what indie filmmaking ought to be.

Brace yourself and go see it.

Nothing about the movie is showy, except for Shelton's palpable love of good people making a mess of things. Barring some late-inning coyness, it's some of the truest, dinged-heart couples' circling of the year.

You will see the man toiling and revising - killing off half-good ideas, struggling for clarity - and it's a routine well worth demystifying.

The new drama, best viewed as a church movie, is a return to the kind of corner-chat indie cinema Lee revolutionized, with an emphasis on a towering performance by The Wire's Clarke Peters as a local bishop inflamed with the Word.

The style of the film, lush and traditional, is nothing special, but the takeaway, a daily struggle for dignity, is impossibly moving.

It's a comedy about the unchecked id; indeed, there's sleepwalking in it. But will those grunting strolls happen through a second-story window or on the highway? You're left cringing, and that puts Birbiglia in excellent company, alone though he might be in bed.

Rarely do movies-never mind foreign ones, of any nationality - explore an honest-to-God ethical quandary. Elena, in its concentrated austerity, often resembles a lost chapter of Krzysztof Kieslowski's Ten Commandments–themed Decalogue.

Kinji Fukasaku's slick, sick nightmare is best left to the quasi-banned realm where it exists as a perfect satire; when brought into reality, it's a touch awkward.

Organizing the mercurial emotions and tics is director Joachim Trier, making good on the promise of his 2006 feature debut, the lit-related drama Reprise. This one's even better-it's about the honesty that often takes root in survivors, a rarely explored subject-but Oslo, August 31st is not an easy film.

There has to be room for this kind of plea, especially a work that, obliquely, captures so many largely unreported details: the night raids rounding up children, the torn-up olive trees and kids' soccer games in the battle zone.

The real heat of The Sessions comes from its pitch-perfect sense of place, the free-spirited Berkeley of the 1980s.

Director David Cronenberg - who knows a thing or two about bodily expressions - understands, finally, what to do with the Twilight star, turning his zombified handsomeness into a stark canvas upon which we can project our own anxieties.

Amazingly, Gere keeps it all together, via a kind of seething anti-rage that speaks reams to the character's survival instincts.

Blessed with an improbable-but-true story that functions on many ironic levels, this clever documentary ultimately conveys more about the complex American character - shifting between intimacy and criminality - than a whole shelf of fiction films.

You can't believe what you're watching: Compliance, true to its title, digs into the rarely explored subject of psychological acquiescence (behavioral scientist Stanley Milgram should get a cowriting credit), with common-sense dignity being the first casualty.

The spirit of the movie is nonjudgmental, an observational intimacy that, in turn, becomes inspiring.

Director Morley has at least restored something of a soul to her subject.

Adjust to the deliberate rhythms of this hiking movie-set on the lush slopes of Georgia's Caucasus Mountains - and the psychological payoff stings like a blister.

It's not an easy sit; we're never let off the hook with golden-hued memories or belated bits of wisdom. Maybe this is love after all.

Stopping just short of the devastating exposé it might have been (but plenty creepy).

The attention to detail is fine-grained, especially on the slippery slope of plea bargaining. Missing are two pieces that might have turned this into an urban classic.

If the documentary lacks anything, it's a firmer grasp of Springfield's own transformation, from "kind of a dick" (per ex–MTV jock Mark Goodman) during his heyday to a giving, appreciative showman. Call it humility, shaded with weird, two-way neediness. Jesse's girl may have dodged a bullet.

The Bay, a real creepfest, joins the suggestive company of eco-terror entries like Hitchcock's "The Birds" and 1979's "Prophecy."

Generation P is worth struggling through, even if it boggles you. In many ways, it's a keyhole into the future of the entire world.