Stop-Loss, Kimberly Peirce, 2008

Peirce's too-relentless coming home saga wastes the momentum of an arresting first act by unleashing a catalog of tear soaked, one note post-war horrors.

The Body Snatcher, Robert Wise, 1945

Wise's marshalling of this typically modest Val Lewton production is masterfully stark and menacing, with an aged Boris Karloff positively stalking the screen as the sadistic graverobber of the title.

The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan, 2008

Nolan's is resolutely a nightmarish vision, his Gotham a hopeless Hades gleefully managed by Heath Ledger's Joker-cum-Beelzebub. Ultimately, the film is successful for balancing this abject darkness with the requisite heroics and just-so-vague resolutions.

The Art of Failure: Chuck Connelly Not For Sale, Jeff Stimmel, 2008

Stimmel's rough-hewn documentary efficiently charts, in a fashion that is by turns lightly entertaining and uncomfortably intimate, the quick ascent and near total decline of the bombastic one time art star.