Drag Me To Hell, Sam Raimi, 2009

Like much of Dario Argento's work, as well as his own more cheeky Evil Dead films, Raimi uses a simple ghoulish conceit as the jumping off point for a relentless string of lavish and efficient "Boo!" gags.

Little Caesar, Mervyn Leroy, 1931

Leroy's tale of the rise and inevitable fall of a cocksure mobster (a bravura Edward G. Robinson) presages an uncountable number of similar yarns, to include much of Martin Scorsese's gangland oeuvre, as Henry Hill, Ace Rothstein, and Billy Costigan all draw, to some degree, from Robinson's Rico.

Last Chance Harvey, Joel Hopkins, 2008

Hopkins' film is a kind of Before Sunrise for the Boomer set. Unfortunately, the hard-luck, feel-good melodrama lacks the wit, lyricism, and romance of that far superior film.

Wendy and Lucy, Kelly Reichardt, 2008

Reichardt's is a gently affecting and understated film that, despite its well worn, genuine rhythms and natural tones is not small but rather slight.

Kill Your Idols, Scott Crary, 2004

Crary's workmanlike documentary arranges an impressive array of archival footage and talking head interviews to evoke the climate of No Wave NYC, circa 1982. The film is somewhat less successful, though, in tracing the links between, or even contrasting, the downtown of Glenn Branca, Sonic Youth, Lydia Lunch, and Swans to the tangentially related post-Strokes scene of the early aughts.

The Girlfriend Experience, Steven Soderbergh, 2009

While its 78 minutes unquestionably feel more like a half-realized exercise than a genuine artistic statement, Soderbergh's week-in-the-life sketch of one high end call girl displays an assuredness markedly absent from the director's recent oeuvre. Lightly reminiscent of Gus Van Sant's triumphant Elephant in structure and tone, an elliptically constructed series of interludes allows Soderberg's film to develop with Polaroid pace.