Jon Strickland

The filmmaker shares with Martin Scorsese an obsession with that classic male triangle of hard man, soft heart and childlike loser, but where so many Scorsese wannabes jettison sociology in favor of mayhem, Babaian burrows into the hearts of these first- and second-generation immigrants.

Davis, who did some writing for a TV series and acted in a couple of B-thrillers, is notably solid inhabiting Riley's conflicted machismo, supported by Diane Tayler's fine turn as a bottom-rung manager.

The images -- including a giant robotic Colonel Sanders with an ax in its head that walks the streets of Tokyo -- reinforce every paranoid fantasy of a controlled future ever concocted.

But by film's end, no one is looking good. If Wranovics is somewhat too noncommittal in his presentation, he still shows a great eye for detail.

Straight off the streets of Jersey City, writer-director Michael Tolajian’s affable debut charms with its scruffy characters and nuanced multiculturalism.

If the plot comes off more like a reworking of Scorsese’s tales of Italian-American mobsters, Boursinhac nevertheless shows a sure hand with his story, lingering on the handsome, lost face of Dris as his world falls apart around him.

Writer-director Darren Lemke's likable thriller shows surprising smarts for a low-budget debut, cribbing from all the right sources.

Hickenlooper can't contain Bingenheimer's incredibly generous spirit -- so generous that, while obviously uncomfortable, he lets the director into his most private moments, including the scattering of his mother's ashes.

Diaz leaves us unsure about whether we should pity or revile Imelda, a woman alternately charmingly childlike, shockingly remote and, ultimately, as she stands over the waxed corpse of her husband, pathetic.

Midway through, the plot pulls itself out of its doldrums with a sudden, heart-twisting turn. Ruben still knows how to cut a sequence for maximum jolt, and, ultimately, he and DiPego manage to summon up some of the B-movie paranoia that fueled "The Stepfather," turning in a pleasantly nonsensical roller-coaster ride.

Grisbi is hard (new subtitles bring out the chill of the gangsters' argot) and gray: a meditation on what we are left with when life has let us down, played out in the haunted eyes of Jean Gabin.