Chris helps manage his father’s (Dermot Mulrooney) Georgia hog farm, pulling way more weight than little brother Tim (Devon Alan), who seems naturally weak and prone to throw up whatever he eats. Chris’s adversarial relationship with his father is both paralleled and explained upon the arrival of uncle Deel (Josh Lucas), a recent parolee with designs on the family’s set of very valuable but allegedly cursed gold coins.

What follows might surprise folks looking for fare similar to Girls and George Washington (first hint: the Philip Glass score). In the hands of a typical multiplex filmmaker, Undertow would seem downright formulaic. But with Green and cinematographer Tim Orr at the reigns, things manage to seem fresh, exciting and different.

The 10^th District Court, Moments of Trials – I needed a dose of reality television since my three-a-week fix of Big Brother 5 has been temporarily replaced by movie after movie after movie. Enter this French import, which pits Madame Justice Michèle Bernard-Requin against a string of drunk drivers and petty thefts. That’s all Trials is: Snipets of the trial and sentencing. But I’m still wondering what Nakomis is up to.

Enduring Love – Joe (Daniel Craig) and Claire (Samantha Morton) have just sat down in a beautiful Oxford field on a lovely day for a picnic and, possibly, the proposal of marriage. But before Joe can pop either the champagne cork or the question, a disabled hot air balloon slowly floats by with a kid in the basket and a man (Rhys Ifans) desperately trying to stop it from getting off the ground. A few bystanders, including Joe, attempt to pull the balloon back to terra firma, but a sudden gust of wind sets it and its would-be rescuers airborne. Most jump to safety before the balloon gets too high, but one man doesn’t and eventually falls to his death.

Some time later, Joe is still quite bothered by the balloon event (and who wouldn’t be this soon after seeing a flying Ifans in the palid Danny Deckchair?), and has the nightmares and blisters to prove it. He’d love to discuss it with Claire, but she doesn’t seem interested. Conversely, when Ifans’s Jed starts popping up like a Stalker of the Week, Joe would rather not so much talk about it. Jed’s "coincidental" encounters grow more frequent and more bizarre, but the further away Claire pulls herself from Joe, the closer Jed seems to get. Really nice stuff from Roger Michell, who has directed Ifans (Notting Hill) and Craig (The Mother) before. Like Undertow, Love is something that sounds formulaic on paper, but turns out to be anything but. A couple of scenes really had an affect on me, and I’m a jerk with a stone heart.  Then again, I didn't pick up on the double-entendre in the title (it lasts forever, and it's tough to bear).

Silver City – Why should Michael Moore get all of the attention? That’s what John Sayles asks with Silver City, a film that’s just as anti-Bush but has received (to date) a fraction of the hype.

City is about a campaign for the Colorado governorship, though we only ever see one candidate: Richard Pilager (Chris Cooper). And his background might seem a little familiar to you. He’s from a high-powered political family with close ties to Big Business. He’s known to sputter a malapropism or two (in the same sentence). He has a history of drinking and DWIs. And he was known as "Dim Dickie" to his frat buddies.

City’s protagonist is Danny O’Brien (Danny Huston, who has the misfortune of looking a little too much like Jeb Bush), a private dick hired to find out who planted the dead body that was hooked by Pilager during the taping of a campaign commercial which showed the candidate as a fisherman. His investigation leads him through a slew of small but enjoyable performances from the likes of Darryl Hannah, Tim Roth, Thora Birch, Maria Bello, and Kris Kristofferson. And, because the film revolves around Latino characters, there’s prerequisite scene of the Day of the Dead parade. Not Sayles’s strongest or most subtle work, but enjoyable if not only for Cooper’s uncanny Bush impression (it’s better if you close your eyes).

The Machinist – It’s really funny when the Midnight Madness film about the effects of sleep deprivation doesn’t start to unspool until closer to 1:00 AM. It just makes things seem that much more real.

A gaunt Christian Bale – actually, using the word "gaunt" to describe him here is insulting to poor Mary-Kate Olsen – plays Trevor Reznik, a machine operator who says he hasn’t slept in a year. His weight is dwindling (Bale is said to have lost upwards of 60 pounds for the role), but that doesn’t stop him from getting flirty with a hot single mom café waitress (Aitana Sànchez-Gijón), or earning the affection of the friendly neighborhood hooker (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Hey, I’ve got meat on my bones and can’t get a woman to look at me without throwing up a little bit in their mouths.

What follows is the usual sleep deprivation Midnight Madness stuff. Bale starts to see things and people who might not really be there. He plays Hangman with his refrigerator, which occasionally spews blood like an overflowing toilet. And, lord knows, a machine shop offers plenty of gore potential. Make sure you wear your safety goggles, kids.