In Stock at Asylum - Drama (M - Z)

This film about addiction, recovery, family and second chances doesn't give the viewer any easy answers or neat resolutions. It is incredibly compelling, but often hard to watch due to the raw emotions it conjures and refuses to let go.
Maggie Gyllenhaal is completely fearless in the role, playing it without a speck of vanity. Her intentions are noble, so you root for her, despite how she fails so miserably over and over again.
She apparently didn't impress Academy voters, since she forwent the usual routes to an Oscar nomination like gaining weight, wearing prosthetics to make her ugly or spouting off overly-melodramatic monologues in a period piece. Instead, she just gave the most honest, emotionally naked performances the screen has seen in years.

"...partly truth, partly fiction. A walking contradiction."

I can't honestly put into words why this movie is so powerful. It goes beyond words, into a primal sense of loneliness and isolation. The suffocating disconnect felt between modern man and his surroundings has never been more convincingly explored.
Ignore the idiot frat boys with posters of Travis and his guns. This film doesn't celebrate violence. It is about "God's lonely man," where the inevitable bloodbath is a sad, scary and ultimately pathetic last grasp at control of a wasted life.
A film masterpiece I never get tired of watching.

After the world went gaga for Quentin Tarantino, I'm not sure how this film stayed so under the radar. Not only does it boast one of the best supporting casts ever assembled, it's also one of the sharpest, most engaging crime flicks ever made.
Christian Slater has never been better, playing cinema's most badass comic book store employee. As the love of his life, Patricia Arquette exudes just the right mix of ditz and vulnerability to mask a clear-thinking, strong willed woman underneath.
Some of the film's plot elements might feel familiar, but they've never been done better elsewhere. And I excuse anything too over-the-top in a film where the protagonist's primary concern during a gunfight is whether he "looked cool." Over-the-top is sort of the point, isn't it?
And to anyone who might argue that this isn't really a romantic movie, I'll quote Alabama herself: "That's the way romance is... Usually, that's the way it goes, but every once in awhile, it goes the other way too."