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Confidences are the commerce of love, and the first revelation is the scariest moment of all in a budding relationship. In Clubland, Tim (Khan Chittenden) is poised on the brink of trust with new girlfriend Jill (Emma Booth). She knows he lives with his mother, but that's all she knows about his family. Tim takes a deep breath, laced with the incense Jill has used in her attempt to seduce him. "My parents..." (Tim's a virgin, who needs to trust Jill before he can take the plunge.) "They're entertainers."

Yeah, that's Sylvia. She told a bunch of lies about my sister Paula and now she's being punished. If you want, you can put this cigarette out on her arm. You won't get in trouble because Mom says it's okay.

When director Donal MacIntyre tells notorious Manchester crime boss Dominic Noonan that he seems to have a "touch of the lavender," the last response expected is "yes." But Noonan's homosexuality is just one of the many contradictions MacIntyre discovers in Noonan in A Very British Gangster, a documentary that's long on character and short on technique.

Jeffrey Blitz knows how to let kids be kids. In Rocket Science, his feature film debut, as in his Academy Award-nominated documentary Spellbound, he presents adolescence as it really is. His characters are capable of poise and insight, but Blitz never forgets how immature teenagers usually are, frustrating and annoying in their awkwardness and intensity.

The devoted head of her school's chastity club, virginal Dawn (Jess Weixler) doodles wedding dresses in her school notebook and gives public speeches on the virtues of virtue. She keeps a smile on her face despite her mom's serious illness and her stepbrother's perverse interest in her budding womanhood. Her innocence makes her the target of a predator purporting to be revirginized, but when he forces himself on her in an idyllic cove, Dawn's not the only one who loses something.

Jackie is watching.

Behind a bank of televisions, she's privy to the open secrets of Glasgow, the first line of defense against pickpockets and miscreants, controlling the closed-circuit police cameras installed for the safety of the citizenry. Jackie's sharp eyes and zooming lenses protect and serve every day. But Jackie's not objective--her eye is human, after all--and when she catches sight of a familiar face, her spying gaze turns into a destructive obsession.

Craig Brewer's debut feature Hustle & Flow showed off his technical skills, but his choice of subject matter--a pimp who earns the audience's sympathy--left questions as to whether or not he gave any thought to the human price paid by the women exploited by men like Djay (Terrence Howard). In Black Snake Moan, Brewer puts those fears to bed.

Nine years was far too long to wait for Tamara Jenkins's sophomore feature, The Savages, her astonishingly mature follow-up to the quirky coming-of-age comedy The Slums of Beverly Hills.

Yeah, that's Sylvia. She told a bunch of lies about my sister Paula and now she's being punished. If you want, you can put this cigarette out on her arm. You won't get in trouble because Mom says it's okay.

Pairing very Britishly dry humor with a light-hearted exuberance, Son of Rambow takes what could've been a gimmicky premise and turns it into a highly original comic adventure tale.