Elephant (G. Van Sant)

ELEPHANT is a documentary-like examination of an ordinary day in a mostly white, middle-class high school in which the calm is splashed with a corrosive burst of violence: two boys arm themselves and begin shooting. The picture mirrors the horrific events at Columbine High School, and its influences stretch from Frederick Wiseman to Ambrose Bierce’s “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”. The title comes from the British director Alan Clarke’s 1989 rough-and-ready short film of the same name, a tough and dense look at the violence in Northern Ireland, which also didn’t paste answers onto the problem. (Elvis Mitchell)