Explicit Ills

A Crash-style ensemble film without the Paul Haggis–style histrionics, actor Mark Webber’s directorial debut is a tapestry of small-scale dramas set in a diverse Philadelphia neighborhood. The drug-addled romance between a pot dealer (Pucci) and an artist (Shaw) is woven in with some idle exchanges between teenagers lounging in empty lots. A clean-living couple finds funding for their natural-health store, but a single mom (Dawson) can’t afford asthma meds for her kid. The film’s cast and the fluid camerawork are as hip as can be, and in this age of Obama, so is the sentiment—unflinching but optimistic.