You Can Count on Me

This won best screenplay prize at Sundance, and justly so. The tone is a little uncertain at first, as writer/director Lonergan introduces his four characters: Linney's single mom, a Christian who still works in a bank in the town she grew up in; her young son (Culkin); her new boss, the smug and officious Broderick; and her tearaway brother, Ruffalo, who has never settled at anything with anyone. It's not long, though, before we discover that these people have much more in common than they imagine. Lonergan has the rare gift of allowing comic tribulation to deepen his characters, not degrade them (he also has a cameo as the local priest). Linney especially responds with a warm and sympathetic performance.