12 Years a Slave [2013]

Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Solomon Northup, a free black man born in the North and sold into slavery in the South, and he is as painfully brilliant as the beatings he endures. Steve McQueen directs, and he is black, so there is no saccharine — just filmmaking.

d: Steve McQueen | imdb.com | trailer | Charlie Rose
What’d You Say to Pats? | Wesley Morris [Grantland]

Winter’s Bone (2010)

Jennifer Lawrence gives a breakthrough performance as Ree Dolly, a 17-year-old Ozark Mountain girl looking for her missing father. She is an everyday American hero, fighting for her life and against the antiquated social mores of her extended family.

d: Debra Granik | imdb.com | trailer

The Road (2009)

Director John Hillcoat paints the end of the world in brown and gray, a bleak terrain of cannibals and thieves, starvation and terror. But Viggo Mortensen and his son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) carry the fire, their relationship a moving tribute to the last of humanity.

d: John Hillcoat | imdb.com | trailer | You never killed a man ...
Bad guys. | He’s a god. | We did good. | They are going to kill us.

The Last House on the Left (2009)

In a remake of Wes Craven’s 1972 revenge tale, Tony Goldwyn and Monica Potter exact punishment against a family of degenerates for raping their daughter, becoming just as canny as the criminals with the use of a garbage disposal and microwave.

d: Dennis Iliadis | imdb.com | trailer | ready to do anything