Now that the Oscars are history, theaters are being flooded with new movies hoping for glory next year. One of the best is Black Snake Moan, a clumsy title for a riveting experience. The setting of rural Tennessee evokes Baby Doll, one of the most controversial films of the fifties. Samuel L. Jackson gives the finest performance of his prolific career. His Lazarus is an old blues guitarist and singer whose wife has just left him. Christina Ricci is the town slut, whose short-tempered boyfriend, played by Justin Timberlake, has just shipped out with the Army. When Lazurus finds her beaten and raped on a dirt road near his farm, he takes her in, then chains her to a radiator to ensure she won't return to sin. She's also his chance to, like his namesake, rise again. Black Snake Moan has a wonderful stage quality, with fine performances. It could be the first film this year to receive serious Oscar consideration, its early release notwithstanding.

The Hawk Is Dying is an offbeat movie starring Paul Giamatti, one of our finest character leads, here cast as an upholsterer living a humdrum existence. Co-starring in this stark, deliberately paced movie is Michelle Williams of Brokeback Mountain. Here she plays Giamatti's sometime girlfriend, a bong-smoking psychology student. Soon his interest in rescuing hawks he finds in the woods becomes an eerie obsession. Talking mostly in a semi-whisper, he's continually downbeat, never revealing very much. What a treat to see the return of Ann Wedgeworth, in her first film since 1999, as Giamatti's mother, troubled by his growing obsession. There's also a character called Preacher Roe, the same name as the old Brooklyn Dodger pitcher. Despite Giamatti's intensity and powerful performance, the film never grabbed me and seemed like a lot of trouble over nothing. Pull us into a world of weirdness if you will, but make it worth the trip.

Factory Girl has a fine performance by Sienna Miller portraying underground starlet Edie Sedgwick. She dropped out of college to come to New York to find fame. She didn't need fortune; she was a blue blood, who fell in with Andy Warhol and his fast-moving crowd at the Factory, Warhol's studio, a magnet for all sorts of odd characters back in the mid-sixties. Ms. Miller gives a poignant portrayal, and Guy Pearce, the English-born, Australian-reared actor, is astonishing as Warhol, capturing the artist's quiet, eerie demeanor. James Naughton is compelling in one scene as the doomed Sedgwick's imperious father.

Zodiac is a compelling thriller about a city paralyzed with fear. It's based on the real-life serial killer who decades ago committed a string of random murders and then sent chilling letters and codes to the newspapers and bewildered police after each crime. David Fincher, responsible for the grisly Seven and the atrocious Fight Club, has effectively recreated a distant time and place, and an atmosphere of terror. Jake Gyllenhaal, quickly joining his sister Maggie as one of our finest young actors, portrays a cartoonist and code-breaking buff at the San Francisco Chronicle. He teams with a hard-drinking city desk reporter played by Robert Downey, Jr. Together they weave through the labyrinth of clues, suspects, and cryptic letters that they hope will lead to the killer. Mark Ruffalo and Anthony Edwards are the detectives on the case. Scottish actor Brian Cox, who played the first Hannibal Lecter in 1986's Manhunter, cameos as colorful San Francisco attorney Melvin Belli, who spoke to the killer on a TV call-in show. Slowly, with painstaking steps, police and journalists begin to close in on several suspects, as the movie faithfully tells the true tale of a city gripped by fear.

After the Wedding is an absorbing Danish drama about a man at a crossroads. Although you probably haven't seen his other films, Denmark's Mads Mikkelsen is familiar to anyone who saw Casino Royale, in which this high-cheeked actor took on the role of Le Chiffre, the principal villain created for the original by Orson Welles, no less; a tough act to follow. Here he portrays a stoic man running a poor orphanage in India who returns home for a brief visit, seeking a promised underwriting grant from a Copenhagen tycoon. Rolf Lassgard plays the philanthropist who invites the visitor to attend his daughter's wedding. There, a life-changing event occurs, and Mikkelsen's character learns a shocking secret that sets in motion a series of dramatic events and revelations. Gradually the tension grows and the relationships reach dramatic climaxes with intense encounters, all of which are handled superbly by the cast of actors who, save Mr. Mikkelsen, are unknown outside Denmark. The Oscar-nominated After the Wedding should get a national release soon, and it's worth seeking out.

Two Weeks is an intelligent, tender little movie starring two-time Oscar winner Sally Field, who portrays a mother of four intelligent young adult children. She's dying of cervical cancer, and this movie carefully depicts how the children deal with her final days, come to terms with their relationship with her, and help their mother end her days. British actor Ben Chaplin, affecting an American accent quite well, is the eldest. His other siblings, Julianne Nicholson, Tom Cavanagh, and Glenn Howerton, display a close bond, while interacting the way real siblings would. This is a sad but compelling drama that's short on budget but long on heart.

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