First Snow: In this deft psychological thriller, Guy Pearce plays a me-first traveling salesman who's told by a fortune teller that he won't live past the first snow of winter, then tries to adjust both his life and his fate. Director Mark Fergus keeps us guessing whether the prediction is a scam or not, and he gets a lot of mileage out of the wide-open spaces of the New Mexico desert.
The Namesake: This multi-generational saga traces a family's migration from exotic India to a suburb in New York, and director Mira Nair handles it all like a master. Kal Penn plays a second-generation Bengali who only gradually comes to realize that his parents have much to teach him about where he came from.