Frozen River: In Courtney Hunt's close-to-the-bone look at a woman who smuggles illegal aliens across the Canadian-U.S. border in order to put food on her table, Melissa Leo gives an utterly vanity-free performance that invites all sorts of responses. The movie works as a piece of Kmart realism, but it's also a thriller, which Hunt handles with the same low-key finesse.
Nights in Rodanthe: Richard Gere and Diane Lane are a pair of lonely hearts who complete each other in this movie version of Nicholas Sparks' romance novel, which sends out the rather startling message that one should never put all one's eggs in one's family or one's career basket. Lane has an award-worthy crying jag, and Gere is solid enough, but only those who cry easily will be moved by the button-pushing script and the canned emotion.