actions, and brings out the best and worst of everyone along the way. Cuarons gift for bravura filmmaking leads to some justly hailed setpieces, but its the unsettling plausibility of his world that makes the film work, as well as its insistencesometimes hard to pick up under all the bullets and bloodshedthat the worst of times dont have to bring out the worst of people. And that if were going to last as a species, they simply cant.9. The New World (2005)Terrence Malick has long been captivated by how man strives to tame, shape, and live in the natural world, which makes The New World practically the filmmakers thesis statement. Here, Malick offers a deep submersion into the unspoiled America, set at a time when the settlers of Jamestown and the lands native inhabitants advanced incompatible conceptions of civilization. The New World moves through three distinct phases, beginning with John Smith's infatuation with the lifestyle of the Powhatan Confederacy, then moving to the colonists' growing conflict with the natives, and ending with Pocahontas marrying John Rolfe and sailing to the ordered gardens of England. Throughout, Malick treats the humans and their environment with equal interest, showing them all as part of an unstable order. And throughout, Malick integrates every visual and audio element of the film into a meditation on one difficult question: Shall we not take what we are given?8. Capturing The Friedmans (2003)Moviefone co-founder Andrew Jarecki set out to make a documentary about popular New York childrens party entertainers like sought-after clown David Friedman, but he stumbled upon a bigger, darker, and richer story that formed the basis of his mesmerizing 2003 documentary Capturing The Friedmans. Friedmans brother Jesse and father Arnold had both been convicted of child molestation. But is Jesse guilty, or merely a victim of the hysteria over child-molestation rings that swept the country in the 80s and filled anxious parents heads with gothic images of Satanic sex cults and trenchcoat-wearing predators lurking around every corner? Though he creates a sympathetic portrait of an upper-middle-class Jewish family in a state of crisis, and the collateral damage that invariably accompanies child-molestation accusations, Jarecki leaves the question of Jesses guilt or innocence tantalizingly open. The use of home movies shot by the Friedmans as Arnold and then Jess awaited trial gives the film an almost unbearable intimacy. What began as a film about an unusually successful professional jester morphs into an American tragedy.7. Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003)Detractors have long accused Quentin Tarantino of being all style, no substance, a master craftsman with a pop-culture encyclopedia instead of a soul. 2003s Kill Bill Vol. 1, Tarantinos first film since 1997s refreshingly mature Jackie Brown, would seem to validate that conception, but when you have style this audacious, inventive, and just plain fun, substance seems downright irrelevant. Tarantinos giddy, overstuffed tribute to the movies that rattled his soul as a kid casts Uma Thurman as a professional assassin who goes bucking for revenge after her creepily paternal boss has her shot and left for dead on her wedding day. Much