Take Shelter is a harrowing examination of the multiple layers of anxiety plaguing Curtis, an average working class man in a small-town America. Curtis suffers from unnervingly realistic nightmares, in which apocalyptic storms threaten him, his own dog viciously mauls him, strangers and even his wife attack him. Michael Shannon (robbed of Oscar recognition) makes Curtis’s sweaty, disorienting panic disturbingly palpable for the audience. The film’s seamless editing ensures that we, like Curtis, question if what we’re seeing is real, waking hallucination, or dream.

Curtis’s nightmares reflect the personal and societal pressures that weigh on him everyday. First of all, he’s worried that his dreams signal the onset of paranoid schizophrenia, which afflicted his mother when she was his age. Curtis also faces the anxiety of a blue collar worker trying to provide for and protect his family. The film connects his personal anxiety to the broader context of our current economic recession, job insecurity, and financial instability: people keep telling Curtis that he better not get fired because new jobs are hard to find; the bank advises Curtis against unsustainable loans; his brother warns him about running up credit card debt (Curtis is trying to find extra cash to build a storm shelter to protect himself and his family from the tornadoes and toxic rain that appear repeatedly in his dreams).

Take Shelter also highlights the average family’s anxieties about health care and inadequate health insurance. Curtis deals with a lack of control in his own medical care – after the counselor he finally opens up to is abruptly replaced, he faces the prospect of repeating his history and trauma to an new counselor. He struggles with the vagaries of health insurance: higher than expected co-pays, difficulty getting approval for a surgery his daughter needs. When Curtis eventually loses his job because of his erratic behavior, he loses his health benefits and jeopardizes his daughter’s health care. The situation is an argument for a national health care system if I ever saw one.

Through Curtis’s apocalyptic dreams, Take Shelter even addresses global environmental fears; Curtis sees birds drop dead from the sky by the hundreds; the toxic rain resembles brown sludge he digs up at his construction work site all day, as he bulldozes the earth and tears down trees. The film suggests that Curtis has concerns, perhaps still subconscious, about the environmental legacy of his disruptive, invasive work.

So are his dreams prophesies of an impending apocalypse or his psyche’s attempts to process the myriad anxieties which plague him every day? The film doesn’t resolve the ambiguity for us. Even Curtis himself isn’t sure whether he’s going crazy or if he’s a prophet. It’s a testament to Michael Shannon’s skill that he enables his character to pursue both possibilities with equal conviction, and it’s a testament to the film’s strength that it allows us to draw our own conclusions from its compelling ambiguity.

Melancholia tells the story of Justine, a young woman crushed by crippling depression, as a microcosm of the earth being destroyed by a collision with the planet Melancholia. In the first half of the film, Justine unravels under the weight of her depression; in the second half of the film, as the apparently capable and in-control people around her fall apart in the face of impending cosmic disaster, she regains clarity and strength.

Kirsten Dunst’s performance is, quite simply, revelatory; I can’t believe she wasn’t even nominated for an Oscar. She conveys the strain of Justine’s attempts to force herself to be happy on her wedding day at the beginning of the film. We sense the massive effort it takes for Justine to put on a happy face, to try to convince herself that after all, she has every reason to be happy. Ms. Dunst skillfully telegraphs the tiny shifts in Justine’s mood as the joy seeps out of the day, as she withdraws and turns increasingly inward. It’s not a matter of will; she wants to able to take joy in her new husband’s love, in their beautiful wedding day, but the depression makes her physically incapable of it. The film crystallizes Justine’s helplessness under the weight of her depression in a later scene in the film: Justine’s sister Claire attempts to coax her out of near-catatonia by preparing one of Justine’s favorite meals for her. Claire hopes that this simple pleasure can make a small crack in the wall of Justine’s depression. After a few expectant bites, Justine breaks into tears and says despairingly, “It tastes like ashes.” Ms. Dunst makes clear that this isn’t for lack of desire – Justine wants the food to taste good, to bring her joy, to serve as a lifeline out of the blackness, but she is powerless against the strength of the depression.

Yet somehow, as the planet Melancholia continues on its collision course with earth, Justine slowly comes out of her catatonic state. She seems able to accept, without panic, that the world is going to end. In fact, she seems to know it as a certainty. That certainty allows her to prepare her sister Claire, who until now was the capable, strong one, for the end. The film contrasts Justine’s trajectory specifically with that of her brother-in-law, John. Throughout the film, John is matter-of-fact to the point of being almost ruthless, with a pragmatic arrogance in his own abilities and rationality. When Claire buys poison to ensure a painless end for her family in the worst case scenario, John chastises her for her weakness. However, when it becomes clear that the Melancholia is indeed going to hit, John crumbles and takes all the pills himself, abandoning his family and robbing them of the option of a quick death.  Justine seems to come into her own as disaster nears. I hesitate to facilely attribute a “purpose” to depression, as though it’s some sort of gift in disguise, but, in the film at least, Justine’s depression, her experience of being crushed by hopelessness and a sense of the futility of it all, actually prepares her for the same experience on a cosmic scale.

Early in the film, as her depression closes in on her, Justine wanders around the garden distracted and disconnected from her surroundings. One night during her slow recovery, she enters the garden again, this time to lie down naked on the earth and bask in the moonlight. Justine radiates tranquility, somehow connected with and grounded in her environment. Justine revels in her body and in the moonlight in an echo of an earlier scene in which her mother performs the “suryanamaskar” yoga pose, welcoming the sun. The sun-moon juxtaposition both connects and contrasts Justine with her mother, identifying each of them with two different elemental energies. The film identifies Justine with the moon, which, with its 28-day cycle, evokes the female menstrual cycle. So the film associates Justine with a symbol of womanhood, of shared female experience. Claire is also part of this sororal community because she’s an observer in this scene, watching in silent awe as Justine basks in the moonlight like a sylvan goddess.

This image of female community contrasts with the circle of men in Justine’s life: her irresponsible, passive-aggressive father; manipulative, overbearing boss; arrogant, ultimately weak brother-in-law; and her adoring yet inadequate husband.  Justine frees herself from her boss and her husband, is abandoned by her father and John, and yet ultimately emerges the stronger for it. Melancholia privileges Justine and Claire’s sororal, empathetic relationship over the ruthlessly pragmatic or ineffectual masculine relationships.

Their feminine community is not about excluding men (their circle includes Claire’s son), but about a different way of caring, based not on patriarchal hierarchies but on nurturing collectives. This feminine empathy is also not about false comfort – Justine never pretends that Melancholia is not going to destroy the Earth, and she rather harshly dismisses Claire’s suggestions to romanticize the end with wine and music. Yet she loves Claire enough to support what is ultimately the most important thing for Claire – Claire’s son. Justine lovingly and calmly takes care of her nephew as the end approaches. They build a “magic cave” of tree branches together and, with Claire, await the end in its sheltering embrace. Justine makes it possible for the boy to feel calm and safe even as death approaches. Thanks to Justine, he faces death with the assurance of being loved and protected. This turns out to be the greatest gift she could give Claire, since Claire’s deepest sorrow is for her son. Justine is able to provide Claire with that gift because her depression, her sense that her life may as well end, prepares her for the actual end of the world.

The few quiet moments, when Denzel Washington subtly displays rogue CIA agent Tobin Frost’s intelligence and skill for reading people and situations, are interrupted by yet another car chase or loud shoot-out. It’s as though the filmmakers don’t have faith in the writing or in the actors to sustain interesting, revealing human interaction. This is disappointing given the caliber of actors the film brings together – Denzel, obviously, but also Sam Shepard, Vera Farmiga (always able to imbue her characters with intelligence and texture), Brendan Gleeson, and The Killing‘s Joel Kinnaman, effective in a small part. While the other actors aren’t given the opportunity to flesh out their characters, Denzel invests the amoral, confident, fiercely intelligent Tobin Frost with more nuance and depth than the script actually provides. I think it’s a top-tier performance in a sub-par film.

Luck by Chance, the debut film by writer-director Zoya Akhtar, is a behind-the-scenes look at the Hindi film industry, complete with divas of yesteryear, self-serving producers, reigning superstars, and struggling newcomers. The movie’s strength lies in its careful observations of these characters, which provide insights into their motivations and insecurities.

The film follows Vikram (Farhan Akhtar), a young man from Delhi hoping to break into the Mumbai film industry. It’s a virtually impossible task, since Bollywood runs on nepotism, a fact which Ms. Akhtar’s film affectionately skewers. Without making Vikram an outright “negative” character, the movie takes a clear-eyed look at his uncanny ability to say and do the right thing at the right time, his skillful use of flattery to advance his fledgling career, and his willingness to exploit and discard others along the way.  Opportunistic, or simply smartly ambitious? For the most part, the film lets us decide for ourselves.

The one person willing to point out Vikram’s unsettling tendencies is his girlfriend Sona, played with earthy authenticity by Konkona Sen Sharma. Sona is a struggling actress paying her dues in bit roles and B-movies in the hope of eventually making it big. What is remarkable to me is the film’s refreshingly non-judgmental depiction of Sona’s sexual relationships with her agent and with Vikram. Unusually for a Hindi film, here is a woman who has sex and isn’t “punished” by humiliation, childbirth, and/or death.

The scene that launches Luck by Chance onto the list of my all-time favorite films is one in which Vikram finally sees the error of his ways and apologizes to Sona for dumping her for his more famous co-star. He says all the right things (as usual) about how Sona is the only one with whom he can be himself, how she is his conscience and his support. This is usually the point in Hindi films where the heroine forgives and takes back the hero, leaving me annoyed that yet another self-absorbed man has managed to get the woman; somehow even his reformation is self-centered. So imagine my amazement when Sona actually verbalizes that frustration. She points out to Vikram that everything about his apology is still about him – how he needs her, how she serves a purpose in his life; he ignores Sona’s personhood and doesn’t really think about what may be best for her. So she decides for herself, choosing a life and career independent of him. Sona remains compassionate while calling Vikram out for his selfishness, telling him the truth not with acrimony, but with mature self-confidence and self-awareness.

The film itself is similarly compassionate and self-aware: it gently satirizes icons of the Hindi movie industry while affording them dignity and respect; it mocks Bollywood’s obsession with spectacle while creating its own stunning visual and musical spectacles. Ms. Akhtar herself simultaneously highlights the industry’s nepotism while drawing on her own connections (she is the daughter of writers Javed Akhtar and Honey Irani, and sister of director/actor Farhan Akhtar)  to enrich her accomplished debut feature.