Delicate business is being transacted in this tight and engrossing drama of sexual identity. Set in 19th-century Ireland, the film focuses on a woman who passes as a male butler in a Dublin hotel just to survive. Glenn Close plays Albert with transcendent restraint. Close has a history with the role. She won an Obie for Simone Benmussa's 1982 off-Broadway play based on a story by George Moore. Her range, energy, originality, humor and intelligence merit serious Oscar attention. And then there's Janet McTeer, who is pure pow as Hubert, a house painter also passing as a man. There's a difference. Hubert has made a life for himself with a wife, while Albert stays closeted. It's Hubert who gives Albert the courage to court a hotel maid (Mia Wasikowska). As directed with grit and grace by Rodrigo García, this quietly devastating film goes bone-deep.

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“The Everchanging Spectrum of a Lie”

The opener off the Welsh group’s The Big Roar album was an epic one, but the band was worried that track had polarized fans. “The first song is eight minutes long,” Rhydian Dafydd, the Joy Formidable bassist, said. “If you did that in the Seventies people would be, ‘Whatever.’ You do it now, people think, ‘Holy s---!’ Some people think it’s the f---ing greatest track on the entire album, and some people think it’s f---ing boring. It’s that element of needing to challenge people.” The band concluded through the song’s lyrics that love was the “everchanging spectrum of a lie.”