You may not buy into actors playing Nazis with high-toned Brit accents, but the power of this Holocaust tale sneaks up and floors you. Writer-director Mark Herman has adapted John Boyne's novel with admirable restraint.

Eight-year-old Bruno (Asa Butterfield) isn't pleased when he and older sister Gretel (Amber Beattie) are forced to leave their friends in Berlin and settle in a remote area where Bruno's commandant father (David Thewlis) has been stationed. The kids and their mother (Vera Farmiga) believe the fence they see outside their window encloses a farm, not a concentration camp. Bruno even ventures out of bounds and meets Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), the boy in striped pajamas behind the fence. They develop a dangerous, covert friendship with devastating results.

Delicate allegorical business is being transacted here — a realization of evil seen from a child's point of view. The premise doesn't excuse lapses in logic (the boys would have been spotted instantly), but the power of the story and the performances — young Butterfield amazes — is indisputable.

“Time to Pretend”

Listening to MGMT’s breakthrough song, one might interpret it as being about the excesses of rock stardom, but it’s actually about the duo’s pet praying mantis. Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden told Rolling Stone they got the idea from the insect's jerky movements. The mantis died, but the two bandmates kept the egg sack and allowed the hundreds of eggs to hatch. “We tried to name them all, but they died after a day,” said Goldwasser, with VanWyngarden chiming in, “But the praying mantis dance inspired us.”