This powerful and moving debut from writer and director Boaz Yakin may have a 12-year-old protagonist, but you won't mistake it for Disney. Fresh, played with riveting intensity by Sean Nelson, runs heroin and crack after school, then goes home to the Brooklyn, N.Y., projects where he lives with his Aunt Frances (Cheryl Freeman) and 11 cousins. His junkie sister, Nichole (N'Bushe Wright), has moved in with her abusive boyfriend. Fresh has been warned against seeing his homeless dad, Sam (Samuel L. Jackson), but when he sneaks off to join Sam for a game of speed chess, he picks up a few moves Dad never intended.

The great cinematographer Adam Holender (Midnight Cowboy) brings a vivid authenticity to Fresh's environment. To get himself and his sister out, Fresh turns two rival drug bosses, Esteban (Giancarlo Esposito) and Corky (Ron Brice), against each other in a blood bath that brings down villains like pawns. The acting by Esposito and Jackson is exceptional, but it is on the remarkable face of Nelson that Yakin shows what gets lost when a child beats criminals at their own game.

“All Along the Watchtower”

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."