An Oscar nominee this year for Best Foreign-Language Film, In Darkness tells the true story of Leopold Socha (the excellent Robert Wieckiewicz), a Polish sewer worker and thief in the Nazi-held city of Lvov who takes money to hide a group of Jews underground. Based on Robert Marshall's nonfiction book In the Sewers of Lvov, the film offers a warts-and-all portrait of victims and saviors, forgoing the heroism inherent in Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List. Polish director Agnieszka Holland, who triumphed with 1991's similarly-themed Europa Europa, makes us feel the rat-crawling filth and human agony of living in those sewers for over a year. In Darkness is an agonizing experience, especially when Jews are publicly humiliated in the streets and a driving rainstorm nearly drowns those cowering in the depths. Holland means to shake you. In Darkness has the power to haunt your dreams.

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“Alison”

On Elvis Costello’s country-tinged ballad, the lyric does not get too sentimental in recalling an ex who had since been with one of the singer's "little friends" and is now married. Some believe the song is about murder, due to lines like “Sometimes I wish that I could stop you from talking,” "Somebody better put out the big light" and, of course, "My aim is true,” which became the title of Costello's debut album. In 2002, Costello told Rolling Stone, “It isn’t [about murder]. It’s about disappointing somebody. It’s a thin line between love and hate, as the Persuaders sang.”