Parents' Guide to Good Time

Directing brothers Ben Safdie and Joshua Safdie have created an ode to intense 1970s New York crime cinema, but with their own vivid, confined close-up take, bathed in artificial, carnival colors. More than just an homage, Good Time feels bracingly fresh, rooted in honest-to-goodness desperation. (The brothers share a wounded past that's unspoken but powerful.) Good Time doesn't necessarily transcend its genre limitations, but within those limitations, it's superb. The movie's unexpected backgrounds, such as a shut-down amusement park at night, or a stranger's apartment, spring up as a result of the characters, rather than as empty decoration. And the film's great, ominous, wailing score adds more unspoken tension.

Better still, the characters -- including a whacked-out, drunken, would-be drug dealer, a young girl staying up too late, and a frazzled security guard (Oscar-nominee Barkhad Abdi) -- feel like they actually live in the corners of the story; they seem to have been there long before it began. Jennifer Jason Leigh is great in a small role as Connie's harried, distracted girlfriend, and Ben Safdie is astounding as Nick. But it's Pattinson, shaking off the last of his Twilight-drenched past, who gives a Pacino-worthy performance full of street smarts and fast talk, but with a human soul. Iggy Pop's shockingly gorgeous closing song sums it all up perfectly.