Alice Connorton

In Eran Palatnik's The Rook, Martin Donovan plays John Abbott, a religious detective investigating the murder of a young woman named Wain Shepard. He travels to the village of Sutheridge in a horse-drawn carriage and meets Police Chief Bob Brice (John A. MacKay), who shows him the body. There is sand under her nails, she's bald, and her stomach bears an odd design, a spiral with crosses. In her room, there is a picture of Abbott himself, with another note, "Beware, beware, the circle in the square." The rest of the film is rife with codes, ambiguous messages, and cryptograms, each more puzzling than the last.

Writer-director Whit Stillman's witty comedy of manners (which won an Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature) pokes gentle fun at a group of upper-class Manhattan preppies who gather regularly to play bridge and engage in intellectual discussion. Led by acerbic cynic Nick (Christopher Eigeman), the coterie adopts "proletariat" Tom Townsend (Edward Clements), who has reservations about his new socialite friends and what they represent.

In Whit Stillman's Oscar-nominated classic, a group of young upper-class Manhattanites are in the midst of their gala debutante season when an unusual outsider joins them and stirs things up.

In Whit Stillman's Oscar-nominated classic, a group of young upper-class Manhattanites are in the midst of their gala debutante season when an unusual outsider joins them and stirs things up.