Rory Culkin

[8] Mel Gibson headlines this M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable) sci-fi thriller about a single father (Gibson) of two young children and his younger brother (Joaquin Phoenix) who discover mysterious crop circles in their fields. Signs unfolds like George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, depicting a global nightmare — in this case, alien invasion — from the claustrophobic perspective of one family …

[8] Jamie Bell (Billy Elliott) leads an all-star ensemble in this surreal, satiric look at the breakdown of suburban existence. The Chumscrubber is an ambitious conceptual piece, not unlike American Beauty in tone and style. But where American Beauty centered on one character’s shaky morality and lost me, The Chumscrubber stems more confidently from one of my favorite thematic tropes — human beings’ desperate need …