That's the essential appeal of Tony Gilroy's "Michael Clayton." Although Gilroy isn't new to filmmaking -- he wrote or co-wrote the scripts for all three Bourne films, "The Bourne Identity," "The Bourne Supremacy" and, most recently, "The Bourne Ultimatum" -- this is his directorial debut, and it's a confident, well-tailored piece of filmmaking. It's also conscientious to the point of being wearying: The plot hinges on an evil pesticide company (it bears the beautifully sinister name "U/North") whose executives have worked hard to hide the fact that their product is poisoning the farms where it's being used, as well as, of course, the families living on those farms. Tilda Swinton plays Karen Crowder, U/North's powerful in-house counsel, who will protect her company (and her career) at all costs. Tom Wilkinson is Arthur Edens, a senior litigating partner at Kenner, Bach & Ledeen, the fat-cat law firm that's representing U/North in a jillion-dollar class-action lawsuit.

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But then something comes along with exactly that institutional-indie pedigree -- something like writer-director Hilary Brougher's second feature, "Stephanie Daley" -- that's strong enough to make the whole enterprise seem worth it. "Stephanie Daley" was developed at the Sundance Writers' and Filmmakers' Lab, and premiered at that festival last year. It was nominated for a couple of Spirit Awards, while still unreleased, and it's been kicking around in distribution limbo for 15 months, on its way toward what will no doubt be a very modest release. Its cast is one of those disparate assemblages of film, TV and theater actors, none of them exactly a star: Amber Tamblyn, Timothy Hutton, Denis O'Hare, Melissa Leo and, yes, Tilda Swinton. (She's also an executive producer, which is just about as much of an indie imprimatur as you can get.)

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And that's exactly what makes this adaptation of C.S. Lewis' much-loved 1950 novel so wonderful. There's nothing too clean or too overbright about it. It's magic, but not the loud, shiny kind: It has the texture of worn velvet, or a painstakingly hand-knit sweater stored away for years in tissue paper.

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But Danny Boyle's "The Beach," based on British novelist Alex Garland's 1997 Utopia-gone-wrong bestseller, doesn't stop there. On this particular island, with no phones, no lights, no motorcars, citizens catch their own fish for food and laze around or play volleyball the rest of the time. A Gordon Lightfoot-gone-native troubadour makes music for them on his battered acoustic guitar. They wear clothing made of cotton and other natural fibers, yet all of them have forgotten what an iron looks like. They're living as God intended, and we're the ones made to suffer for it.

The message of "The Beach," both the movie and the book it's based on, is that technology and other stuff you have to plug in have disconnected us from our true natures -- but if we ever have the opportunity to let our freak flags fly, we must be prepared for the dark secrets we might unearth. For anyone who ever read "Lord of the Flies," or even just the Cliffs Notes, that's nothing we haven't heard before.

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Unlike "Happiness" (1998), which bludgeoned its audience with pathetic pedophiles and murders, "The War Zone" creeps up behind its audience and slits its throat. It's coolly gorgeous and familiar -- if cinematically formal -- and the family appears strong and healthy at first. It's easy to respond to them, which makes their secret even more devastating.

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