The Stanford Prison Experiment

Kyle Patrick Alvarez's "The Stanford Prison Experiment" is not a documentary but a dramatization of Philip Zimbardo's August 1971 psychological study in which 24 male students were chosen from 75 volunteers ($15 a day was quite the lure back then) to serve as the guards and prisoners at a fictitious three-cell prison in the basement hallways and cleared-out offices of the university's Jordan Hall.

Thin Ice

There's a lot to like in Jill Sprecher's bitingly cold Kenosha black comedy "Thin Ice," starring Greg Kinnear as a fast-talking Wisconisn insurance salesman living beyond his means. A big score appears in the form of a dotard customer (Alan Arkin) who doesn't seem to realize he owns a violin, or how valuable it may be. In trying to pry it away, Kinnear encounters Arkin's relentlessly sunny neighbor, who always seems to check up on the old guy at the most inopportune time; the powder-keg ex-con (Billy Crudup) Arkin has annoyingly hired to install a home alarm system; and an ethical luthier (Bob Balaban) who maddeningly insists the fiddle be sold on the up and up.