ANESTHESIA

In actor-director Tim Blake Nelson's new thought-provoking drama, a well-loved Columbia University professor of philosophy, Walter Zarrow (Sam Waterston), is violently mugged on the doorsteps of an apartment building. Nelson delves into the chain of events that precipitates the attack, and the lives of the characters the incident brings together: his son (Tim Blake Nelson), daugher-in-law (Jessica Hecht), a troubled student (Kristen Stewart); a philandering husband (Corey Stoll), and a man fighting drug addiction (K. Todd Freeman). Glenn Close, Gretchen Mol, and Michael Kenneth Williams round out a stellar cast in this meditation of city life that examines the inextricable and unforeseen forces that bring a group of disparate individuals together in a world where many people are, as Professor Zarrow lectures, "beautifully, achingly alone."

—Brian Gordon