The Sweet Hereafter

(New Line)

Atom Egoyan turns Russell Banks's novel about a school-bus accident that devastates a small northern town into a wrenching, nearly flawless film. Told in a fluid stream-of-collective-consciousness that skips with mounting gravity between points-of-view and from past to present to future, the movie actually improves on Banks's original structure. With Ian Holm as an ambulance-chasing claims lawyer, and Sarah Polley, radiant as one of the few surviving passengers.