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Anyone who has followed ''Project Greenlight,'' HBO's amateur-dude-gets-to-make-a-movie series, is in for a surprise: ''Stolen Summer,'' Pete Jones' cuddly opus about Catholics, Jews, and a big-eyed kid suffering from leukemia in 1976 Chicago, turns out to be competent and watchable. But the bigger surprise, to me, is that it's a family weeper made with intelligence and feeling. If nothing else, it should earn Jones his next green light. Less conventional, and better still, is ''Blue Car,'' Karen Moncrieff's quiet drama about a young poet, played by the terrific newcomer Agnes Bruckner, drawn into an ambiguous relationship with her high school English teacher (David Strathairn).
The title figure of the documentary ''Sister Helen'' is a foulmouthed Benedictine oblate who lords it over a halfway house of recovering alcoholics. The movie is funny, shrewd, and surprisingly forceful -- an intimate portrait of a cranky savior who needs her addicts as much as they need her. ''Only the Strong Survive,'' the latest from D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, takes a stirring look at R&B veterans (Wilson Pickett, Sam Moore, etc.) whose cleansing music has only ripened with age.
A love triangle and thriller set in small-town Florida, ''Coastlines'' proves that director Victor Nunez has become a master at evoking the psychological suspense of real-life relationships. And though ''Secretary,'' the comic tale of an S&M bond between boss and assistant, is too stylized for its own good, Maggie Gyllenhaal, as the spank-happy office masochist, has a radiance that transcends the movie's...well, cheekiness. Gyllenhaal is better than good; she could be the new Gwyneth.
