CHILDREN UNDERGROUND (2003)

It's difficult to recommend a film about troubled children -- here, hardcore Romanian street kids -- that lacks even a glimmer of hope. However, grim as the Oscar-nominated Underground can be, with its shots of zoned-out preteen paint huffers, heartless brutality, and frustratingly helpless social workers, the doc's very unsentimentality is its greatest strength. A happy ending would let the viewer off the hook; as it stands, the filmall but demands action.