The best Tallie Medel’s drama movies

Alice and Bret's dog Harvie is dying, and he's ruining everything. What had been a bright little family is quickly getting consumed by clouds of self-doubt, suspicion and a disturbing amount of ground beef.

17-year-old Jackie is in distress as her older brother Matthew gets his first girlfriend and prepares for college. Though Matthew does not share her incestuous desire, Jackie fights the intrusion of reality on her idyllic childhood world.

Mara and Jo are best friends. Mara is dependable and Jo is troubled; they met when they were 14 years old. Neither of their lives are stable, their jobs are precarious and their dates go nowhere, writing is something done on the side, like so often in Brooklyn. Amid the everyday events and chit-chat, the only constant is their friendship, or, rather, its dynamic: Mara’s phone will ring and Jo will need her help, Mara will drop everything for her, but Jo’s thoughts will already be elsewhere by the time she arrives. The plot skips forward delicately, alighting on another manifestation of the same pattern each time, though Jo’s troughs deepen and Mara’s resentment grows. Time passes and there are new jobs, new boyfriends, drugs, tears and fresh starts, a pregnancy and later a little girl, all of which steadily tug at Jo and Mara’s bond.

A young man disappears amid talk of violence and demagoguery, leaving behind an obscure cache of letters, postcards, and notebooks.

In present-day Texas, Maya and her on again, off again girlfriend Jules total their car after a night of backwoods raving and teen mischief. They're rescued from the wreckage by Freddy, an oil worker whose stoic facade crumbles as he comes to see himself, and his repressed desires, in Maya. As Jules recovers, Maya and Freddy develop a rapport that dulls the debilitating silence of their small-town lives. Together, they subtly encourage one another to chase after what they want the most (or at least figure out what that might be).