The best new movie I've seen this year is Green Room, the grim and grimy indie siege movie that pits a touring DIY hardcore band (called the Ain't Rights) against a small army of bloodthirsty right-wing skinheads (and their pitbulls). When the movie comes to a boil, it's some of the tensest, most cathartic filmmaking I've seen in recent years. But the early scenes of the movie are, in their own way, just as memorable. In the movie's first shot, the members of the band all stir awake in the middle of a sun-dappled cornfield. It's where their van has fortuitously ended up after the drummer fell asleep at the wheel. For the next 40-or-so minutes, the band endures every manner of indignity. They siphon gas to get to the next town. They soldier through an awkward college-radio interview with a dorked-out host. They show up in a new town and find out there's no show. They play to a disinterested lunchtime crowd at some middle-of-nowhere restaurant. They face the sad reality that their life as a band is just not economically viable -- that they'll all have to go back to Arlington and try to hold down regular jobs. And yet, the whole thing looks terribly romantic. The Ain't Rights are facing all these obstacles together. It's them against the world.