Elephant (2003)

"To make a film about something like the Columbine student shootings incident and provide no insight or enlightenment would seem to be pointless at best and irresponsible at worst, and that is what Gus Van Sant has done in Elephant."

"The film doesn't try to explain, but to put us in a subjective time and space, a place where it's impossible not to feel the abject horror of random violence."

"By making the camera an observer, we get a perspective that often comes out of horror movies, a choice that whips the ordinary with the terrifying, an unforgettable mix."

"This is a film about post-Columbine US high school life, in which the violence is conceived with the glazed detachment of lucid dreaming."

"Unique and unforgettable."

"It simply looks at the day as it unfolds, and that is a brave and radical act; it refuses to supply reasons and assign cures, so that we can close the case and move on."

"An unblinking look at our mania for murder, the film is a stunning response to an American tragedy that in its senselessness and human cost embodies the larger tragedy of this country's blood lust."