Now, with television language changing quickly to reflect the rude realities of life, this thoughtful, provocative drama examines how racial slurs function in society, how insidiously they creep into common use.

Can a thoughtful, leisurely paced drama about racial and social issues in the late 1950's compete with the plethora of current network shows marketing little more than zippy, mindless one-liners?

Set in the 1980s, it is a bleak and thoughtful drama that shows the life of some ordinary families who had moved there and would like to move back to Shanghai.

"A cool, thoughtful two-part Canadian drama about obviously incendiary subject matter," Stephen Holden wrote in The New York Times.

With a little more subtlety - and a lot less predictability - the movie might have played more like a thoughtful drama and less like an outrageous exercise in wish fulfillment.

"The Boys of St. Vincent," a cool, thoughtful two-part Canadian drama about obviously incendiary subject matter, opens today at the Film Forum, which will give it well-deserved attention.

Here, I thought, was a perfect example of the younger generation, attention span whittled away by television, failing to appreciate the old-fashioned virtues of gentle, thoughtful drama.

"Three Seconds in the Key" works - as comedy, as thoughtful drama and as an impressive demonstration of Ms. Margolin's nimble use of language.

"Wonderland" is a thoughtful, engaging drama with cynical humor, a deceptive plotlessness and a bleak worldview.

The site described the film as "a little deeper and more thoughtful than most police dramas - but not quite enough to surmount its thinly written characters and numbing violence".