“Elephant” is among the most riveting experiences I’ve had in a cinema this year. A whole new film grammar is created. Expectations are shot down. The Peckinpah ending is done without slo-mo, without music, without emotion. The De Palma sequence, showing one instant from multiple perspectives, is a moment devoid of drama, an imposed sprout of warmth and humanity without context in a cold, cement institution. New characters are created in the heat of the third act to subvert all of our movie notions, from surprise endings to changes-of-fate to simply the way things are supposed to go down depending on where they are placed in the frame — it’s like a horror movie where the cat doesn’t jump out at you. From a formal perspective, that’s the elephant in the living room — nothing quite feels right, yet it all looks so ordinary. The high school set is 360 degrees of boredom but the tone, one of hyper-realism, makes “Elephant” seem as if it is set on a faraway space station. “Elephant” is the movie an observant kid makes in his mind fifteen times a day during high school. Some critics condemn it for trivializing Columbine. This movie isn’t about school shootings; I fully accept the notion that the killing spree at the end is symbolic. I don’t fall for that kind of talk easy, but here it is earned. This is the movie Steven Soderbergh almost made with “Solaris,” it’s David Cronenberg’s “Stereo” with less talking. Gus Van Sant has grown into one of the finest recorders of the mundane, in that his images are never boring. I absolutely loved it and after admiring his “Gerry” from earlier this year, he has become, mid-career, one of my favorite filmmakers.