Lara Zarum

By the time Whitney winds to an end, that massive talent feels like a dangerously valuable resource, one that even the people who were supposed to protect Houston couldn’t resist exploiting.

The Tale is a powerful and clear-eyed examination of sexual abuse and the shifting sands of one’s own memories.

Watching this movie is like freebasing sincerity — a scarce resource in our current entertainment hellscape. It’ll give you warm fuzzies for days.

Voiceovers build on top of voiceovers, and we feel as if we’re simply getting to know these people a little better, even while Rees is gesturing toward things to come. The result is a deeply engrossing film — its two-plus hours whiz by — about stumbling one step forward and two steps back toward a more enlightened existence.

A heartfelt coming-of-age story that perfectly captures the bittersweet transition from adolescence to dawning adulthood, Gerwig’s directorial debut is a joy from start to finish, a warm, generous snapshot of teenage vulnerability and exuberance.

The manic sex comedy Me Him Her has an admirably buoyant energy but a murky message and shortage of laughs.

Like his onetime mentor Luis Buñuel, Ripstein favors sparse, naturalistic settings populated by pathetic-yet-zany characters and eschews anything that might be considered traditionally beautiful. Instead, he unearths beauty in the mire of his characters' social conditions and in their dedication to each other.

On the surface a typical exercise in horror-film cliché, Body turns out to be a far more thought-provoking creature, a parable of adulthood and a stinging indictment of white-girl privilege.

Christmas, Again is a low hum of a downer, but maybe that's appropriate.