Neil Genzlinger

You may find this sparse film maddeningly elusive, but chances are you’ll come out of it with your head spinning, in a good way.

With a pair of irresistible leads and a straightforward love-overcomes-adversity story, Everything, Everything scores a direct hit on the teenage-girl market. Others might find it pretty enjoyable as well.

It’s not an easy movie to embrace, but it lingers.

If Urban Hymn starts with that familiar dynamic, it stays surprisingly fresh thanks to three fine performances and a willingness to be uncompromising.

It’s a study of courageous innovation against an entrenched medical orthodoxy.

Mr. Bezmozgis creates a disturbing portrait of a girl turned calculating and nihilistic by her upbringing, and there is no coyness here.

It avoids the big confrontation or grand statement; doing so allows it to be an effective, if somewhat uneventful, study of the Brooklyn bubble effect.

It’s strictly comfort food, 99 percent predictable, though the 1 percent that isn’t — you’ll know it when you see it — is deftly executed.

Enjoyable performances keep the tale from becoming too heavy-handed.

The title character of Rock Dog isn’t likely to end up on anyone’s Top 5 list of animated heroes, but the film does have a thoroughly enjoyable rocker in it. And an appealingly nasty wolf, too.

The journey could be a bit more eventful, but the payoff is charming.

If you prefer to view dying as a natural part of life, a step in a cycle, this film will feel discordant and perhaps counterproductive. But visually it will certainly stick with you, and your children.

Mr. Rains, Ms. Leo and Mr. Franco are all so interesting that you wish they had more to bite into. But the film has a transfixing quality nonetheless.

Sometimes the movie, directed by Josh Gordon and Will Speck, is too obviously just a framework for its stars to deploy goofy schtick, but the overall package is naughty, inappropriate fun.

Ms. Smith does not fit easily into any box, and neither does this thought-provoking film.

An assured and thoughtful debut.

The movie sweeps you along with a brisk pace and even dashes of humor.

It’s a smart, understated sex comedy, a description that suggests a certain maturity. You’d never suspect it was the first feature from its director, Robert Schwartzman.

At this point no documentarian can possibly have a fresh take on climate change, right? Wrong. The Anthropologist, a stealthily insightful film by Seth Kramer, Daniel A. Miller and Jeremy Newberger, improbably mixes that topic with a mother-daughter story to produce a distinctive study of change and human adaptability.

Cristin Milioti (“How I Met Your Mother”) is so quirkily endearing in the lead role that she makes it easy to just go with the airy tale.

The director, Mike Flanagan, who with Jeff Howard also wrote the script, demonstrates rare patience for horror fare as he builds toward the macabre.

This film isn’t content to be merely a “never forget” reminder; it wants to convey just how deep and lasting the pain is, from this attack and, by extension, many others.

The frosty landscapes have a subtle beauty, pale and sometimes shrouded in mist, giving the film a very different look from what often comes out of the big studios — somber, which is appropriate to the story.

The way to watch is to ignore the image burnishing and just feel the moment.

The film effectively recreates the sense of confusion over how to try to contain the leak and what might happen if the fuel ignited.

Ms. Ryan’s muted approach may be what we’ve come to expect of looks back at this period — nostalgia always comes with a lot of browns and grays, and with plenty of voice-over (in this case, Marcus’s letters to Homer). But she executes the formula well.

Mr. Morelli mixes live-action and animated scenes to good effect. He doesn’t have time to give his characters depth, but there’s pleasure in figuring out how they connect and pondering the movie’s modest themes.

Revenge is the theme and cheeky is the tone of In Order of Disappearance, a delicious Norwegian film full of icy landscapes and icier hearts.