Sheri Linden

As a harmless time-waster, Good Trip has its charms, but also its oversold shtick.

A welcome corrective to the abridged and widely accepted narrative that dismisses Cash's first marriage as "troubled," My Darling Vivian relates a little-known love story, great in its own right — and immortalized in Cash's first hit, "I Walk the Line." And it offers a nuanced portrait, loving but not fawning, of a complex woman.

It's an eloquent contribution to af Klint's rediscovery, which began four decades after her 1944 death. It's also a cogent argument for why that rediscovery impels nothing less than a rewriting of art history.

Even though the movie poses questions worth pondering, it's self-inoculated against doing the pondering. With all the long, loving glances at the orderly pastel interiors of Jean's home, and the constant nudging reassurance of the score, the narrative has been too padded against sharp angles to register a seismic jolt.

Director Martha Stephens' atmospheric period piece is in many ways its own planet: The world it conjures is a woman's world — not a world that women created or rule, but one where their longings, dissatisfactions and sorrows are center stage, and most of the story's men and boys look on from the periphery, when they're not lashing out.

This isn't a deep dive into what makes one man tick, but a multilayered exploration of the love and devotion that animals inspire, whether the critter is your companion or your patient. Contained within the stories in Dog Doc is a visionary approach to caring for animals and ourselves, a way of more truly sharing the planet rather than trying to control it.

Neither the screenplay nor the agile direction insists on neat resolutions for any of the characters, and there's a double-edged charge as the foursome make collective and individual progress, slide back and try again: the women recognizing each other in ways they otherwise never would have imagined, the half-sisters slowly becoming friends.

Jenkins' one and only feature weaves living history, charged and messy, into a homespun, hopeful tale. It's impossible not to wonder about — and wish for — what he might have done next.

What Kovgan's utterly transporting film does, through a thoughtful and dynamic combination of curated material and new performances, is radiate the rapturous power of dance.

There's a wrenching sadness to this simply told story, but also but also a heartrending hope.

A less muddled, less self-conscious Queen & Slim could have been an indelible waking dream. Instead, it's hit-and-miss. But Waithe and Matsoukas are on to something, and it's the undercurrents rather than the filmmakers' more obvious exertions that hit the mark.

Even when the story feels strained, the chemistry among the performers has oomph as their characters taunt one another, celebrate big wins, ride out setbacks and mastermind double-crosses. And the uneven shenanigans sail home smoothly with an exhilarating and ultra-satisfying switcheroo.

The story's final, intended aha moment falls woefully flat, but capping this flawed valentine to artistic independence is a closing-credits nod to Easy Rider, especially poignant so soon after Peter Fonda's death.

But for all its vividly detailed eccentricity, the movie, like Abby, connects the dots rather too easily. As Clifton Hill digs deeper into exceedingly sordid stuff, it doesn't dish up the kind of aha moments or chilling frissons that would lift the story from clever contrivance — until a final, delicious twist pulls the rug out from under this richly atmospheric but not always convincing tale.

Technically, it wouldn't be wrong to call Waves a "teen drama," but that generic label doesn't begin to convey the emotional scope of this tender, bruising, exuberant film.

Writer-director Gray's handsomely crafted planet-hopping drama is by turns vividly eventful and deliberate in its uneventfulness, and it feels caught, somewhat awkwardly, between stark simplicity and violent leaps into hyperdrive.

What's missing in this Kitchen is heat. A B-movie summer diversion at best, it's more a collection of genre tropes than an involving crime drama.

A winning combination of thoughtfulness and exuberance.

Ladkani's Sea of Shadows is a stirring adventure — inspiring and heartbreaking in equal measure.

The documentary's talking heads include Rubin's aunt and cousin as well as artists, friends and critics — notably Amy Taubin, whose personal recollections are particularly incisive. Even with this mix of voices, Smith doesn't try to fill in the many gaps in Rubin's story but to honor them, along with her creative and spiritual impulses.

It works mainly in fits and starts, though there's no question that the movie's depiction of the effects of Soviet rule on a nomadic population will be eye-opening for many Western viewers, and deeply resonant for Kazakhstanis.

Poehler's adept at showcasing not just the comic gifts of her cast, whose decades-long friendships began in improv theaters and at SNL, but also the joyful vamping that connects their characters.

As with any vérité portrait, there are many things that go unexplained. But the images tell us what we need to know: The unforced choreography between Hatidze and the bees.

Attanasio has made a sharp, affecting film that's brimming with darkness and hope, every instant of it vividly alive.

Though the screenplay ... ultimately conforms quite plainly to formula and grows less interesting as it proceeds, there’s a gutsiness to Larson’s headlong leap into material that walks a fine line between risky fantasy and feel-good reassurance.

As well as building a strong case, through example, of the implications for towns and cities across the country, the film delivers telling glimpses of the personal day-to-day coping mechanisms of the cops themselves.

[Gottsagen's] sensibility infuses the modern-day fable with an engaging forthrightness. But the unequivocal material often sticks close to the surface, and the film built around him, for all its physical sweep, can feel constricted by obviousness.

Hart has fashioned a tale of matriarchal inheritance, but one whose fierce message is undercut rather than deepened by its child's-book clarity. The intriguing setup receives underpowered execution, the intended jolts landing all too softly.