Stephen Holden

Frantz takes pains to show both sides’ lingering hostility after a devastating and (the movie implies) senseless war.

At first Apprentice seems to be a basic revenge film in which Aiman stalks the man who killed his father. But it becomes psychologically more complex.

Donald Cried is an acutely insightful, exquisitely written and acted triumph for Mr. Avedisian, who understands how the past permanently clings to us.

[An] exquisite, beautifully shot meditation on love clouded by fear and doubt.

Their ordeal feels cruel, unnecessary and infuriatingly real.

This movie, directed and produced by Dave Davidson and Amber Edwards, digs deeply enough into Mr. Giordano’s world to convey the drudgery and headaches of being a bandleader.

What makes the pain of this film bearable is Daniel’s unquenchable decency, courage and perseverance.

Most of the humor is too lighthearted to offend all but the most reverent believers, and the movie’s inventiveness rarely flags.

Even in the throes of grief, Mr. Cave retains his mystique as a rock shaman.

Mr. Byrne’s film is a sober, evenhanded recapitulation of Sands’s imprisonment and death that places him in a historical context.

The wonder of the movie, which Mr. Beatty wrote and directed from a story he wrote with Bo Goldman, is that it is so good-humored. Fools and idiots abound, but demonic, systemic evil does not.

Because “Merrily” was a musical about the ravages of time on friendship and youthful ideals, the documentary tells parallel stories — one fictional, the other real — of disappointment and disillusion. They give the film a double shot of poignancy.

[Ms. Steinfeld] manages a tricky balancing act, making Nadine simultaneously sympathetic and dislikable.

The tone of the narration is so wrenchingly honest that the film never lapses into self-pity or relies on mystical platitudes.

It is the film’s cosmic dimension that makes it so special.

The narrowness of its perspective and its relatively brief 82-minute length disappoint. Yet Don’t Call Me Son still manages to be a fascinating, sympathetic portrait of a lost boy abruptly thrown to the wolves.

Gimme Danger is still plenty entertaining and includes many moments of foaming-at-the-mouth musical fury.

The vision of nature being lovingly tended in Rosie Stapel’s documentary, Portrait of a Garden, is remarkably evocative.

The movie is not really about deciding whether you’re gay or straight — those terms are never spoken. It’s about the chemistry of two people at a moment in time.

As it seesaws between Greta’s conscious and unconscious minds, the movie begins to feel like a waking dream.

Chronic ends with a sudden, terrible slap in the face that is a final blow to your equilibrium. It is left up to the viewer to decide whether it is a cheap stunt or an ultimate moment of truth. I vote for the latter.

Ms. Rabe’s beautifully balanced performance reminds you that people never really grow up.

As I Open My Eyes is best when it observes the fraught but loving mother-daughter relationship between Hayet and Farah.

The characters have enough dimension to avoid appearing to be symbols of a social tragedy, and the movie’s relative gentleness makes the harsher realities of Brandon’s world all the more distressing.

We’re all familiar with the term contact high, but not with its antithesis. Because it is so believable, White Girl is a contact bummer that’s hard to shake.

As a drama about adult responsibility, selfishness and moral obligations, however, it never wavers in its commitment to examine what it means to raise a child.

If the movie, loosely based on two books by Fatima Elayoubi, tells a familiar story of immigrants struggling to make something of themselves in an alien culture (Fatima speaks some French but reads only Arabic), it does so in a tone that is kindhearted but clearheaded, and the performances are low-key and believable.

The film is a contemplation of the loneliness, tension and anxiety of outsiders pursuing a piece of the American dream.