The result feels perfectly American — I wonder if Conrad was named in honor of the troubled brother in “Ordinary People” — yet the film lives and breathes with a lovely intimacy and density of detail that we associate with fine independent features from Europe.

The Dark Horse brings Cliff Curtis back home, and he gives a performance that’s transcendent in more ways than one.

Toward the end of this loose-jointed and endearing new film, a freshman says to her boyfriend, “It’s kind of beautiful that we get to feel passion in this world—about anything.” She and he, and everyone around them, have passion to burn, and we get to feel great about them.

The writing and direction, by Robert Budreau, range from pedestrian to lethargic — not a good thing when the subject is passive more often than not.

A fascinating and downright lovable documentary.

Spasms of highfalutin philosophy, and howlingly pretentious dream sequences, serve only as the thinnest of veneers for incessant action in one of the most assaultive movies ever made.

What you call Mr. Shults’s first film is spectacular.

This isn’t only a wise and graceful film but, in its tossed-off way, a great one, with a debut performance — by a young actress named Lou Roy-Lecollinet — that will prove to be unforgettable.

A beautifully strange and stirring sci-fi adventure.

Plain-spoken and unpretentious, he’s a fount of surprising information and informed opinion.

Eye in the Sky is literally all over the map in its depiction of drone warfare, and right on target, if flagrantly contrived, in examining the ethics of killing by remote control.

The film is neither kind nor cruel, but wise, great-spirited and wonderfully enjoyable. It’s an addled dream of beauty unlike any other.

The Wave, Scandinavia’s first-ever disaster film, is the polar opposite of a disaster. It’s a triumph of modest means, a tribute to the power of storytelling on a human scale.

As for Ms. Fey, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot doesn’t serve her fully, but this is her best work yet on the feature screen.

Like the movie as a whole, she (Judy) is funny, sweet, sophisticated and adventurous.

The most remarkable thing about The Mermaid, though, is its clarity as a cautionary fable.

A shamelessly fictionalized biopic.

The brightest touch in the whole tale is a transvestite hooker’s little papillon, decked out in a DayGlo pink vest, but even the pooch seems glum, pricked-up ears notwithstanding.

The narrative jumps back and forth between the two time frames, rather than telling Karamakate’s story in linear fashion, and these juxtapositions deepen the film’s resonance.

If the story’s psychodynamics are familiar, Mr. Eggers makes them seem newly discovered. The intensity of his writing and direction, as well as the eerie austerity of Jarin Blaschke’s cinematography, Craig Lathrop’s production design and Mark Korven’s music, all conspire to create a film of exceptional originality.

For all the luster of its subject, though, this earnest biopic lacks the spark of life.

One of the hallmarks of contemporary Danish filmmaking is a seemingly effortless naturalism that springs from superb acting and skillful direction.

Where to Invade Next is documentary filmmaking gone wrong, a churlish polemic that uses the tools of propaganda to construct its world view. The film itself is an invasive presence, wreaking havoc in the realm of truth.

Some movies keep you in a state of suspense. Zoolander 2, a dud glitter-bomb of a sequel, eventually leaves you in a state of suspended animation, with eyes glazed over and brain in sleep mode.

The psychology of The Club is warped and gnarled, the thinking of its members less-than-jesuitical.

Few viewers anywhere will be immune to the movie’s charms, or the performances, notably that of Mr. Sigurjonsson, who makes Gummi a slightly mournful, enormously lovable and quixotically heroic figure.

A dispiritingly vitriolic, only sporadically funny satire of ’50s Hollywood, Hail, Caesar! verifies a suspicion long held here, that the Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan, really hate the movies.

It’s a strange piece of work, full of paradox — sharply analytical about the ways of love, yet sometimes plodding to the point of self-parody; intentionally distanced, yet offputtingly so, despite an exquisite performance by one of the stars, Clotilde Courau.