Stephen Holden

Cézanne et Moi offers a pungent, demystifying portrait of the rowdy late-19th-century Parisian art world where famous painters and poets mingled and jostled for position at dinner parties and art openings filled with shoptalk, backbiting and intrigue.

Ms. Chastain’s watchful, layered performance helps keep the film on an even keel, but it is not enough to prevent The Zookeeper’s Wife, with its reassuringly cuddly critters, from feeling like a Disney version of the Holocaust.

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.

Mr. Phillips’s self-deprecating humor is amusing but not funny enough to give him the edge he needs to rise up and conquer.

As one comic after another recalls triumphs, misadventures and painful lessons learned, the stories become redundant.

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

It is too flat-footed and sloppy to explore the obvious parallels between then and now, and the movie is peppered with gratuitous star cameos that distract rather than enlighten. At least it means well.

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.

Passengers increasingly succumbs to timidity and begins shrinking into a bland science-fiction adventure whose feats of daring and skill feel stale and secondhand.

As it drags along, the movie makes you feel trapped in the shoes of someone destined for failure.

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

The best thing about All We Had is Ms. Holmes’s stormy portrayal of a desperate, foolishly trusting woman who rushes from man to man seeking security, only to find herself used and betrayed while her daughter looks on with increasing dismay.

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.

Partly because Miss Sloane is more a character study than a coherent political drama, it fumbles the issue it purports to address, and it eventually runs aground in a preposterous ending.

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.

Written and directed by Tim Kirkman (“Dear Jesse,” “Loggerheads”), Lazy Eye has realistic dialogue and believable performances by its stars. But unless you consider subjects like saltwater swimming pools and the movie “Harold and Maude” fascinating topics, “Lazy Eye” has little to say.

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.