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Predictably, I overheard a moviegoer say to the ticket-seller, "I'd like to see Juliet, Naked." You should see it too! Nick Hornby's novel has been turned into a highly entertaining romantic comedy directed by Jesse Peretz. The strong script is by Evgenia Peretz, Jim Taylor, and Tamara Jenkins. The story starts with an awkward website video, in which Duncan (played to hilarious effect by Chris O'Dowd) rattles on about obscure American rocker Tucker Crowe, who has not been seen in decades, much less produced any new music. Duncan lives with Annie (the delectable Rose Byrne), who runs a small museum in a seaside British town. The museum's biggest attraction is a shark's eyeball, bobbing in formaldehyde. To the dismay of megafan Duncan, Annie doesn't especially appreciate Tucker Crowe, nor how his music has taken over their listening and the mystery of his disappearance their conversation. Like anyone obsessed with in a very small slice of life's enormous pizza, Duncan is tedious in the extreme. When Annie posts a few of her less flattering thoughts about Tucker Crowe on Duncan's website, Crowe himself (Ethan Hawke) responds. To her surprise, he agrees with her, and they begin a secret trans-Atlantic email correspondence. The two have great charm together, playing off each other and admitting their shortcomings. They're neither one perfect and able to admit it. Crowe is living in the center of the United States, somewhere, in a garage lent him by his ex-wife, and taking part-time care of their young son Jackson (Azhy Robertson). We soon learn another woman is the mother of his grown daughter, who's now pregnant, and he has twin boys by yet another. He's barely in touch with these children and totally out of touch with the daughter of his first love, Juliet. Perhaps it's the pseudo-anonymity of email that encourages him to speak to Annie. When he has a trip to London, the face-to-face is awkward. It might be the beginning of a relationship, but there are a lot of kids and partners in the way. What I loved about this movie, in addition to the fine acting, is that the situation avoids the typical Hollywood relationship clichés (which The Puzzle fell prey to, disappointingly), and strives for honesty. P.S. I love the crazy job titles that turn up in movie credits. In this one: "Petty cash buyer."

While you can't fault the acting in this new Marc Turtletaub rom-com, written by Oren Moverman, it contains few surprises. All the typical Hollywood assumptions about relations between men and women are on display, along with filmmakers' strange notions about how ordinary people in relationships or financial turmoil actually behave. Agnes (played by Kelly Macdonald), has been married a couple of decades to Louie (David Denman), who owns an auto repair shop, and they have two sons, the unhappy Ziggy (Bubba Weiler) and his younger brother Gabe (Austin Abrams), who's planning to go to college and is in love. Agnes isn't happy and she isn't unhappy; she's in a disappointed stasis. They live in one of the Connecticut suburbs of New York-Bridgeport, I think. They don't travel, not even into the city. (It's a cinch she doesn't have a passport, the significance of which I won't explain.) If they have a vacation, they go to their cottage on the lake. The adults' attitudes about sex-roles predate the Eisenhower Administration-as does Agnes's wardrobe-though they are only in their forties now. In short, the premise seems dated. Not that there aren't still people with old-fashioned ideas and lives, but we've seen that movie. In short, Agnes is aware that, while she engages in an endless round of housekeeping, meal preparation, and church lady functions, life is passing her by. A poignant moment occurs early when she decorates the house for a birthday party, serves the food and cleans up, and brings out the huge chocolate-frosted cake she's made so people can sing happy birthday-to her. The only pastime she truly enjoys is working jigsaw puzzles, and she's a whiz at it. One day she sees an ad from a person seeking a puzzle partner. She contacts him and, in a move that surprises even herself, takes the commuter train into New York to meet him. Robert (Irrfan Khan) tries her out and is amazed, and they practice two days a week, aiming for the forthcoming national championships. Louie would object to her spending a day in the city ("Where's my dinner?") so she lies about it. That seems out of character, as do a number of her subsequent actions. Meanwhile, her puzzle partner Robert is the only man who takes an interest in her interior life or even supposes she has one. She is like someone dying of thirst offered a glass of water. You've guessed the rest. Denman's portrayal of Louie, who may have been conceived as a cardboard anti-feminist, is so sympathetic that he actually doesn't come off as a bad guy. I was sorry I didn't like this movie as much as the critics do because I love jigsaw puzzles myself, and what the movie says about the mental process of working on them seemed to me exactly right. They make order out of chaos, when what Agnes is doing is, at least for a time, the exact opposite.

The movie The Rider isn't really about rodeo. It's a character study and an exploration of what it means to lose your dreams, and how to be a man in a culture that glorifies danger. Writer-Director Chloé Zhao may have been born in Beijing, but she has made one of the most authentic films about the West in recent years and one of the best films of the year so far. Don't miss it! She's drawn on the real-life story of a young man's recovery from a rodeo injury that nearly killed him and probably will if he falls again. Brady Blackburn (played by Brady Jandreau) had a solid career on the rodeo circuit in front of him. As the film opens, his skull looks like Frankenstein's monster, a metal plate rides underneath, and he has an occasional immobililty in his right hand-his rope hand. The doctor tells him no more riding, no more rodeo. She might as well tell him not to breathe. He's "recuperating," but determined to get back in the saddle. He lives in a trailer with his father (Tim Jandreau), who puts on a gruff front, and feisty 15-year-old sister, Lilly (Lilly Jandreau), who has some degree of Asperger's. The disappointment his fans feel when they find him working at a supermarket is visible to the taciturn Brady and to us. In his spare time-and this is where the movie comes spectacularly to life-he trains horses. Watching him work with them, you know for sure that he's no actor. This is his real-life job, and Zhao has captured those delicate moments of growing trust. Not that interested in rodeo? You don't see much of it. And most of the rodeo scenes are in the video clips Brady and his best friend Lane watch. Watching them watching is the bittersweet point. Lane was a star bull-rider now unable to walk or speak. The way Brady interacts with him is full of true generosity and mutual affection. When Brady throws his saddle into the truck to go to another rodeo, in vain his father tells him not to. The father accuses him of never listening to him, and Brady says, "I do listen to you. I've always listened to you. It's you who said, 'Cowboy up,' 'Grit your teeth,' 'Be a man,'" the kinds of messages men give their sons that sometimes boomerang back to break their hearts. Cinematographer James Joshua Richards's deft close-in camerawork captures the personalities of the horses, and his wide views put the windswept grasslands of South Dakota's Badlands and Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The film is shot partly on the Lakota reservation, but not much is made of the cast's Native American heritage. By grounding the script in Brady's real-life recovery and by surrounding him with his real-life family and friends, Zhao creates a wholly natural feel for the film, which has been nominated for five Independent Spirit Awards. And what was it like for Brady to work with the filmmaker? "She was able to step into our world: riding horses, moving cows, stuff like that. Why should we be scared to step foot into her world?" he said in a Vanity Fair story by Nicole Sperling. "She would do things like get on a 1,700-pound animal for us. And trust us. So we did the same. We got on her 1,700-pound animal."

Comedian Bo Burnham wrote and directed this debut comedy about a girl approaching the end of eighth grade. Seeing this movie makes your present life look pretty darn good! So while it's funny, it's painfully so. Been there. Or someplace similar. While American adolescence has been typically miserable for generations, today's added dimension is the unrelenting pressure of social media. The awkward, socially ignored Kayla creates self-help vlogs on topics like "putting yourself out there" and "growing up." They are mainly a way for this suburban teen to articulate her own confused thoughts and give a pep-talk to herself, because at some point we see her usage stats. No one watches them. Though New Yorker critic Richard Brody complains that the introvert Kayla has no friends and seems to have no interests (forgetting her participation in the extremely forgettable school band), he's overlooking not just the video production, but also the way constantly scouring social media dominates Kayla's day. There's no time left for swim team or cheerleading practice or piano lessons. Elsie Fisher does a remarkable playing Kayla. In fact, all the kids are perfect, including "mean girl" Kennedy (played by Catherine Oliviere), for whom Kayla is a non-entity or worse. Message from Kennedy to Kayla: "hi so my mom told me to invite you to my thing tomorrow so this is me doing that." Kayla is reticent, slightly hunched, but moving forward doggedly, whether to class, a pool party, or, well, life. You have to admire her, including her drive to help others. At one point, a boy makes a pass at Kayla. Women watching this film will see an all-too-familiar dynamic when he turns what happens into her fault and she ends up apologizing."Sorry," she keeps saying, when of course she should have punched his lights out. Contrast this role and performance with that of Tom in the much-hyped Leave no Trace. Unlike director Debra Granik, Burnham gives Fisher plenty to do, and she does it, with all the stumbling and uncertainty of a thirteen-year-old trying to live up to expectations, but not quite sure what those are. Kayla's relationship with her father, a single dad (Josh Hamilton), is what you'd expect. He reaches out, but most of the time she's too absorbed in her own world to think he's anything other than embarrassing. Points for hanging in, Dad. To quote Kayla, "Growing up can be a little bit scary and weird." Absolutely.

The movie The Rider isn't really about rodeo. It's a character study and an exploration of what it means to lose your dreams, and how to be a man in a culture that glorifies danger. Writer-Director Chloé Zhao may have been born in Beijing, but she has made one of the most authentic films about the West in recent years and one of the best films of the year so far. Don't miss it! She's drawn on the real-life story of a young man's recovery from a rodeo injury that nearly killed him and probably will if he falls again. Brady Blackburn (played by Brady Jandreau) had a solid career on the rodeo circuit in front of him. As the film opens, his skull looks like Frankenstein's monster, a metal plate rides underneath, and he has an occasional immobililty in his right hand-his rope hand. The doctor tells him no more riding, no more rodeo. She might as well tell him not to breathe. He's "recuperating," but determined to get back in the saddle. He lives in a trailer with his father (Tim Jandreau), who puts on a gruff front, and feisty 15-year-old sister, Lilly (Lilly Jandreau), who has some degree of Asperger's. The disappointment his fans feel when they find him working at a supermarket is visible to the taciturn Brady and to us. In his spare time-and this is where the movie comes spectacularly to life-he trains horses. Watching him work with them, you know for sure that he's no actor. This is his real-life job, and Zhao has captured those delicate moments of growing trust. Not that interested in rodeo? You don't see much of it. And most of the rodeo scenes are in the video clips Brady and his best friend Lane watch. Watching them watching is the bittersweet point. Lane was a star bull-rider now unable to walk or speak. The way Brady interacts with him is full of true generosity and mutual affection. When Brady throws his saddle into the truck to go to another rodeo, in vain his father tells him not to. The father accuses him of never listening to him, and Brady says, "I do listen to you. I've always listened to you. It's you who said, 'Cowboy up,' 'Grit your teeth,' 'Be a man,'" the kinds of messages men give their sons that sometimes boomerang back to break their hearts. Cinematographer James Joshua Richards's deft close-in camerawork captures the personalities of the horses, and his wide views put the windswept grasslands of South Dakota's Badlands and Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The film is shot partly on the Lakota reservation, but not much is made of the cast's Native American heritage. By grounding the script in Brady's real-life recovery and by surrounding him with his real-life family and friends, Zhao creates a wholly natural feel for the film, which has been nominated for five Independent Spirit Awards. And what was it like for Brady to work with the filmmaker? "She was able to step into our world: riding horses, moving cows, stuff like that. Why should we be scared to step foot into her world?" he said in a Vanity Fair story by Nicole Sperling. "She would do things like get on a 1,700-pound animal for us. And trust us. So we did the same. We got on her 1,700-pound animal."

I really wanted to love this movie. It has everything I like-a story about important principles, two impeccable stars and a terrific supporting cast, a newsroom setting. Director Steven Spielberg had much so much good stuff to work with-including a decent script by Liz Hannah and Josh Singer-why wasn't it better? One of the team's great decisions is to present Katherine Graham (played by Meryl Streep) not as a hard-nosed, successful businesswoman, but one growing into a not-always-comfortable role as publisher of the Washington Post (a position first held by her father, then her late husband). In 1971, when Daniel Ellsberg (Matthew Rhys) steals the Pentagon Papers, thousands of pages of documents that recount the government's decades of deception about the Vietnam War, Graham faces a fateful choice of tremendous consequence: will the Post will publish stories based on these top secret documents? On one hand, the paper's editor, Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks), and the newsroom staff are pushing to publish. For them, it's a "freedom of the press" issue, a riveting story, and they're racing the clock to get in the game. On the other hand, her business advisors (notably, Tracy Letts as Fritz Beebe and Bradley Whitford as Arthur Parsons) and the Nixon Administration oppose publication, which is risky on several counts. First is legal jeopardy: already the Justice Department has taken the rival New York Times to court on the matter. Barring the Times from publishing more, at least temporarily, opens the door for the Post. Then there's financial jeopardy: the bankers who backed the Post's recent stock offering are threatening to pull out if the paper goes ahead. Graham's personal relations further muddy the waters. She's been friends for years with people who the Pentagon Papers show participated in the war deception, notably former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara (Bruce Greenwood). Is she respecting her family legacy by publishing or by holding back? In the end, of course, her decision sets the stage for the Post's becoming one of the nation's premier newspapers. The newsroom Spielberg and the reporters create is an exciting place. As Bilge Ebiri said in the Village Voice, "I started crying the first time I saw Tom Hanks's Ben Bradlee walk through a bustling, thriving newsroom . . . a whole world that's been lost." It's also fun to see the newspaper produced the old-fashioned way: linotype machines and hot lead. Victory is in the air when the Post's trucks roll out of the printing plant in the early-morning mist. So what's the problem? Why isn't this movie more satisfying? For me, it's because the central question-will she or won't she?-is one we already know the answer to. It's the scenes where we don't know the outcome, like the powerful one where Graham confronts her old friend McNamara, that are the most compelling. Given that, drawing out her dithering (despite how expertly Streep dithers) seems, finally, fake. For a contrast, consider the movie Spotlight. Again, we know the Globe reporters get the priest abuse story, but every interview had qualities of uncertainty about it. It was a puzzle painstakingly assembled in front of our eyes. I also could have done without the tepid and too-stagy anti-war demonstrations and the bevy of eager young women waiting for Graham as she leaves the U.S. Supreme Court building. The point about her pioneering in a male world had been already made, much more effectively. Nevertheless, in 2018, the story provides a vital reminder about the ongoing and urgent need for an unfettered news media to hold people in power to account.

On a drive through the American South some years ago, British writer-director Martin McDonagh saw a set of billboards that challenged the authorities similar to the way the sheriff of Ebbing, Missouri, is challenged in this film. The rage they embodied stayed with him, and although this film is billed as a black comedy, don't go looking for belly laughs. Its true subject is heartbreak. With an intelligent script that's perhaps a few minutes too long, McDonagh's characters' actions impinge on others like billiard balls knocking about on the table. Mildred Hayes (played by Frances McDormand-a genius at portraying tough, uncompromising women) intends for her actions to affect others when she pays for three billboards to be pasted up on a remote stretch of road outside town, blood red and anger-filled: "Raped While Dying. And Still No Arrests? How Come, Sheriff Willoughby?" Guilt and anger are written just as clearly on her unsmiling face. The sheriff's deputies, accustomed to have their way in all local matters, great and small, are offended. They want her to take them down. Of course she won't. One of them, Jason Dixon (Sam Rockwell) is an overgrown boy, prey to his every violent whim and McDonagh gives him a complex character arc. Sheriff Willoughby (Woody Harrelson) has other troubles on his mind and, while it's true he hasn't made progress in solving Angela Hayes's murder, it isn't true that he hasn't tried. Although his place in their world is the slipperiest, he has the best sense of what that place is. Several supporting roles are equally powerful (I especially liked Mildred's ex-husband's new girlfriend), and there are some laughs-people being their natural selves can be hilarious, usually without meaning to be. Though a broken heart manifests itself differently in all three main characters, it's Sheriff Willoughby who points the way to healing. Already the film has received numerous awards and nominations, including the Golden Globe for best motion picture drama, with Frances McDormand, Sam Rockwell, and Martin McDonagh (screenplay) winners too.

Written by Simon Beaufoy and directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, Battle of the Sexes shows the lead-up to the famous 1973 tennis match between world number one women's tennis player Billie Jean King (played by Emma Stone) and former men's champion Bobby Riggs (Steve Carell). You even get a bit of Howard Cosell, though filmmaking magic. In 1970, women tennis players received far less (about a tenth, I think) prize money than the men, because, as the head of the lawn tennis association explained (Bill Pullman again), women's tennis is just less interesting. King led a walkout, and the women left the association to form a new league. With Virginia Slims cigarettes as a sponsor, they had their own competitive tour (ironically, none of them smoked), managed by highly entertaining Gladys Heldman (Sarah Silverman) who does. In that context, Riggs—a hustler and clown, playing tennis costumed as little Bo Peep, complete with sheep, wearing swim fins, and the like—said he could easily beat the best woman player. "I love women," he says, "in the kitchen and in the bedroom," an attitude, unfortunately, newly topical. King takes up the challenge. While she trains, he cavorts. Home life isn't simple for either of them. Riggs's wife has left him, tired of his gambling, and King, though married, has her first lesbian relationship. At the time, public knowledge of that might have destroyed her career. Emma Stone does a fine job—likable and focused—and Carell is a believably driven character, teetering on tragedy as comics convey so well.

Woody Harrelson as LBJ? Actually, he does a fine job in this eponymous movie written by Joey Hartstone and directed by Rob Reiner. When it comes to the history depicted, this film gets it more right than most, partly because Reiner took the time to read and absorb the Robert Caro and Doris Kearns Goodwin histories. In 1960, LBJ is a genius in the Senate, though he's profane, even vulgar, the opposite of the Kennedy clan. Johnson won't say whether he plans to run for president in 1960 because, his aides suggest, "he's afraid he'll lose." Lady Bird (played by Jennifer Jason Leigh) overhears and corrects them: "He's afraid people won't love him." When Jack Kennedy (Jeffrey Donovan) surprisingly asks the Texan to become his vice president, Johnson accepts. You think it may be as much to tweak Bobby Kennedy (Michael Stahl-David), who obviously loathes him, as anything else. One of the most uncomfortable scenes occurs when he corners Bobby in a door alcove and says, "Bobby, why don't you like me?" Johnson never expects this office will be a sure path to the presidency, especially not after a mere thousand days. Seeing how the public loves Jack, and the outpouring of grief after the assassination, he apparently decides the best way to make people love him is to pursue Kennedy's policy relentlessly. And, thankfully, he did. That decision brought us new Civil Rights laws, the War on Poverty, Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start—and, tragically, the full-on Vietnam War. (The War just received the full Ken Burns treatment and isn't touched on much here.) He achieves those programs by continuing his masterful managing of the Senate, personalized here by Texas Senator Ralph Yarborough (Bill Pullman) and Georgia Senator Richard Russell (Richard Jenkins). Though the critics are cool to it, for the accurate history and some fine performances, it's nevertheless worth seeing.

"A lot of today's Hollywood films don't have a lot of patience. They sort of expect the audience to get bored really quickly, so they're like, 'We've got to have an explosion every 10 minutes.'" That was said about the dystopian science-fiction sequel Blade Runner 2049. It's hard then to imagine how a film like Columbus, the debut film of writer/director Kogonada, got made at all or that American audiences would sit through it. I liked it. Set in Columbus, Indiana, home to an astonishing collection of modernist architecture, the buildings speak to a young city resident, Casey (played by Haley Lu Richardson). She's been offered a chance to go to Boston to work and study with a prominent woman architect, but has decided to stay where she is, shelving books in the local library. She lives with her mother, recently recovered from a bad meth habit, and is afraid to leave her. They treat each other like thin-shelled eggs that require constant vigilance. She has an admirer at the library (Rory Culkin), who, like her mother, urges her to go. This stasis changes when she meets Jin (John Cho), the New York-based son of a prominent Korean architecture scholar who suffered a stroke while visiting the town. He's in the hospital and may never recover consciousness. He and Jin have had a distant relationship and Jin feels little connection now. He wants to get back to his life. The father is probably closer to his long-time assistant (Parker Posey), who, like Casey, has given up her individuality to play a supporting role. Richardson and Cho bring great depth to their parts, and it's a pleasure to watch them—indeed, the entire cast—work. There's not a lot of yelling or acting out. And not one explosion. The example of Casey, denying herself so much to protect her mother, weighs on Jin, just as his encouragement to follow her dream inspires her. This sounds simple, but the movie never drifts into the banal. The healing power of architecture is often referenced and the Columbus buildings, lit from inside at night or seen from odd angles, are stunningly beautiful. They loom over the characters studying them like benign watchmen. Arty, and satisfying—as Sean P. Means said in the Salt Lake Tribune, "a tender, beautiful gem that should not be overlooked."

Need a 119-minute break from the news headlines? This Steven Soderbergh caper comedy, script by Rebecca Blunt, may be just the thing. There's nothing too serious going on (a planned heist at NASCAR's big Memorial Day weekend race), but the characters are so well-developed and their robbery plot so complicated and devious, your attention is captured from the outset. Channing Tatum plays Jimmy Logan, out of work and, if his ex-wife has her way, out of his young daughter's life. He needs money. He proposes the theft to his brother Clyde (Adam Driver), the serious one, a bartender who lost an arm in Afghanistan. Clyde is reluctant, because he's convinced every family enterprise is destined for disaster—"the curse of the Logans." Love how he whips up a martini one-handed to quiet a mouthy British patron (Seth MacFarlane)! Their sister Mellie (Riley Keough), a beautician, is in on it too and gets sweet revenge on an irritating client who drives a purple Caddy. See that for yourself. To pull off this daring crime, the brothers need help. Unfortunately, the one man they know who really knows how to blow a safe is in prison. Part of their plan is to spring him for a day. Daniel Craig plays prisoner Joe Bang, in "a wonderfully wacky, show-stealing turn," said Todd McCarthy in The Hollywood Reporter. Joe insists his two brothers (Jack Quaid and Briain Gleeson) be brought into the plot, and the likelihood of success appears to plummet as these two slouch onto the scene. Prison warden Burns (Dwight Yoakam) is also a treat. Many funny moments, some relatively subtle. I particularly enjoyed the big race's opening ceremony, which deployed all the worst excesses of American sports jingoism.

I know a lot of people who would not like this remarkable movie, written and directed by Taylor Sheridan. If you don't like violence, you might as well stop reading now. If you oppose hunting, you can stop. If thoughts of a child being lost are too troubling, stop. But if you want to see a powerful tale about achieving retribution despite the forces aligned against that possibility, you may appreciate Wind River. So many easy mistakes this movie could have made, but didn't. There was no unconvincing romance, despite the respect and understated chemistry between the main characters. There were no long quasi-editorials about the plight of reservation Indians. The filmmakers show you that. There was no pretending that people simply get over soul-wounds by the next scene. These characters carry their pain with them and it helps shape who they are and what they will do. What the filmmakers do give you is beautiful, treacherous mountain scenery (the Wind River Indian Reservation is in Wyoming, though the film was shot in Utah), where blizzards are blinding and it's so cold that breathing can burst a person's lungs. They give you snowmobiles racing across the fields, forests whose sounds could be branches breaking or a family of stalking cougars. Best of all, they give you several profound cinematic moments, achieved not when the characters say a lot, but when they say almost nothing. "At times, Sheridan has his characters spell out a little too clearly what they're thinking and feeling . . . but the words are so beautiful and come from such a place of deep truth, it's hard not to be moved," says Christy Lemire in her review for RogerEbert.com. I don't want to say too much about the actual story, so as not to take away from your experiencing it fresh. Suffice it to say it's about the investigation of a murder; it's about gun culture and drug culture and their inevitable consequences; and it's about survival. And it's about loving and safeguarding your children. Once you have them, a father says, "You can't blink. Not once. Not ever." Put everything else aside and concentrate on the fine acting. Jeremy Renner plays the protagonist, fish & wildlife employee Cory Lambert ("I hunt predators") who has many reasons for trying to solve this killing; Elizabeth Olsen is the FBI agent who learns more in a week in the snow than in her FBI Academy training, that's for sure; Graham Greene is the laconic, seen-it-all tribal police chief; and Gil Birmingham is the father of the murdered girl.

Maud Lewis today is one of Canada's best-known primitive painters—quite an accomplishment for a poor, chronically ill woman from a townspeck between the Bay of Fundy and St. Mary's Bay. This charming film, written by Sherry White and directed by Aisling Walsh, tells her story. At least in the way that biopics do, leaving you wondering, was Maud's husband really so prickly? Did they really live in a tiny one-room house? Further research indicates the answers to those questions are probably not and yes. Maud suffered from painful juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, which may have stunted her growth, and an equally painful awkwardness in social interactions. In marrying Everett Lewis, she finds a man even more emotionally and socially stunted than she is. I can't say enough about how beautifully Sally Hawkins and Ethan Hawke play these odd characters. Physically, it had to be a taxing role for Hawkins, because Maud walks with difficulty and, as time passes, becomes more and more bent over. But a wide smile comes readily to a woman who can look at a window and say, "The whole of life, already framed, right there"—both to Hawkins and in photos and film of the real-life Maud. They find each other when Everett looks for a woman to cook and clean his one-room house while he runs his fish-peddling and junk collecting businesses. Maud is looking for an escape from under the thumb of her judgmental aunt. When he advertises for help in the general store, this tiny woman appears on his doorstep. She brings order to the house, but Maud's real desire is to paint. She starts by decorating the walls of Ev's house, then scrap construction materials he's brought home. From there, her career as an artist blossoms like her paintings, but since they charge about $5 per picture, it never makes them much money. Maudie is an uplifting story about a person who made the most of her gifts and whose efforts were recognized in her lifetime, far outside their Marshalltown, Nova Scotia, home. Because she had modest goals—"I've got everything I want with you, Ev. Everything."—she found tremendous satisfaction and joy in her life, despite its challenges. (Many of Maud Lewis's paintings are now in the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, as is the Lewises' actual house, restored after the Gallery acquired it in 1984. In May 2017, a Maud Lewis painting sold at auction for $45,000.)

The Big Sick is loosely based on the real-life romance between comedian Kumail Nanjiani and his wife, Emily V. Gordon, who together wrote the script. Directed by Princeton native Michael Showalter (trailer), it puts fresh juice into the romcom genre. Kumail's family moved from Pakistan to the Chicago area when he was a child, in part to give him a better life. What they gave him was an American life. While his parents (played by Zenobia Shroff and Anupam Kher) expect religious devotion, marriage to a Pakistani girl, and a professional career, he's become perhaps too assimilated—secular, uninterested in an arranged marriage with any of the beautiful but traditional young women his mother parades before him, and a part-time Uber driver focused on developing his skills as a stand-up comic. At the downscale comedy club where he works he meets graduate student Emily (Zoe Kazan), and the two of them hit it off. Really well. Ultimately, though, if he marries a woman who's not Pakistani, he knows his family will disown him. When Emily at length senses the problem, she asks, "Can you envision a future where the two of us are together?" He can't say it, but he shakes his head, and she breaks off the relationship. Kumail finds out Emily has developed a mysterious illness and is hospitalized with cascading medical complications. He goes to visit her and ends up signing papers allowing the doctors to put her in a medically induced coma. Now he's responsible, and he cannot leave her bedside. Her frantic parents (played to perfection by Ray Romano and Holly Hunter) arrive from North Carolina. Aware of the unhappy break-up, they are not very friendly, and now Kumail must deal with them too. And his wobbly career. Nanjiani does a terrific job as himself (much harder than it might seem). He occasionally reminds me of Bill Murray, in the way he has of being acutely observant and still, as if thinking, "Ok, I'm smiling, but would somebody please tell me what the hell's going on here?!!?" The acting all around is warm-hearted and true. Particularly enjoyable are the other comics (Bo Burnham, Aidy Bryant, and Kurt Braunohler) jabbing each other mercilessly. They're all experienced, well-regarded comedians IRL, and kudos to Braunohler for taking the role of a somewhat dim guy who the others decide is really not that funny. It's sweet, you'll laugh, and it has a rewarding core of truth.

I have a friend who doesn't like intense family dramas—too many bad associations. He'll have to avoid The Dinner (the trailer gives too much away, BTW), written and directed by Oren Moverman. The movie is based on Dutch author Herman Koch's excellent novel (2013), which I greatly admired. It's told in the first person, and I wondered how the narrator's snide and witty commentary would translate to the screen. That aspect of it worked differently in the book and survived less successfully in the film, with biting humor replaced by mental chaos. Steve Coogan plays Paul Lohman, an erstwhile high school history teacher who loathes (actually, is desperately jealous of) his politically successful older brother Stan (Richard Gere), now embarking on a gubernatorial campaign. The brothers and their wives (Laura Linney and Rebecca Hall) are to have dinner at an exclusive restaurant, but Paul at least is not looking forward to it. Nor should he be. Stan has an agenda. He wants to discuss something truly awful—criminal, in fact—their teenage sons have done, which could explode all their lives. Comparisons with Roman Polanski's Carnage are perhaps inevitable, but the fireworks and the damage here are all in the family. The kids who caused the whole debacle are weakly portrayed, and the movie, unlike the novel, ends ambiguously. If your focus is on strong performances, this is a worthy effort. If you want a convincing story, read the book.

Full title of this Joseph Cedar movie is Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer. Norman the person is not very likable. He stands too close when he talks to you, he's relentless in searching for an angle, he's quick with the half-to-full-lie. But in Richard Gere's nuanced portrayal, initial discomfort turns to something more like sympathy. How he's treated by the people who see him for what he is becomes simultaneously justified and painful. The sympathy is possible because Norman isn't angling to benefit himself, at least not financially. He only wants to feel important, that he matters in the world, yet he remains "always just a few capillaries removed from the beating heart of power," says A.O. Scott in the New York Times. When he has a setback, and he has plenty of them, you see the gears turning until he hits a way to make the best of it. When Norman "bumps into" an Israeli diplomat and does him a favor, right there you know the seeds of calamity are planted. I won't say more about the plot, which is complicated in the delicious way that only someone like Norman could complicate it. Israeli actor Lior Ashkenazi plays the diplomat; Michael Sheen plays Norman's put-upon nephew; Steve Buscemi as the rabbi of a financially distressed congregation is "a marvel of wit and off-kilter humanity," Scott says; and Manhattan plays itself, beautifully.

While this drama, adapted by Gabby Chiappe Directed by Lone Scherfig, is too serious to be a comedy, it offers many laugh-out-loud moments, as well as a few tears along the way. The conceit is that the British government has commissioned a feature film that will inspire Britons and, with luck, the Americans too, to support the war effort. The subject: the inspiring evacuation of Dunkirk. The filmmakers realize they need to appeal to women in the audience, so they hire a young woman (Gemma Arterton) for the writing team to create "the slop"—that is, the female dialog. She turns out to more than fill the bill and has the chance to find her own voice along the way. In addition to Arterton, fine performances from Sam Claflin as the cynical head writer, Bill Nighy as an over-the-hill actor who's never fully convinced he shouldn't be the romantic lead, Rachael Stirling as a spy for the foreign office with a soft heart, and Helen McCrory as Nighy's no-nonsense agent. You'll love the Jeremy Irons cameo, in which he gets carried away delivering Henry V's "band of brothers" speech.

On the very positive side, this drama about Jews hidden in the wreckage of the Warsaw Zoo is based on a true story. Right now, when meanness seems to trump acts of charity and compassion, that's an important message. At the same time, there's quite a bit of déjà vu here, as director Niki Caro fails to plow new ground or to "capture the many layers of this unique story, relying instead on plainly-stated metaphors," said Sheila O'Malley on Rogerebert.com and a contrived and unpersuasive relationship between the main character and "Hitler's zookeeper." Antonina and Jan Zabiński really did save more than three hundred Jews after German bombs and stormtroopers destroyed their zoo. They hid the refugees in their own home, changed their appearance, gave them false papers, and spirited them away, under the enemy's noses. See it for the animals, the fine performance by Jessica Chastain as Antonina, and for the reminder that even in extreme circumstances there are people who believe, as Jan Zabiński said many years later, "If you can save somebody's life, it's your duty to try." Supporting performances are strong as well. Written by Angela Workman.

Oppressed (or freaked out) by the news? Here's a calming and rewarding way to spend two hours in a movie theater cocoon. Writer/director Jim Jarmusch's movie Paterson doesn't travel far, but it's a pleasant journey. Adam Driver plays a New Jersey Transit bus driver (possibly he was cast based on his name alone) named Paterson, who drives a bus in—you knew it!—Paterson, New Jersey. He lives there with his wife Laura (Golshifteh Farahani) and their English bulldog, Marvin (Nellie). Though he follows the same routine and drives the same bus route every day, Paterson is not bored, because his creative imagination is fully engaged. A basement poet, he polishes his creations on the job, and they scroll gently across the screen as he makes his rounds or studies the Passaic River's Great Falls. He carries his books of poetry—especially that of William Carlos Williams—and listens to the small talk of his passengers, the rhythm of their language as much as the words. It's "a movie that's filled with poetry and that is a poem in itself. The movie's very being is based in echoes and patterns," said Richard Brody in The New Yorker. Laura bursts forth with her own creative endeavors, the only common thread of which is their black-and-white color scheme. Black-and-white frosted cupcakes—a big hit at the farmer's market—which she hopes will make them rich; a black and white harlequin guitar, which she hopes will launch her career as a country singer. She's a charming dabbler and Paterson's muse. Every night when he returns home, it seems some other part of their house or Laura's wardrobe has been reconceived in her favorite non-color combination. I couldn't help believing that at some point she'll recognize that her immense talent with fabric would be an awesome career direction. Meanwhile, her patterns fill Paterson with visual interest, "creating a vibrant visual punctuation to the otherwise relaxed storytelling," said Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. Paterson the driver, or perhaps I should say, Driver as Paterson, has one extracurricular activity, a visit to a neighborhood tavern every evening. Lots happens during that one nightly beer. Most of it hilarious. The décor of the tavern, replete with articles about Paterson greats—especially Lou Costello—further ties the man and the story to a circumscribed geography, the launchpad for his words. Driver, Farahani, and Nellie play their roles winningly, with a memorable, if small, supporting cast.

You forget Turkey's difficult politics watching this documentary by Turkish filmmaker Ceyda Torun and cinematographer Charlie Wuppermann about Istanbul's Big Romance with—cats! (What did you think "Kedi" means?) At an hour twenty-minutes, the film is somewhat longer than it might be, but as a vacation from the news cycle, perhaps not long enough. The residents of Istanbul don't "own" most of the cats that roam their streets and markets, that nest in quiet places and makeshift hideaways. But they more than tolerate them, they celebrate them. And the cats, meanwhile, act like "slumming royals," says Joe Leydon in Variety. You can see the cast here. A number of the featured felines rule the neighborhoods where they live, defending their turf against interlopers and providing benefits to the humans. "They absorb my negative energy," one man says. A waterside restaurant owner who'd had a problem with "mice" (I fear this was a euphemism) celebrated the day "this lion took up residence." She takes care of the "mice," to the comfort of the diners, I'm sure. My particular favorite was the cat who lives at a deli. She never goes inside, but paws at the window—rather insistently, it should be noted—when she wants one of the countermen to make her a snack. The filmmakers identified a number of the city's human residents whose mission seems to be to keep these felines in food. One pair of women cooks twenty pounds of chicken a day for them. (!) "All of us have tabs with all the vets," says a bakery owner, and we see a man take an injured kitten to the vet in a taxi.. In short, the film is charming. It talks about how cats are different than dogs. And it shows how caring for the cats has been helpful to people in many ways. Suitable for all ages, and especially for those who have—or wish they had—been to Istanbul and now are reluctant to go because of paragraph one above. As Leydon says, it's "splendidly graceful and quietly magical."

Scriptwriter Nick Payne transformed Julian Barnes's prize-winning novel into this movie directed by Ritesh Batra about a self-absorbed Londoner and his growing obsession with a woman from his distant past. It appears he'd much rather be living there, with the frisson of youth and the sixties—than in his current divorced, not especially accomplished, late-middle-age state. Tony Webster (played superbly by James Broadbent) becomes a voyeuristic observer of the life that might have been. He receives an unexpected letter from his former girlfriend's mother telling him she's bequeathed him the diary of his youthful best friend—the best friend who stole the girlfriend from him. It's an odd thing, but he becomes determined to get that diary, while the ex-girlfriend (Charlotte Rampling) is determined he not have it. The conflict sparks many nostalgic reminiscences about those days. It transpires that events were shatteringly different from how he has understood them all along. Meanwhile, his ex-wife (Harriet Walter, who is in everything lately) is onto him, and his daughter (Michelle Dockery, Downton Abbey's Lady Mary) is about to yank him back into the present by producing a grandchild. Again, the cast is terrific, even if Webster himself is annoyingly oblivious, and the source material is strong. I have not read the book, but apparently Julian Barnes told the filmmakers not to be constrained by his text: "Throw the book against the wall," he said. The critics seem to think they followed that advice rather too well.

Pity the poor teenage boy Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann) in this film written and directed by Mike Mills and set in Santa Barbara in the late 1970s. He not only has a protective, chain-smoking single mother, Dorothea (played by Annette Bening), but she recruits his girl friend, one word, not two (Elle Fanning) and her boarder (Greta Gerwig) to help look out for him, to teach him "how to be a good man." Three moms could be a bit much, and is, but he is graceful under pressure, even when Gerwig inducts him into feminist thinking with Our Bodies, Our Selves. The resident handyman (Billy Crudup) could be a decent masculine role model, but he and Jamie just don't connect. The movie has a lot of cultural references to the 70s that may make you laugh or shake your head. A group of Dorothea's friends sit around to listen to Jimmy Carter's preachy bummer of a speech about the "crisis of confidence" among Americans and the need to get past rampant consumerism. This impolitic speech was reviled at the time (one of the characters says, "He is so f-----")—and now sounds distressingly prescient. The acting is A+, and "What is so special about Dorothea (and every character in the film) is that they aren't 'quirky' in an annoying, independent film way," says Sheila O'Malley for Rogerebert.com. They're real people.

This multiply-honored Danish-German movie from Martin Zandvliet also could have been titled Land of Mines, since it is based on Denmark's real post-World War II program that used POWs to clear the mines the Germans laid up and down the Danes' western seacoast. Apparently, someone in Hitler's command believed the Allied invasion might take place there, and when the war was over, the mines had to go. In real life, we're told, some 2,000 prisoners were given the task of clearing the beaches of some 1.5 million mines—a task New York Times reviewer A.O. Scott terms "intuitively fair and obviously cruel." About half of these former soldiers, many of whom were mere teenagers, died or were seriously injured in the process. This movie, which has subtitles, is about 14 such prisoners and not easy to watch. Lacking the Hollywood cues that typically signal when disaster's coming and who will be next to die, every moment of training, every defusing of a mine, every run on the beach is tension-filled. Hardass Danish Sergeant Carl Rasmussen (played by Roland Møller) doesn't think these prisoners should get by with a thing, and he works them hard. The story, then, is about how he gradually comes to see them as the young boys they are. The Danes are justly praised for saving the vast majority of their Jews in World War II, despite the country's occupation by the German army, but this almost forgotten episode shows a darker side. Not everyone is capable of compassion or of easy forgiveness. And where should the Sergeant's loyalties lie? With his countrymen (and the rest of humanity) who have suffered at the hands of the Nazis or with the boys now under his absolute command? The boys condemned to this excruciating duty, with its meager diet and the receding possibility they will ever return home, are portrayed by a fourteen young actors—including a pair of twins—who are utterly believable. Is their deadly task necessity or punishment? How much bravery is required just to persevere? A recent Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, Land of Mine was shot on location on the Danish coast. A real mine—one missed by the young searchers more than 70 years ago—was discovered during filming.

Director Kristóf Deák makes very good use of the children without becoming over-sentimental in this story of what happens when a choral teacher bent on winning an important prize tells some of the children to just not sing. Elementary solidarity! One small correction to an earlier reviewer, the film takes place not in a girls' school, but a regular school, and the chorus members are both boys and girls.

The holiday dry spell of movies worth watching is officially over. Lots of good films filling the theaters. I'm glad we caught Moonlight, written and directed by Barry Jenkins (III) before it faded, though maybe it will be around longer now with the Oscar Best Picture nomination. I'd seen the preview and came away asking myself, what the heck is this movie about?, instead of my usual, why did they give away so much of the story?!! Immediately I was persuaded to see it, though, upon learning the play it's based on was written by Tarell Alvin McCraney, whose Brothers Size plays were so powerful on the McCarter Theatre stage a couple of seasons ago. Whatever it was about, I knew it would be worth watching. Brian Tallerico for RogerEbert.com calls it "one of the essential American films of 2016." In some ways it reminds me of modern (30 under 30) fiction-writing. A bit of disjointedness and a big dose of grit are part of the package. We see protagonist Chiron (pronounced Shih-RONE) at age 10 or so (Alex Hibbert), as a high school student (Ashton Sanders) negotiating tricky teenage waters in a violent environment, and finally as a young adult (Trevante Rhodes), struggling with his sexuality. While he in some ways advances, becoming more physically powerful, if still emotionally fragile, his mother (Naomie Harris) succumbs to her addictions and her sentimentality. His one lifelong friend Kevin (André Holland) cannot be the lifeline he needs. As Mara Reinstein says in US Weekly, the movie "touches on themes of race, sexuality and isolation in ways that are rarely depicted in cinema." A late scene with the adult Chiron and his mother, says so little in words and so much in feeling that it feels like a documentary. It doesn't seem like actors reading lines; it's real people struggling to connect. The actors playing Chiron at all three ages do a stellar job. Two actors recently in very different parts in Hidden Figures appear again here: Mahershala Ali as the young Chiron's drug dealer mentor and Janelle Monáe as his girlfriend. Various artistic touches distinguish this film, reminding you it is a deliberately created thing. Parts of it are filmed with such super-saturated tropical heat that the stills would be like artworks in themselves. McCraney and Jenkins both grew up in Miami's Liberty Square area, and the film carries the strength of their grip on its realities.