Lisa Kennedy

There is much that is tenderly grown-up in this drama that tangles with diverging ambitions and the economics of work. Yet there’s something wanting in the insularity.

Brooks expertly traverses the divide between ease and gravity, from a sad-funny moment with her sister to a touching maternal mea culpa.

The filmmaker Maya Annik Bedward’s “Black Zombie,” about the historical and cultural roots of a seemingly unstoppable genre, begins and ends on a spiritual note. Or, as Yves-Grégory Francois, a Haitian I.T. professional and Vodou priest, suggests, a note of “metaphysical justice.”

In Middletown, the kids seem more than all right. So, too, the grownups they’ve become. It’s the adults charged with public safety who are concerning.

It’s easy to discern a certain yearning on the part of the filmmakers shimmering beneath all those action set pieces. . . you might even find yourself getting a bit misty at the declarations of independent thinking in the service of our still-young republic, however escapist.

The Marching Band unfolds with a measured grace, thanks to that attention as well as the complementary work of its leads and charming ensemble.

Sandler is sweetly attuned to Sophie, a sometimes tentative teenager. And Lynskey strikes a believable balance as both a fighter and a woman tired of the fight.

As it marks ends and beginnings, “Julian” honors a love abridged and enduring.

Recollection or recounting are not what Owens is after here. The notion of a reimagining falls even further from the truth of this cinematic evocation and deep-welled benediction. “Jimmy” aims to be restorative. It aches to bestow joy to him and to make sure we see this young pensive artist as a Black gay man far from a vexing home.

The film’s nuanced moments are found in that encircling amity in which they all fight.