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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."