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If it had been released just two years ago, “Bonhoeffer” might have come across as simply the latest in a long line of respectable but predictable period dramas about brave Germans who dared to stand up to the Nazi regime. Today, however, the movie feels more like an uncomfortably timely cautionary tale with unsettling echoes of current events.

Not just because it reminds us that, in the late 1930s, Hitler’s sympathizers distributed a Nazified version of the Bible that depicted Jesus as a pure-bred Aryan — and demanded loyalty to Der Fuhrer in one of two extra commandments added to the original text. (Sales were huge.) Written and directed by Todd Komarnicki, a filmmaker arguably known best as the scripter for “Sully” from Clint Eastwood (who gets a special thanks shout-out in the closing credits hwew), “Bonhoeffer” illustrates the relative ease with which Hitler gained the acceptance and eventual fealty...

Moneyball is a terrific and unique sports movie based on a true story from Major League Baseball, but several key figures from the actual events are left out. Brad Pitt stars as Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland Athletics between 1997 and 2015, who was celebrated for his groundbreaking approach to baseball team management. Moneyball tells the story of Beane's ingenious use of sports analytics to redefine how baseball teams fill out their rosters, mixing elements of underdog sports movies with high-octane dialogue from acclaimed screenwriter Aaron Sorkin.

The true story of Moneyball is that the Athletics found themselves at a disadvantage compared to larger franchises like the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox, where the big city market makes the teams inherently more appealing to star players. Thinking outside the box, Billy Beane incorporated new ideas for the 2002 baseball season and managed to send the underdog Athletics on...

Bennett Miller's "Moneyball" is a lovely lie of a film. It's the Hollywood version of Michael Lewis' already-massaging-the-truth book about Billy Beane's epiphanic Major League Baseball success with sabermetrics (a statistics-based measurement of a player's value to the team) in rebuilding a partially gutted-by-free-agency Oakland Athletics team after the departure of their best offensive players. In Miller's film, unorthodox general manager Beane (Brad Pitt) hires stat nerd Peter Brand (based on front office guru Paul DePodesta and played by Jonah Hill) to help him build a contender for the cash-strapped A's by stocking their lineup with statistically productive players cast off or ignored by the rest of the league.

In the end, it works: the A's go on a (statistically unpredictable) 20-game win streak at the end of the season, win the American League West and go to the American League Division Series where they're defeated by the Minnesota Twins.