Stevenson’s memoir, Just Mercy, was a best-seller that brought Walter McMillan’s story national attention. Director Destin Daniel Cretton adapted the book into a film of the same name that was released in January and is currently streaming on Amazon Prime. The timely release of this bravely acted, absorbing true story puts the film on a short list of accessible resources inviting reflection on the flaws in our criminal justice system.

Just Mercy does more than lay bare the need for criminal justice reform. It tells a story of family, community, friendship and love. It demonstrates that couples can and do recover from infidelity. This is hardly the point of the film, but as a couples therapist I find it a noteworthy detail explored from an unusual angle. It celebrates the value of professional integrity and demonstrates why pursuit of meaningful work is always fulfilling and sometimes an act of bravery.

Just Mercy is a true story that is as relevant as ever, and appropriate for family viewing with middle school and high school aged children.

Each summer, Elio’s father (an archaeology professor) hires a research assistant to work and live with the family. When the dashing and entitled Oliver (Armie Hammer) arrives on the scene, his American attitude clashes a bit with Elio’s family who seem charmed by his flamboyant looks but overwhelmed by his cavalier demeanor. Elio (Timothee Chalamet) is seventeen years-old and absolutely stunning. Elio and Oliver’s sexual chemistry sparks quickly but remains subtle and subdued, until it explodes. The Italian countryside in which the tale unfolds infuses an passionate clique of characters with joy and abandon.

The film’s title, Call Me By Your Name, alludes to how same-sex relationships involve special challenges with respect to identity and the emotional task of balancing separateness and togetherness. Romantic partners sharing the same gender can more easily blend into one. Nevertheless, this entrancing love story is ultimately more about individuality and coming of age than it is about separateness or togetherness.

The plot is not concerned with gender so much as it is with the passion and abandon of young, forbidden love. The scenes building up to Elio and Oliver’s affair are as sensual as the sparks that fly once the relationship becomes physical. Each scene is as visual and tactile as the next. But the film’s closing conversation between Elio and his father is especially memorable. As a therapist who works with many therapy clients who are eager to explore relationships with their parents or with their teenage children, the insight and honesty that flows between father and son is extraordinary. Elio’s father speaks to Elio with palpable respect, candor and honesty. His wisdom and perception stuns, as he offers a template for fatherly discourse that is as instructive as it is inspiring.

Elizabeth Olsen plays FBI agent Jane Banner, who is called to the Native American Wind River reservation in Wyoming following Cory Lambert’s (a respected local wildlife tracker played convincingly by Jeremy Renner) discovery of the dead body of a teenage girl. Lambert has quickly realized the dead girl is Natalie – his teenage daughter’s best friend. Lambert’s daughter had also mysteriously died a few years earlier.

Because murders on Native American land are federal crimes, the FBI dispatches Banner, who is woefully ill-equipped to navigate the terrain (she arrives, in the depth of winter, in a windbreaker). Banner makes up for her youth and naiveté through grit, bravery and determination. Her seriousness as a strong and believable character is compounded by the lack of romance between Banner and Lambert despite the intense circumstances of the terrain and the close proximity these characters enjoy throughout the investigation.

Wind River was therapeutic mother-daughter viewing for unexpected reasons beyond Olsen’s substantial role. I, like many of my therapy clients, struggle with my teenage daughters’ desire to feel trusted and with how this reasonable urge often leads to insistence on a degree of independence that can feel extreme or even reckless. “Don’t you trust me?!?” is a question I and so many of my therapy clients with teenage children are often asked. Without spoiling the gripping backstory that the murder investigation reveals, this film offers metaphorical lessons about trust, supervision and independence.

The entirely unexpected twists and turns of this gripping plot — set in the breathtaking backdrop of the Wyoming landscape – demonstrate how a grown-up situation that seems appealing and wonderful can quickly change and devolve into a dangerous and life-threatening chaos. If your teenagers are pressing for more autonomy than you feel they can handle, this compelling and memorable film has an important message.

HBO’s riveting original movie, Wizard of Lies, explores Bernie Madoff’s historic ponzi scheme through the lens of his pathological personality and his dysfunctional family dynamics. The film is based on New York Times financial reporter Diana B. Henriques’ 2011 book by the same title. Henriques plays herself in the film, and her interview of Madoff punctuates the plot. Both Henriques’ book and the HBO film explore the curious question of whether Madoff’s two sons, Mark and Andrew, were aware of the massive crimes taking place amidst their supposedly thriving family investment firm. Barry Levinson directs Robert De Niro as Madoff and Michelle Pfeiffer as Madoff’s wife, Ruth. Both De Niro and Pfeiffer disappear into their characters and Madoff’s sons Mark (Alessandro Nivola) and Andrew (Nathan Darrow) are also convincing and complex.

The question of Mark and Andrew Madoff’s knowledge and accountability is a fascinating one from the perspective of systems theory. What the film does best is demonstrate the complex possibility that the family dynamic may have been structured so that the professionally disengaged, closed-door culture of their family business paralyzed the sons in their tracks. An entire floor of the company was off limits to the Madoff sons, which may seem bizarre to an outsider. Nevertheless, an office floor hidden in plain sight is a classic example of the disengaged dynamic in play. In an especially memorable scene, his son goes so far as to say he does not understand certain aspects of the business and his father yells “You don’t have to understand!!!!” At the same time, the internal structure of the Madoff family system may have felt so enmeshed that there was no permission to step back emotionally and assert enough emotional independence to determine the obvious and disturbing realities churning under their watch.

Individuals who grow up in families that are intensely enmeshed or dramatically disengaged often feel exceptionally isolated as they imagine such extremes are not relatable to others. They presume that no-one outside their actual family could possibly understand the dynamics of their familial relationships. Of course, this view only perpetuates their isolation. And Wizard of Lies depicts this brutal truth following the disturbing trajectory of each son. Viewing this memorable film may feel therapeutic and relatable to individuals with such families through its ability to throw open a window illuminating the behind-closed-doors of relatable family dysfunction.