War is boring as hell in “The Damned,” an austere western drama set far from the battlefields on the 1862 frontier. It seeks not to tell a story but to capture a set of feelings. None of them ...

Roberto Minervini’s narrative debut “The Damned” revisits the U.S. Civil War in a cinema verite style. Minervini, who has helmed a slew of documentary films, deployed his nonfiction ...

The Italian-born filmmaker Roberto Minervini has, until now, focused on documentaries, but his first fiction film bears hallmarks of keen observation and suggestiveness.

Adam Gopnik reviews “Lincoln’s Peace: The Struggle to End the American Civil War,” by Michael Vorenberg, and “1861: The Lost Peace,” by Jay Winik.