'A Simple Soldier' Review: A Fascinating, Fraught Documentary About the Ukraine War

"It's like a movie." "It's on the verge of both horror and romance." This brief conversation, which we hear early on in Juan Camilo Cruz and Artem Ryzhykov's grim documentary "A Simple Soldier," is one of its most revealing. Referring to the first glimpses of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which began in 2022 and has now carried on for three years with little end in sight despite hundreds of thousands of casualties, it's one that sees two people attempting to make sense of something terrifying playing out right in front of their eyes in a way that is familiar. People . . .