Guy Lodge

That We Are What We Are steers just shy of silliness even at its most outrageous is in large part thanks to a committed cast of non-disposable character actors.

This is quick, nippy entertainment that raises plenty of sociopolitical talking points without digging too deep into any of them.

The duly playful, freeform result occasionally skirts preciousness but is mostly rather affecting, bound by a palpable sense of female friendship and a perceptive interest in the dynamics thereof.

If her filmmaking style is relatively straightforward, it’s a rich, raw sense of place that gives this Sundance entry — premiering in world dramatic competition — vitality and danger.

The filmmakers have lightened and brightened their source material to a kid-friendly degree — even the English countryside, as glisteningly shot by George Steel, has never looked less overcast. Yet there’s wisdom amid the silliness, as the story gently makes a case for the necessity of grief, mindfulness and mortal awareness, even in a life otherwise unburdened by adult human responsibility.

Even when Disco Boy threatens to be too much or too little, however, Rogowski’s strange, sparse, plaintive performance keeps its soul intact, and its most poignant query afloat above all the flash and dazzle and neon lights: just how much of themselves people will sacrifice for a paper identity.

Fearsomely visceral and impeccably performed, it’s a brisk, bracing update, even as it remains exquisitely in period.

An amusing, extravagantly implausible farce that nonetheless makes a pointed argument about the perceived marginalization of childless women in modern society.

It’s a modest film with a heart very much on its torn sleeve, given force and ballast by another fine dramatic turn from the hard-working Virginie Efira.

With an assist from Sally Hawkins’ valiantly committed lead performance, the result occasionally summons the genuinely disoriented perspective of an unstable protagonist, but more often, it’s the filmmaking that seems to spiral out of control.

Florence Foster Jenkins is an audience picture first and foremost: one wholly sympathetic to its eponymous subject’s delusional drive to delight crowds with or without the requisite artistry.

Cividino depicts the tricky male power games between the boys with tact and compassionate impartiality.

[A] sensitive, deliberate debut feature.

Everything in L’Immensità is beautiful even when everything wasn’t: Crialese’s odd, affecting memory piece layers the world as it was, is and could be in the same gilded frame.

Hepburn’s film eschews the expected emotional progression of a grief drama by focusing as much on continuing pain as sudden mourning.

Creatively speaking, however, A Ciambra is something of a step sideways for the Italian-American filmmaker, consolidating his considerable formal and observational gifts while fumbling a bit as storytelling.

If Huppert’s endearingly scatty, offhand performance lends proceedings a veil of comfy familiarity, however, A Traveler’s Needs nonetheless finds the indefatigable Korean auteur at his most puckishly cryptic.

Sympathetic as Thor’s journey to awareness is, Heartstone’s languid, rollingly repetitive storytelling never quite justifies its weighted focus on his character at the expense of his friend’s more active anguish; a more judicious edit could place both in sharper relief.

The film's chief pleasures are those of practiced professionals doing their job, and doing it well. None of the stars here is slacking, and their combined, easily resumed chemistry ensures that this sequel, for good long stretches, feels like old times — even if it's hard to imagine fans of its predecessor cherishing repeat viewings to quite the same extent.

The result is as despairing as any portrait of close-knit family and dedicated parenthood can be, adeptly blending sensationalism with domestic intimacy, and sincerely eye-opening in its portrayal of inherited Islamist fervor.

Who You Think I Am is a surprise package that plays its trump cards with shrugging insouciance, yielding giggles and gasps in equal measure, sometimes at once.

An intelligent, restrained but warmly intimate cinematic conversation with the Sixth Generation Chinese trailblazer.

Quite what we gain from the experience is uncertain, with most viewers likely to leave the film understanding little more of the Unabomber than they did two hours before. Still, Ted K is impressive and oppressive in equal measure.

Low on narrative drive, and marred by a misjudged final-act swerve into extravagant whimsy, Nicholas Hytner’s amiable luvvie-fest is enlivened by Smith’s signature irascibility.

Benjamin wrings a lot of warmly perceptive, occasionally acidic humor. The film might be termed a romantic comedy, though the will-they-won’t-they dynamic that usually powers the genre feels beside the point here.

It’s a film as compellingly all over the shop as its subject, even if it doesn’t quite have her beat on stylistic verve and risk.

At 99 minutes, A Woman’s Life is brisk and concentrated, but it never feels glibly selective with regard to its protagonist, permitting us access to Gabrielle at her most impressive, her most unbearable and her most disarmingly ordinary.

The result, though intermittently stirring and often luminously shot, represents something of a chore for all but the most ardent Jia completists — and even some of them may be left adrift by the literary scope of a film that does surprisingly little to contextualize its subjects for viewers unfamiliar with their work.