This picture offers more action, more delicious comeuppances, more daring design and a few genuinely surprising cameos just for good measure. Yet it doesn’t suffer from the usual “give ’em the same thing, but more of it” bloat common in sequels to surprise hits. Its ensemble is more varied than Knives‘, and its critique of the clueless rich more relevant to our age.

Palmason boldly risks audience disenfranchisement by pushing his disturbing story to unexpected lengths dramatically and stylistically, thereby winning a creative wrestling match with a potentially intransigent narrative.

Besides his sure gift for incisive characterizations and acerbically witty dialogue, Johnson also displays a strong visual sense, with the film shot and edited for maximum effect.

Childhood memoirs always are under threat from self-indulgence and sentimentality, but 1993 successfully sidesteps both, establishing Simon as a talent to watch.

Some years from now, Starred Up, a rough, violent and, to American ears, half-indecipherable British prison drama, will be remembered as the film that announced a new star, Jack O’Connell.

Both touching and universally understandable, the theme is how an untimely death destroys the fragile fabric that binds a family together.

Darius Khondji's cinematography evokes to the hilt the gorgeously inviting Paris of so many people's imaginations (while conveniently ignoring the rest), and the film has the concision and snappy pace of Allen's best work.

It proves that Beauvois still masters his uniquely classical brand of filmmaking, coaxing strong performances out of veteran Nathalie Baye and newbie Iris Bry, who makes an impressive screen debut.

Hosoda has a lovely, light touch and leavens the proceedings with dry, well-observed humor.

The strong cast, high-gloss production values and constant wow factor of the action offer plenty of distraction from the storytelling deficiencies.

This biographical drama, grounded in the anguished poetry of its protagonist, is hushed and decorous to a fault. But it does eventually wind its way to a profoundly affecting conclusion.

Lindholm here makes yet another modestly scaled but effective drama that asks more uncomfortable questions than it answers.

Movies like this are why arthouses exist, and why we'll seek them out again as soon as it's safe to breathe near our fellow humans.

At the end of Living, I felt not like I’d seen an old favorite in a new light, but like I might want to go back and watch Ikiru again. There are worse outcomes for a remake than reviving affection for the original, or retelling an old story for a new audience that may not have heard it before. There are better ones, too.

The leisurely narrative is barely able to sustain the film's full-length running time, and some of the obviously staged sequences involving the family of shepherds are annoyingly hokey. Nonetheless, "Weeping Camel" has an undeniable appeal.

The dissected minutiae of this adultery drama unfortunately doesn't add up to a very original or moving whole.

While things get a tad buckled town in mayhem and special effects throughout the film’s busy final reels, Wright spends enough time sketching out his mischievous middle-aged men so that their journey...feels worthwhile and even meaningful for a few of them.

The film is a captivating, sobering look at the world’s endangered aquatic species, but it’s also a frightening revelation of what methane and carbon are doing to the ocean.

Neatly divided into seven discrete chapters plus prologue and epilogue, it's a necessarily repetitive but engrossing and ultimately optimistic glimpse into a troubled situation entering belated turnaround.

Modest in aesthetic terms but more jounalistically serious than many low-budget advocacy docs, the film will be an eye-opener for some, and should add to pressure on executives to stop pretending they're innocent of the crimes contractors commit on their behalf.

Considering that it was filmed in bits and pieces over two decades, it's not surprising that 17 Blocks is disjointed in its storytelling, nor that its technical elements are ragged (subtitles are frequently employed due to poor sound quality). But it nonetheless packs a potent emotional punch.

Demanding attention, imagination and critical viewing from the audience, Chinese Portrait is nevertheless one for posterity.

Though it can at times feel wanting in dramatic heft or clarity, The Dog Who Wouldn't Be Quiet can also be revelatory, and its drama flowers in delightfully unflashy ways.

Even when Mountains’ narrative, which often feels more like a series of beautifully conjured vignettes, doesn’t hit its full potential, the way Sorelle thinks of gentrification rewards our close attention.

With its stellar performances, dramatic orchestral score and rich costume and set design, Illusions Perdues is a worthwhile, sweeping narrative of love, lust and literary ambition.

Joshua Z. Weinstein's charming Menashe immerses us in an authentic environment of ultra-Orthodox Judaism and makes it relatable by weaving a sweet story familiar in its general contours, of a single father struggling to hold on to the son he loves.

No true fan of science fiction -- or, for that matter, cinema -- can help but thrill to the action, high stakes and suspense built around a very original chase movie.

It's a splendid microcosm of contemporary China's aspirations and shortcomings.