Although the narrative is structured through a highly unbelievable instigating conceit — Zain is trying to sue his own parents in court for giving him life in the first place — Labaki lures such outstanding performances out of the almost entirely non-professional cast and sketches such a credible view of this wretchedly poor milieu that the flaws are mostly forgivable.

This is a picaresque road movie about two mismatched characters, with rookie director A.B. Shawky offering a motley and not entirely smooth cocktail of drama and melodrama, a dash of social critique and insight, some chuckles and a few tugs at the heartstrings, mainly by virtue of its near-virtuoso score.

The screenplay to The World Is Yours is sporadically hilarious though rarely subtle, relying a little too heavily on boorish stereotypes and slapstick violence for its broad humor.

There are a few standout scenes in War's closing reels, as well as a few cleverly executed twists, yet Erlingsson doesn't let them undercut the movie's emotional sway.

The film becomes somewhat overplotted and a tad too clever for its own good as the frantic, farcical complications continue to pile up. But the cast across the board is engaging, mirroring the loose, limber touch of director Salvadori as he establishes order out of chaos and smoothes all the rough edges into a harmonious ending for everyone.

As an experiment in collaborative, exploratory docudrama, The Dead and the Others is an admirably committed enterprise. Sadly, as a cinematic experience, it is flat and functional.

Bi’s film is ultimately akin to the early image we see of Wildcat’s body being wheeled on a mine cart and pushed gently into the abyss, taking us on a slow and steady rollercoaster ride through memory, melancholy and movie magic.

At heart, it's more concerned with capturing the feel of the early '80s, the paranoia but also spirit of communal life in crowded apartment blocks.

Large-scale filmmaking of this kind to some degree is probably always an adventurer's folly, with an unhinged visionary tilting at windmills in a valiant quest to tame fantasy and reality into companionable travelers that will live forever. But rarely have such brave deeds yielded so meager a reward.

One imagines Godard spending whole days playing with dials, switches and buttons to discover the very moments he wishes to emphasize in his clips, and a good many of them are passingly arresting.

The main problem of Happy as Lazzaro is that it's unclear what Rohrwacher finally wants to say in part two, which combines the near-documentary realism of her first feature with the occasional flights of fancy of her second.

Girls of the Sun (Les Filles du soleil) is at once mildly harrowing and completely over-the-top, intermittently intense yet so unsubtle it winds up doing damage to its own worthy discourse.

This intriguing debut feature from Flemish director Lukas Dhont, in a completely natural mix of Dutch and French, looks terrific, is not afraid to tackle a number of difficult subjects and features a star-making performance from acting and dancing talent Victor Polster.

Ultimately, Loznitsa builds up a portrait of a bitter clockwork world where the faces of the doomed are above all part of a landscape.

As a timely yarn about the mistreatment of minorities, both in Sweden and worldwide, Border is rich in allegorical layers. But as a thriller at least partially rooted in supernatural genre conventions, its relentlessly dour Nordic glumness drags a little. Social realism and magical realism make uneasy bedfellows.

DP Eric Dumont captures the action as if he were shooting events as they unfold in real time. Along with the supporting nonpro cast and all the news footage, this makes At War feel much closer to documentary than fiction — and the movie itself less like a workplace drama than the chronicle of a soldier in the heat of battle.

A banal and patronizing cautionary sermon for lovestruck ladies torn between heart and head, sexy-dangerous bad boys and dependably dull husband types.

Cotillard, looking like one of the most glamorous white-trash fantasy figures in the history of the movies, has a hypnotic quality that will make you follow her character whatever she says or does.

The film is overlong and wildly uneven (just as it was two years ago), but it benefits from a strong cast making the most of some sharp moments exposing the underside of male privilege and domination.

To say that the storyline is cliched is giving it more credit than it deserves. But the film manages to succeed anyway, thanks largely to the quiet charisma and likeability of its physically imposing leading man who manages to hold his own even playing opposite the scene-stealing tykes.

With so many discussions to drop in on, each with its own stuff to show off...each sequence can only hint at what's fascinating about its field.

And thanks to some creative character casting and a self-aware script that isn't averse to poking fun at itself, Show Dogs emerges as a high-concept family comedy that manages to avoid being taken for the runt of the litter, even if it doesn't really bring anything fresh and different to the arena.

Though it has far less outright violence than Gomorrah, whose oppressive criminal atmosphere it shares, Matteo Garrone's Dogman is just as intense a viewing experience, one that will have audiences gripping their armrests with its frighteningly real portrayal of a good man tempted by the devil.

The doc is as much a profile of its passionate central figure as an account of Brinton's importance to the history of cinema.

Cold War, Pawel Pawlikowski's latest film, is bittersweet and unbearably lovely, a sad ballad of two lovers who can't stand to stay apart but also sometimes can't stand each other either.

This is a beautifully crafted film loaded with glancing insights and observations into an understated triangular relationship, one rife with subtle perceptions about class privilege, reverberating family legacies, creative confidence, self-invention, sexual jealousy, justice and revenge.

It's a riveting narrative, and even those not among Houston's more passionate fan base will find it an emotionally wrenching experience.

Despite a compelling lead in Andrew Garfield, the tension dissipates rather than mounts as this knotty neo-noir slides into a Lynchian swamp of outre weirdness.