Palm Springs International Film Festival — A–Z of films

Campillo has a weakness in not knowing when to trim all the talking.

As stark as its empty landscapes, as measured as the tread of the strangers along the poplar avenue, as compelling as the panic that grows in the village ahead of them.

Allure is a film full of claustrophobic tension.

This documentary feels confined by constraints that should have been stripped away in the filming process.

A tremendously powerful piece of cinema.

Why make a movie about this match? Why now? Is it the danger factor with Superbrat or nostalgia for IceBorg or the ingenuity of the stunt guys to make the players look genuine?

It is fundamentally a film about the workings of infatuation with a charmed fever that contaminates its characters.

As a metaphor for the way the world views changing relationships and mores the film is affecting.

Remarkably adept in balancing audience sympathies and bold in its refusal to choose the most easily justified routes for its characters, The Charmer is a powerful piece of cinema.

Carpignano is interested in the margins - and the fringes of those margins.

Though a short film, even one of half-an-hour as Legrand’s was, can be carried almost solely on this sort of tension, a feature needs something more.

There is an awkward balance here between the focus on capturing real events and a clear desire to play to the gallery.

Capturing this moment, this opening up, writer/director team Cecilia Atán and Valeria Pivato demonstrate that there's room on the big screen for small things.

A cleverly constructed piece of low-budget filmmaking, Directions punches well above its weight.

Leuenberger makes Nora's gradual awakening to gender issues feel like the sun coming out on a dreary day, brimful of unexpected warmth.

Rather than simply turn Tommy into a laughing stock, Franco teases out the tragicomedy of the man.

The proportion of films opening with HP Lovecraft quotes that manage to live up to the visionary writer's work verges on the infinitesimal, but The Endless is one of the special ones.

Lelio makes no bones about how he wants us to feel, to the point where it sometimes feels as though he is stating the obvious is six-foot neon letters.

A cast to die for? Certainly. And they almost do.

Samuel Maoz steps into the rhythm of the foxtrot to give structure to the three separate chapters of his intense, reverberating film.

One of the most important cinematic perspectives on the genocide to be made for international audiences.

The film’s most gripping aspect is the delicacy with which it handles its extraordinary emotional depth

Flashes a light to illuminate different stages in the life of the man who invented himself with style and grace.

Haneke is a master of his material, revealing just enough to keep the viewer on tenterhooks but not enough to give an easy explanations.

Although it is technically beautifully realised and features an impressively varied and supportive score from Terry and Gyan Riley, not all of Girard’s connections fully work.

Ziad Doueiri's latest film shows how the embers of history can stay warm for a long time, easily flaring up under the right circumstances - even those that seem innocuous.

The bobbins are a brilliantly employed metaphor, something that feels freshly sprung from a fairy tale, only silly until you consider how sinister they are.

Tonya's story is a blinder. You walk away with your heart bruised and your eyes swollen

The idea that a family would face the war crime equivalent of lions, tigers and bears in the space of a few hours barges through the boundaries of belief.

Akin asks us to shift our perceptions of terrorist attacks in deliberately provocative ways, constantly flipping what we think we know and what we expect to see right up until the film's haunting final image.

Morgen infuses new life into Jane Goodall's groundbreaking wildlife study that took place over half a century ago.

Carell is extremely impressive here.

The plot can sink without trace, which it does, because this is all about the stars

Denis and Binoche take a perceptive and light approach to what could have been hackneyed material.

The Kopps' film provides insights into the fundamental nature of storytelling, its psychological relevance and its importance in intellectual development.

Hunnam gives a compelling performance as a man railing against the bigotry of his time, and yet simultaneously embodying it as a white explorer in a place already well-known to its inhabitants.

Though the filmmaking is good, the bleakness of the message is unremitting.

The way director Emmanuel Gras eases under the skin of his main subject makes for fascinating viewing.

It's as if I Spit On Your Grave has been transformed into a Kabuki drama.

There are a lot of characters, but they gradually flow together to build a fractured patchwork of what it means to be a veteran of messy conflict on any side.

It's as though Cuenta and his co-writer Alejandro Hernández spent so much of their energy on their impressive plot machinations that they have none left for developing his character, leaving Gutiérrez trying to work magic with just one note.

Even though Newton is a stickler, there's an appealing purity to his views and he remains likeable almost despite himself.

No Date, No Signature is a moral maze in which superb performances mean we can never lose sight of the human impact of what might seem like logical decisions.

There is a fragility and brittleness to this but also an underlying warm sweetness that might just melt your heart.

Phantom Thread is a film about fabric, craft, beauty, but at heart asks all the crucial, complicated questions about love.

Maya Forbes and Wallace Wolodarsky love their protagonist just a bit too much.

Like all good road trips, the destination may be a the top of the protagonist's mind but the film says a lot more about his past and present than his future.

There's a quietness about it, a new maturity for Spielberg.

As entertaining as the above is with its two charismatic leads, it is not an especially novel path for a 'crime couple' thriller to take, and it is in the last act that Racer kind of goes off the rails.

Densely packed with information, this is a film that continually finds new things to say and new ways to say them.

A vivid illustration of just how close life can come to mockumentary when you start to scrutinise it.

While satirically entertaining in places it has too many threads competing for attention and ultimately runs out of steam.

It has the ungainly but attractive ambience of an old fairy tale being passed down through the generations, becoming more and more embellished on each retelling.

The film wears its story lightly. Even when Simón is dealing with heavier themes her focus is on Frida and her emotions.

There is artistry here and an absence of cliche.

The film has grit as if volcanic dust had scorched its rose tinted glasses

Song is superb in the central role, taking his character through an emotional arc that would be a challenge for any actor, but never less than convincing.

The use of abstract visuals, however, not only forces us to focus more intently on what is being said in the section about Miriam but also encourages us to become attuned to the 'everyday' life we are seeing.

Thelma appears aloof on the surface, but her constant choice of statement lipsticks, despite her otherwise conservative dress code, hints at the emotions screaming from within.

Although much of Laaksonen's work was hardcore, Karukoski doesn't seek to 'shock' audiences with outrageousness, instead gracefully zoning in on the man and his life to celebrate his both his bravery and his art.

The lightness of touch so evident in his family films is no less deft here, as he woos us with the promise of cast iron fact.... only to spend the rest of the film oiling the ground beneath our beliefs until they can't stop sliding this way and that

The weirdness thrives on understatement

Fortunately, McDormand never lets Mildred's hold on us slip, balancing the conundrum of a woman who is simultaneously a mum, who likes a beer and a game of pool, and a Rambo-style avenging angel.

The tone is deliberately odd blending the naturalism of the day-to-day emotions of relationships and grief, with the altogether more heightened tensions of a revenge thriller, while still keeping a cheeky eye on the absurdity of a mooning garden gnome.

Inti Briones's muddy, saturated black and white imagery complements director Daniela Thomas' tight close-ups and lingering landscape shots in conveying both the paradox of the location and the pressure its inhabitants feel.

Annemarie Jacir's characters may not leave the city of Nazareth as they take a circular road trip in Wajib but the emotional distance they travel is considerable.

This is powerful and painful, striking.

It quite subtly toys with the iconography of the genre - poking at the outlying parts of it, the parts dealing with "foreigness" and "home" rather than the more dependable elements of right and wrong.

Sobel doesn't invite us to pity these men but rather to listen to what they have to say.

There's a potency to this film, largely thanks to a carefully judged performance by Marina Foïs as novelist and tutor Olivia, and a charismatic one by Matthieu Lucci as her most difficult student, Antoine.

Trengove strikes a good balance between showing the cultural importance, even though on the wane, of old-fashioned masculinity and personal drama between Xolani and Kwanda, slowly ratcheting up the tension to breaking point.

This is a very particular film - one where particles of detail crystallise into observation, meaning and import accreting like nacre around grit, producing a pearl, a natural jewel.