Bhutan’s vast landscape overwhelms with its beauty, and as the village of Lunana and its people calmly make an impact on the protagonist, Lunana makes one on the viewer.

Ryusuke Hamaguchi has masterfully and thrillingly expanded Haruki Murakami’s typically spare and evocative short story into a three-hour feature.

Director Bruno Dumont casts vivacious French star Léa Seydoux as a news anchor who comes to terms with fame and a chaotic life in a narrative that borrows from classic women’s pictures with their twists and turns.

As so often happens with international films, this movie is much more accurately represented by its original Japanese title, Coincidence and Imagination, than its English translation.

This film is shot by Christopher Doyle, the cinematographer most famous for working with Wong Kar-wai and Edward Yang, and it looks incredible.

In this captivating sequel, we are treated again to actress Honor Swinton Byrne as British film student Julie and her mother, Tilda Swinton, playing her onscreen mother.

What does it take to make a new start in a new land, one that lets you earn a living and maintain your self-respect? Such a reinvention is never easy, especially when it takes place in middle age.

One movie that will be accessible soon to millions internationally is Brazilian-American director Alexandre Moratto’s taut, terse, gritty drama.

Though its approach, focused on the rich during a military regime, seems cold, detached, and cynical to a certain degree, the results are discretely chilling.