Perfect Strangers (Perfetti Sconosciuti) (2016)

The laughs in this timely comedy of e-manners quickly become awkward when dinner party guests, a likeable group of fortysomethings, agree to a game in which mobile phones are abandoned to the dinner table thereby granting everyone present access to all others' incoming communications, a game which reveals lies and secrets that threaten to eclipse the circle's good times.

★★★★☆

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Sweet Dreams (Fai Bei Sogni) (2016)

This could easily have been pure melodrama - there's little light, not much gaiety and every scene tightly revolves around the core idea of mother-child love - but remind yourself this is an autobiographical Italian film about a real man who grew up minus a fundamental building block - the truth about his mother's death - and it becomes tolerable melodrama and more than that, an occasionally profound look at a successful war correspondent and newspaper columnist's happiness, success, and faith.

★★★☆☆

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