The Dinner (2017)

In a fancy restaurant, a multi-course degustation delivered to tables by convoys of sleek, choreographed waitstaff is this movie's metaphor for a smooth, controlled passage or course through things, from A to B, and the dinner guests at one particular table - a politician, his second wife, his brother and sister-in-law - are the antithesis, an uncooperative, distracted, disparate group gathered to decide on their best course now that their teenaged sons have committed a despicable crime, in this frustrating film which tries to be both profound and farcical while it grapples with themes as wide-ranging as politics, American Civil War history, teenage bullying, adolescent crime, racism, parenting, sibling rivalry, familial secrets, and mental illness, all with a sassy, isn't-this-so-so-clever attitude.

★☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Beatriz at Dinner (2017)

This episode of 'Touched By A Vegetarian, Reiki-Practising Angel' overreaches with its story of a Cecil the Lion-killing business mogul who is never, over the course of a dinner, going to be made to accept responsibility for all the evils of the world (including the murder of a pet goat) and so, with nowhere to go, it ends exactly as all your dinner parties ever have when someone wants to drunkenly cure all societal ills - guests end up wanting to kill themselves.

★☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

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.

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS