20 don't-miss movies from week 2 of Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival

★★★½ out of four stars

"Game of Thrones" star Emilia Clarke plays a nurse in 1950s Italy caring for children who have become deeply emotionally withdrawn. Her newest charge, living in a huge palazzo with his recently widowed father (Marton Csokas), has willfully gone silent. The film draws eerie puzzlement over whether the voices he hears in the castle's massive masonry walls are truly coming from his deceased opera star mother. Clarke provides the love and compassion the boy needs; could the brooding Csokas take the same interest in her? Moving between supernatural and rational tones, Twin Cities director Eric Howell's feature-film debut is magnetically moody, creating the spirit of a Hitchcock version of "Jane Eyre." Howell and cast members will attend Thursday's screening. (94 min., USA/Italy)

COLIN COVERT

★★★

The best fright films trigger our terrors by making us fill in important blank spaces in the story and visuals. This Mexican minimalist chiller makes us full partners in the creative process, giving us loads of human-scale horror to worry about. In a claustrophobic old cabin in the foggiest possible woods live an aging father and his three children. There seems to be some sort of big bad wolf outside the door. But is the real danger in its jaws or the possibility that a nearby hatchet, shotgun and rock might go into the wrong hands? Long, unbroken cuts enable the pressure to build to almost suffocating tautness, withholding clarity until the final harrowing moments. (92 min., Mexico)

COLIN COVERT

★★★★

JIM BRUNZELL III

★★★

Racism Scandinavian style. This period piece vividly dramatizes old, harsh prejudices against the rural Sami people of northern Sweden. It's handsomely set in the 1930s, when social-Darwinist race biology exams measuring facial structure and nude photography were standard in state schools. Lene Cecilia Sparrok is magnetic as a Sami girl determined to sever ties with her Lappish heritage, and its melodious yoiking song tradition, to reinvent herself as a full-blooded Swede. Her assimilation tests the pugnacious teen's backbone and the deep-rooted societal standards of old urban Sweden. When you abandon your heritage and family, what is there to gain? It's an impressive, confident feature debut for writer/director Amanda Kernell, who is Swedish-Sami herself, and a promising talent of tomorrow. (110 min.)

COLIN COVERT

★★★

COLIN COVERT

★★★½

Packs more of a punch than the usual coming-of-age story. Brooding '70s tween Piotrek is spending a rural summer vacation with his hot mom, as their relationship straddles the line between a single-parent dynamic and an almost romantic love. Piotrek undergoes various sweet and traumatic experiences as Mom begins mysteriously stepping out and he replaces her with an older neighbor girl. This kind of low-budget naturalism is why we need an international film fest; a simple scene on a chair carousel is a beautiful visual metaphor. (87 min., Poland)

SIMON PETER GROEBNER

★★★

CYNTHIA DICKISON

★★★½

A character-driven crime story with a classic look of grimy 1970s realism. After serving eight years for a jewelry heist gone disastrously wrong, the getaway driver is released to rejoin his girlfriend. But amid her conjugal visits to the prison, she has also hooked up with a meek, prosperous lightweight, and a wonderful sense of everyday-life anxiety begins to build and build. This Spanish treasure is the kind of sharply structured film noir that nearly bursts with unexpected twists of fate. The beautifully crafted three-act structure reveals that violent payback is around the corner, but never shows its cards until we're biting our fingernails to the nubs. (92 min., Spain)

COLIN COVERT

★★★½

JIM BRUNZELL III

★★★½

Visceral, raw, and painful, "Una" lives or dies on the strength of Rooney Mara's performance, and does she deliver. As the title character who confronts a childhood trauma, Mara is by turns childlike, enraged and despairing, conveying a palpable depth of feeling. The film, adapted from David Harrower's play "Blackbird," feels like a high-wire act, constantly balancing on the tense edge of a fall into the abyss. It zigs where you think it will zag, and takes its time getting to the payoff, but it's worth it. Dealing with a complicated and difficult subject, "Una" slowly untangles the past and the present, unraveling a web of secrets and half-truths that keep one waiting with bated breath for the final tightrope trick. (94 min.)

KELSY KETCHUM

★★★½

JIM BRUNZELL III

★★★½

You don't find Richard Gere cast against type in a flawlessly human performance every day. His white hair in a Woody Allen tangle, Gere plays a good-hearted, old ambitious Jew, a schmoozing would-be dealmaker who reaches out to promising people with gifts that some might interpret as emotional bribes. He is considered a background extra by New York City's financial elite until fate introduces him to an Israeli politico (Lior Ashkenazi, outstanding) who becomes a genuine friend and then a world leader. Finally Norman is in the spotlight, and in a great deal of trouble as his tendency to exaggerate spirals out of control. Writer/director Joseph Cedar juggles overlapping storylines, and a solid gold supporting cast, like a pro. (118 min.)

COLIN COVERT

★★★

ALICIA ELER

★★★

This documentary chronicles the senior year at an all-female Baltimore high school that aims to get its entire graduating class accepted to college. The film focuses on a group of students who started a "step" dance team when they were 12, and hope to finally take home a championship. Director Amanda Lipitz' irresistible crowd-pleaser deftly balances the kids' juggling act of heartaches at home and in school, their dedication on the dance floor and their determination to achieve success. (83 min.)

JIM BRUNZELL III

★★★

KELSY KETCHUM

★★★½

This biopic of 19th century poet Emily Dickinson evokes its title, with a calm surface but an underlying sense of raw and real emotion. Cynthia Nixon magnificently embodies Dickinson's loneliness, her anger, and her wonder and dismay toward the world. Using Dickinson's poems throughout reminds us of her brilliance. Superb acting from the rest of the cast and beautiful cinematography add to the power of the film and create a thoughtful and fully realized portrait of a writer's life. (126 min.)

KELSY KETCHUM

★★★

COLIN COVERT

★★★

Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa leaves his native Japan for this French-set modern ghost story. Everything else is pretty much as expected from the man behind "Pulse" and "Cure." Tahar Rahim ("A Prophet") plays a man just looking for a gig, who strangely lands a good one working for a troubled photographer steeped in the titular outdated style. There are a few genuine creeps that will unsettle, but never outright terrify. When things get twisty in the third act, you'll either go for it or the film will lose you completely. (131 min., France/Belgium/Japan)

ERIK McCLANAHAN

★★★

JENNA ROSS

★★★½

Belgium's mild-mannered, modern, miserable monarch Nicolas III is on a diplomatic mission to EU-hopeful Turkey when his own country's French half splits from its Dutch half (which could really happen). So in this cleverly candid mockumentary, the figurehead and his handlers are forced onto an unlikely road adventure through poor eastern Europe, while he tries to write the speech that will save his nation, learning some Valuable Lessons about freedom. Is this a sweet satire of ineffective government or a sly way to highlight the contrasts of east vs. west? Both. A run-in with a troupe of female Bulgarian folk singers is priceless. (94 min.)

SIMON PETER GROEBNER