Beatriz at Dinner

There was a time, mainly during the 1990s, when Salma Hayek was brought in whenever a movie called for an exotic and mysterious beauty. It's thrilling, then, to see her cast against type as a frumpy yet magnetic holistic therapist in this absorbing dark comedy drama. Stranded at the home of a rich client (Connie Britton) when her rickety Volkswagen breaks down, Hayek's Mexican immigrant spends an evening drifting between ritzy dinner guests before, ultimately, facing off against an oafish businessman (John Lithgow). Masterfully drip-feeding the humour-gilded tension, director Miguel Arteta - who previously teamed up with writer Mike White for another dress-down drama, The Good Girl - works considerable alchemy with a film that takes a timely look at the class divide. Shades of Trump haunt Lithgow's anti-immigration tyrant, but it's Hayek's dazzling Beatriz who is the film's sturdy moral compass.