John Bleasdale

Aïnouz has eschewed the post-modern fun of Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Favourite for a much grimmer, darker vibe. This is the kind of film where torches most definitely gutter and men call out directives “on the orders of the king!” But for all the weighty gravitas of Simon Russell Beale as a conniving bishop and Eddie Marsan as a conniving noble bring to bear, the story never takes the history seriously enough either.

Irony has a wearying effect after a while, ultimately leading to a flattening of the ethical landscape so that by the end of it we can’t help but feel they’re all as bad as each other.

Few American directors capture the contemporary urban nightscape as well as Fincher: a supreme genre filmmaker, which makes this perfectly fine film so disappointing.

As fascism in South America, North America and Europe is rising from the grave, it needs a properly-aimed and delivered stake, rather than complacent sniggering

Everything looks beautiful: sand the colour of peach fluff and skies, a cyan blue.

Homecoming gives an empathetic portrait of a family in a phase of change. Girls are becoming women; a mother is beginning to return to life. It has the promise of a prelude.

It’s a pity that on this occasion Scorsese makes an admirable and fine film, but alas not a great one.

It is as glitzy and gaudy as the festival itself, with its vacuous politics drowned out by the thunderous sound of it slapping its own back.

Ultimately, Narvel is the fascist as liberal fantasy. Someone with access to skilled violence, who can unleash it at whim. It’s such a pity that a screenwriter who used to excel at delineating the intricacies of male insecurity and poison now comes out with such a one-dimensional character.

The Eternal Daughter is very much a minor film for Hogg: a small chamber piece which could be watched as amusing marginalia to The Souvenir diptych. It’s a hangout film for those among you who can’t get enough Tilda Swinton and an incredibly cute dog, and as such it works. It doesn’t really have anything to say, and the meta-ness feels a little tired.

Wilde has already proven herself as a director with her brilliant debut. Even the hackneyed sci-fi concept behind Katie Silberman’s screenplay wouldn’t have been too much of a problem if it wasn’t for the performances.

There are moments in the film that just feel wrong, sometimes complex and wrong and sometimes just plain wrong.

It’s impossible not to be beguiled by the sweetness of the comedy, the skill of the performers and sheer craft of the film. But hopefully next time out Kore-eda will use it in the service of a plot which is more believable.

The final twist is so manipulative and cynical as to be actually enraging.

Crimes of the Future still has its strengths. Howard Shore’s score lends a tragic, almost stately emotional counterpoint to the steel of the wit.

Your appreciation or otherwise of the film is going to be greatly influenced by whether or not you’ve seen the original, and as such Final Cut doesn’t really elbow its way to the front. However, if you can stand the slight whiff of decomposition then this deconstruction is fun and clever.

When You Finish Saving the World is fine. It’s well made, witty, and Wolfhard and Moore are effortlessly convincing in their roles; Wolfhard shucking off his Stranger Things image in the process. The problem – if there is one – is in the smooth snark of the title. There are sharp edges here that never bite.

Visually arresting and well-acted, Dogs shows promise but one would have hoped for some new tricks.

Of the many problems the film has, it’s the different plots that never quite bounce off each other.

The performances are pitch perfect, particularly that of Marceau, who is superb in riding through the conflicts of the situation and the moments when the strong emotions riding over the niceties finally come to the fore.

This is a good solid three star movie. Which is perhaps where Snyder should be anyway, away from the extremes of deification and vilification. When he’s not trying to be great, he can actually be quite good.

The Capote Tapes show a talent that seemed to go to waste while at the same time teasing us with the possibility that there is more yet to come.

The alienness of humanity, when seen from another perspective, is evident throughout the film.

Benjamin is a charming metropolitan rom-com which is ultimately too lightweight to escape the gravity of its influences.

Not great, not hilarious, but not terrible or awful either.

Ultimately, though it hints at moments of wit, Cuck never feels serious enough to be a convincing character study and not garish enough to head into genre territory. Ultimately, this sordid tale feels both real and inconsequential.

Babyteeth is a funny, vibrant and deeply moving piece of work. Its flaws are the flaws of youth, overcompensating for boredom with frenetic hyperactivity.

There’s so much to enjoy in Ema that it comes as a surprise that there’s so little there.

It might be that there’s a meatier version of the film – a Carlos-style miniseries perhaps – but as it stands, shifting between a lighthearted caper and more consequential political tragedy, Wasp Network is an entertaining fumble.

The King feels disconnected and unurgent. Despite some wonderful moments, it perhaps lacks the requisite majesty.

The film itself is utterly uncontroversial, solid, occasionally stolid, and perfectly fine.

Superficiality soaks the entire film.

Hopefully, Soderbergh’s film will raise more awareness as well as a chuckle.

The truth is that The Truth is an above-average French comedy and Kore-eda has succeeded in a finely wrought act of ventriloquism and diva worship. But the Japanese director’s fans can be forgiven for thinking above average is not good enough for such an accomplished filmmaker.

Scenes come and go with a weightlessness that has nothing to do with zero gravity.

Efira is a dominant and compelling presence and Sibyl is frequently funny. Ultimately, it never quite squares the circle of the comedy and the pain, but Triet is a sophisticated filmmaker and this – her third feature – is further proof of great talent.

It’s just Huppert on autopilot and like that dry white wine, you can have too much of it.

Compared to the sophisticated and nuanced horrors of Black Mirror, Little Joe feels like a fairly straightforward riff on a very familiar idea.

Jarmusch has opted for a stumbling dead so indulgently pleased with itself that it resembles little more than a precocious home movie filled with familiar faced pals all of whom find the joke funnier than any audience will.

The script by Cronin and Stephen Shields blends the familiar with the eerie well and never allows silliness to take over. The performances all round are superb and Seána Kerslake creates a credible heroine – a woman on the edge but who is by no means fragile.

Hill does his best but Jim is woefully underwritten, a shuffling loser who various other characters try to bolster with the dignity of a back story that doesn’t seem to fit his actual behaviour.

It’s difficult given the premise of the film not to come out of The Workshop thinking of alternative directions the story could have gone in.

As the film drifts through dream sequences and diversions, the dramatic power of the chase fizzles in the damp of the woods.

Ultimately, Alverson’s The Mountain is arthouse cinema at its frostiest.

The first forty minutes or so are – as you would expect – a harrowing recreation of the bombing and the crime.

With a filmmaker as intelligent and controlled as Nemes, Sunset has the assurance that everything has a place and the confusion is intended. But even this has a paradoxical effect.

The trademark brutal violence remains effective, and Zahler maintains a pervasive feeling of dread throughout his films, but Dragged Across Concrete shows the limits of taking the game long.

Bradley Cooper’s soulful exploration of the depredations of fame is an effective melodrama boasting genuine star turns from himself and Lady Gaga.

There’s nary a memorable shot in the whole film. As for Ehrenreich’s performance, it’s honestly difficult to tell how good he is. Remarkably for a film called Solo, with so many characters each one nibbling at the scenes, he hardly has room to shine.

Deladonchamps and Lacoste make for engaging leads and there is warmth and humour here too.

Everything seems designed to disturb or perhaps infuriate the viewer.

Mitchell’s third film feels like a script that was locked in a drawer after numerous rejections but now can be brought out and pushed through with clout earned from the success of It Follows.

After all is said and done, ‘The House that Lars Built’ is an impressive construction for an obnoxious purpose. In fact, the best criticism comes from Talking Heads and their song Psycho Killer: “You’re talking a lot but you’re not really saying anything.”

Cosmatos’ Mandy matches Cage grimace for grimace and achieves, at times, a transcendent midnight madness.

Panahi keeps everything as softly spoken as his own onscreen presence and yet some of those quiet observations are devastating.

Ash Is Purest White is a fascinating chapter in Jia’s ongoing chronicle of ordinary lives affected by unprecedented change in China.

It might be that the actor Dano baulks at taking the scissors to any of the performances of his fellow thespians, or that screenwriters Dano and Zoe Kazan are too faithful to Richard Ford’s source novel but this results in a deadening of effect that renders the melancholy monotonous.

Other than a sinking feeling, there’s not much else The Chamber is going to give you.

As with Kaufman's own stunts, it's difficult to know what to take seriously.

There's a lot that's wonderful about Andrei Konchalovsky's Holocaust drama Paradise and yet there's something fundamentally wrong with the film.

It's as if Wiseman has taken his cue from the old style librarians and has wanted to give a portrait of a community but without the inevitable noise that goes with it, issuing one long "shhhhhhhhh".

Clooney only shows flashes of comic moxy, and everything is drowned in a now tiresome fetishizing of the 1950s aesthetic, with gizmos and supermarkets, office furniture and hairdos glossily remade.

There are the occasional moments when Bushwick lets on that it knows that this is all truly awful.

In its determined avoidance of sensationalism, it finds itself stranded in an empty space so understated, it is genuinely difficult to understand what, if anything, it is saying.

The Seasons in Quincy is most compelling when we and it listens to Berger or captures him listening to someone else.

Adapting Melanie Joosten's novel, Shaun Grant has been unable to recapture the grimey darkness of everyday evil of his previous script Snowtown. Instead, we get a sojourn in place of trauma.

Mitchell's understanding of punk seems to be the brandishing of two or three cliches, shouting a lot and name-checking bands.

It isn't that it's hard going: it simply can't decide what it wants to be. [Cannes Version]

Garrel and Miller manage to create a credible chemistry.

Jupiter's Moon is a highly ambitious and thoroughly entertaining trip and if the politics is more backdrop than subtext, what remains is compelling and occasionally beautiful enough for you to enjoy the flight.

There's something highly familiar about the material and although it is artful and occasionally powerful, Akin and co-screenwriter Hark Bohm have constructed their story without straying far from countless other versions of the same thing.

Despite a first half of great promise, the film is ultimately ground down by the endless suffering even as it bloats with a bizarre lurch into satirical fantasy.

Campillo doesn't edit for our comfort and we feel both the tragedy and the boredom of death.

Franco has a hardlined style and a kind of story that play like an apprentice Haneke. However, as each film arrives, the power diminishes, because the stories are now easily predictable.

There is much to enjoy here - especially at the beginning - and Östlund's ambition and vision are to be applauded. However, The Square would have been greatly improved had the director taken his scalpel and his demanding critical eye and applied it to the film itself.

The journey through a nighttime New York is rich in realistic characters, observational details and some original locations.

Fans of Kawase will likely enjoy this delicate tale of people finding their way in the dark.

The fraudulent nature of the mystery makes Wonderstruck feel like a technical exercise: albeit one which is enlivened by some great visuals and excellent performances, particularly the wonderful Millicent Simmonds.

Though it can't bear too much comparison with Sicario, Wind River is far better than its title suggests and a promising directorial debut.

There's a wry comic sensibility that sees Hughes himself as an absurdity who seems half aware of his own ridiculousness.

This is a confident dramatic voice emerging and it will be interesting to see what comes next.

The tone is mournfully serious and this contrasts with the inherent silliness of vampires. Milo, with his glazed expression and apparent absence of affect utterings, is a compellingly dour presence but doesn't prove quite enough to prop the film up alone.

Dark, lurid, sadistic and powerful, it is at the least a fascinating and bold debut, and promises better to come.

This is heartfelt, inspiring stuff and there is no doubt that this is a true story that absolutely merits wider recognition.

A Woman's Life is a modest chamber piece, a series of sketches revealing a life of quiet desperation, which eschews melodrama and, for the most part, platitudes but exhibits great tenderness and sensitivity.

The film itself is fairly conventional given the wildness of its subject matter and Jim Jarmusch's pedigree.

This is a timely and necessary reminder of Trump's practices, but like Michael Moore's Michael Moore in Trumpland, this seems like another missed opportunity, a wry exasperated sigh, when we desperately need some full on rage.

Once beyond the babble of the Mindfulness merchants, the latter half of the documentary, however, is far more interesting and compelling as Shen has his experts round on the noise pollution that so disrupts our lives.

For the most part Swiss Army Man is a visually unique gas and only feels bloated when it tries to hitch its wayward originality to some sort of real world application.

Ozon's Frantz is, sadly, an underwhelming tale of a European union that didn't quite make it, its chocolate box sheen belying the emptiness at its heart.

This affectionate portrait in failure is more in the tone of Darren Aronofky's Venice winner The Wrestler, carried mainly by a brilliantly swollen performance by Schrieber, full of humour and bluff and yet with an intelligence to learn his lessons, slowly, but learn them.

It's all so random and the 3D Kodachrome colours, poised performances and careful framing can't disguise the fact that The Beautiful Days of Aranjuez has very little to say.

Even at ninety minutes Popstar feels too long. The funniest moments are the songs.

There's no getting away from it, Gibson has produced another bombastic, crowd-pleasing and obviously blood-soaked movie which expertly glorifies that which its hero was against.

Amirpour is a talented director with a wonderful eye but her style lacks substance and her obvious influences - the Mad Max franchise and the wonderful LQ Jones film A Boy and his Dog - are so superior as to almost completely nullify her derivative contribution to the genre.

It's gorgeous, lush and fun, but there's an underlying silliness to the endeavour which, despite occasional archness, constantly threatens to trivialise events.

Adapted by Cianfrance himself, The Light Between Oceans feels overly tied to its previous form.

The Wakhan Front's script is finely-balanced, allowing the possibly supernatural to slowly impinge without resorting to genre clichés.