John Bleasdale

Despite its manifold flaws, Jackie & Ryan is still oddly watchable.

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

The Wait consistently defies common sense in order to sustain the thin narrative.

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.

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.

Penn's film doesn't entertain greatly nor does it have much coherent to say.

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

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.

That the drama should hinge on a series of bizarre novelistic coincidences and the irrational dopiness of the characters with whom we're supposed to empathise drains the film of realism and sends us into Mills & Boon territory.

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

All of this is intoned with such a humourless sense of self-importance that anyone who genuinely loves their music (such as this reviewer who [full disclosure] would rate Funeral and Neon Bible as two of the best albums of recent years) finds themselves alternately stuffing their fingers in their ears or, when it gets too excruciating, their elbows.

A run-of-the-mill, plodding drama, the 'social realism' of which never feels particularly real.

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

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.

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.

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.

Not exciting enough to be taken as straightforward thriller and not engaging enough for a dramatic character piece, Egoyan's The Captive is held back by its own lame script and a distinct lack of necessity.

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.

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.

Ultimately, Benson's Eleanor Rigby disappears into the gap between its rom-com and drama stools.

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

Osborne, who initially got his kicks with Kung Fu Panda, doesn't trust his source material and the film becomes about collecting the pages of the story and the effect the story might have on the people who hear it, rather than the telling of the story itself.

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

Though the farce is occasionally funny, it's as bloated and windy as its comedy policeman Inspector Machin.

Côté employs a methodical reticence that often leaves the viewer guessing as to the significance of the images we are seeing.

The performances are fine across the board and Nørgaard keeps things moving efficiently, but this is stylish but televisual fare, ram-packed with familiar hardboiled and shopworn tropes.

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.

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.