Steve Pond

If you’re trying to follow it without having read the book, it may not make a lick of sense – and even if you have, Kaufman goes in directions that Reid never did. But as funhouse meditation on who we are and how others figure into our identities, it trots out many of Kaufman’s old obsessions in a way that feels fresh and weird.

There are moments of real beauty in the film, which is an unassuming and contemplative excursion into how we love, and why. But like the fireworks that greet Asako and Baku’s first kiss, its pop is a modest one.

Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood is big, brash, ridiculous, too long, and in the end, invigorating.

A Hidden Life is certainly the director’s best movie since his 2011 Palme d’Or winner “The Tree of Life” — it’s his most monumental film since then, and perhaps his most sentimental film ever. And it is also slow and meditative, requiring viewers to sink into and surrender to that particular Malick style that some find maddening.

For its combination of ambition and audacity, this is a glorious piece of cinematic insanity.

Del Toro’s Frankenstein is a remarkable achievement that in a way hijacks the flagship story of the horror genre and turns it into a tale of forgiveness.

It’s hard to watch Notturno at times, but to the director’s credit it’s also impossible to look away.

The film feels true in the way it must be exploring Branagh’s memories of a tumultuous and confusing time, and the way it pays tribute to a vibrant community as that community is irrevocably changed.

It’s a dark, disturbing and glorious film about a dark, disturbing and glorious band, and another sign that Haynes knows how to put music onscreen in a way that few other directors do.

The bracing thing about It Was Just an Accident is that it has married Panahi’s wit and humanism with real anger; if many of his previous films lulled you into realizing his points about oppression and injustice, this one is downright confrontational.

The Banshees of Inisherin is lovely and disturbing in equal measure, turning its darkest urges and blackest humors into a touching and evocative portrait of a time, a place, a community and a pair of crazy men.

The film is one of the most meditative of Almodóvar’s career. ... It makes for less energetic and, yes, less exciting filmmaking. But “Pain and Glory” is a beautiful meditation on past and present, a memory piece that will nourish rather than provoke.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood finds a gentle state of grace and shows the courage and smarts to stay in that zone, never rushing things or playing for drama.

The film has its twists, turns and resets, simultaneously giving the audience more information while also keeping it off balance. It can be riveting and at times repetitive, but it does what it sets out to do: It drops you in the middle of a crisis and it keeps you there.

It feels a little too light and even occasionally uncertain in the early going, but picks up steam, becomes deeper and more moving and absolutely nails the ending.

You’ll walk away from Rewind shaken by the story, and haunted by the face of a little boy with a world of hurt and nowhere to run.

Blinded by the Light is corny, silly, as overblown as one of Springsteen’s grandest anthems and damn near irresistible.

If it doesn’t feel as fresh and bracing as “Ida” did, that film may have been the perfect combination of form and content. Cold War, which is Pawlikowski’s first entry in Cannes main competition, is in some ways more familiar, but the spin he puts on it is distinctly and beautifully his own creation.

Neugebauer, Lawrence and Henry deliver an unhurried gem that might feel slight but always feels right.

A riveting combat movie that aims to put viewers alongside American soldiers in the midst of one of the bloodiest battles in the long-running war, “The Outpost” takes the measure of what a few dozen men endured and finds heroism not in enemies killed but in compadres saved.

That’s Hard Truths, in a nutshell: people. People you won’t forget, courtesy of a handful of remarkable actors and a singular director who at the age of 81 remains a true treasure.

For a film at least partly about music, Deliver Me From Nowhere makes effective use of silence, especially in the moments when Springsteen finds himself adrift rather than inspired.

The Whistlers is no minimalist slice of realism, but an oversized, deliciously twisted ride that runs on an endless supply of black humor and a sizeable body count. You won’t laugh much while you’re watching it, but it’s a hoot nonetheless.

Woman at War is a beautiful hoot.

There’s no real tonal conflict between the lightness of the comedy and the import of the issues it is addressing; American Fiction runs on serious conversations that are never bogged down by being treated too seriously.

Zeitlin has come up with a second film that goes down many of the same paths as his debut, another film filled with kids rampaging as the music swells — but he puts it on a mythic stage and creates a film that is magical and messy, unruly and otherworldly.

Western Stars goes far deeper than the usual performance document, to sensitively explore what he sees as the state of his, and our, lives. It’s a ruminative, almost elegiac look at Springsteen’s life and career, filled with moments of uncommon beauty that makes it of a piece with this latest, most introspective phase of his career.

Aftermath is the work of a stronger and more assured director. It drops mind-boggling revelations about the extent of Russian doping and the lengths to which Vladimir Putin’s administration will go to silence dissidents and whistleblowers, but it’s also a deeply touching portrait of a man whose life was shattered because he got tired of being part of a system that ran on lies.