Tara Brady

The inclusion of older footage from the Armando Diaz school, where Genoa police kettled protests during the 2001 G8 summit, reminds us that previous generations have equally hoped for change.

Brian and Charles themselves, meanwhile, make for an irresistible two-step in a delightful tale of friendship and loneliness, dramatised and written in beats that make one think of Wallace & Gromit without the clay.

She’s a marvellous, magical character who, in this adaptation of the popular manga, takes second place to the male auteur she has plucked from obscurity.

None of these skits congeals into anything like a plot.

In common with Edgar Wright’s recent portrait of Sparks, Tornatore’s film largely eschews such niceties as documentary structure in favour of enthusiastic chronology. And then Ennio worked with Pasolini; and then he worked with Dario Argento. And so on. It’s an interesting biography, nonetheless.

Hawke and Thames respectively give two big performances to enact a compelling cat-and-mouse game, in a film wherein even the supporting characters are richly drawn.

Bjerg’s central performance is a lumbering delight and Youssef’s comparatively straight-man routine makes one pine for a spin-off sitcom.

Lightyear may well feature the studio’s best opening gambit since Wall-E and Up, but the film quickly falls into, well, adequacy.

At its best, All My Friends shares DNA with both the social dread of Ruben Östlund’s get-togethers and the leylines of Ben Wheatley. Hints of English folk horror — a pitbull tied up near a car, accusing looks at the driven grouse shoot — add to the delicious disquiet. Imagine if Ben Wheatley rebooted Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Inspired by a real-life Sandusky, Ohio legend, writer-director Todd Stephens crafts an impeccable odyssey that ponders love, loss, and attitudinal changes.

Astaire’s dancing and Audrey’s charm sweeten a bitter pill. But unearthing this vicious artefact is not unlike exhibiting a medieval chastity belt.

A quiet character study pivoting around mum sex and elder care, it’s not the director’s best work but it’s streets ahead of this recent misfire.

The film – like its subject – lets the pomp and circumstance do the talking.

Marianne may learn to “pass” for a cleaner – kind of – but she can never experience the precariousness faced by her subjects. Her idea that these people are entirely invisible is bogus from the get-go. The script wrestles with these problems but it simply cannot overcome them.

Vogt coaxes impressive, carefully calibrated performances from his creepy young ensemble.

Sadly, the film falls short of being A-ha’s Some Kind of Monster (Metallica’s cringy group therapy epic).

Unnervingly naturalistic performances from two cinematic legends – the great Italian giallo master Dario Argento, the great Italian giallo master and the star of La Maman et La Putain – add to the sense of loss.

At its core, however, this is a big-hearted family drama about acceptance and a love story between an older married couple. It falls to the terrific Yeoh to hold all the subplots and occasional comic misfires together.

By the time we finally see the leading lady, La Panthère des Neiges – as the film was called at home – has long since privileged the journey over the destination.

Taking cues from the lively cast, Nabil Ayouch’s third feature to make it to Cannes is scrappy, occasionally messy, prone to distractions, and never less than diverting.

At 72 minutes, Playground falls shy of feature length, yet it atones with a sickening sense of dread and pinpoint emotional accuracy. The performances that Wandel coaxes out of her young cast are remarkable and often painful to behold.

To add to the viewer’s distress, the picture is as deafeningly loud as it is tiresomely provocative.

Celeste Cescutti leads a parochial cast that is largely unprofessional, with a fierce performance that bosses and grounds the film’s magic realist themes.

Directors Danny Clinch, Taryn Gould, and Colleen Hennessy have sifted through hundreds of hours of footage to fashion something that allows for a sense of the person behind the rock casualty. To this end, they do a splendid job.

Haarla and Borisov demonstrate impeccable timing and expertly tiny movements as they warm up to one another. It’s something like love but without either sex or romance. And it’s a joy to behold.

Both actors are ill-served by a script that carps on about finding your moment or some such. Can’t a hedgehog go on a quest to find a magic master emerald without this constant haranguing?

Following on from Harry Wootliff’s infertility romance, Only You, this confirms the British writer-director as an unmissable talent.

Bounce along as Julie might and it’s a lively, sexy, eventful two-hour adventure.