The Black Phone doesn’t disappoint, although it delivers in ways unexpected. And though it takes time, the payoff is worth the effort put into packing up old expectations and unpacking new. But fair warning: The Black Phone is not the easy-to-digest horror film you might think.

The Spanish comedy/satire Official Competition plays on those clichés, and yet doesn’t really say anything new. But thanks to its A-list cast, led by Penélope Cruz and Antonio Banderas, it’s quite enjoyable.

Despite its horror-film veneer, Innuksuk wraps the viewer in a warm blanket of nostalgia whenever the film threatens to chill. But Slash/Back has enough creep factor to settle any argument purporting that Stranger Things only happen in the cozy climates of Midwest America.

Its pace, at least in the early going, is breathless.

It’s a neo-Western, a sensitively acted, heartfelt and ambitious drama which stumbles when it resembles an illustrated thesis about the legacy of the West.

True to Pixar’s magic storytelling, Lightyear offers a much deeper and more complex set of ideas for adult viewers on that very theme, without being heavy or depressing. There is much sweetness here.

If themes about the importance of friendship, hope, and love land a bit on the nose, there’s no denying Brian and Charles takes an innovative approach to delivering them, even if — see above — the tack is brazenly metaphorical. Yet its distinctive charms are resonant enough to offset a slender story in what nevertheless amounts to a sweet and earnest, modern-day fable.

The odd golfball-centric bit of whimsy aside, The Phantom of the Open is straight-ahead storytelling (complete with a pat family crisis that is neatly resolved) that can only be as good as the actors in it.

If you want a film where the dinosaurs go roar, then this is your film.

Hustle may not surprise you, but that doesn’t detract from its charm. There are mountains for the characters to climb, a sense of connection to others, and other ideas that feel especially rewarding right now.

The film’s tone and the story structure are both naturalistic, and realistic. Carpignano doesn’t force huge moments of upheaval in the film, or story points where characters have sudden shifts of personality to heighten the drama or bring the story to a dramatic conclusion. We’re experiencing what Chiara experiences, and again that documentary feel works to keep the story intimate.

Watcher is a successful thriller, good enough to hold viewers through its three acts and into the final scene. But the reward for sticking around might not be the payoff viewers were waiting for. Neither is it all that original.

In essence, a 90-minute commercial for the festival, inviting audiences to come down to “the most kickass party in the world’ and “the world’s greatest backyard barbecue.”

Again, this is Cronenberg, and I would expect nothing less than an obscure narrative and underplayed emotions. But the bleakness Cronenberg plies onto the landscape, whether it's a child playing by the seaside near the wreck of a fallen ship, or well-dressed socialites chatting over cocktails, weighs too heavy to be appreciated.

It’s an interesting juxtaposition of the Queen as a woman, as a girl, as a monarch, at work, at play, in love. For anyone who grew up with the more matronly era of the Queen, images of her as a vivacious, playful, beautiful young woman are fascinating.

Clocking in at under two hours, virtually every word of prosaic bro dialogue, every dramatic exchange, every turn of events, is designed to do one thing: get us back in the sky twisting and turning at several times the speed of sound, narrowly avoiding crashes with other planes and with the ground.

To give Noé’s credit, he used the Saint Laurent fashion money to practice the split-screen technique which is employed far more movingly in Vortex. He also made the only fashion ad I won’t instantly forget.

Women, men, relationships, the patriarchy feminism, nature, and body-horror merge in writer/director Alex Garland’s creepy, allegorical art-house horror thriller Men.

Once you get past the clinical mis-en-scène and the voyeuristic surprise, the story is the usual A Star Is Born showbiz rollercoaster of big dreams, success, and disillusionment.

The new documentary Mau by the Austrian brother team of Benji and Jono Bergmann offers some insight into what is termed “design thinking,” the idea that creative design process influences almost every area of human life. Unfortunately, the film is far too busy admiring its subject to offer much insight into the discipline’s real-world applications.

Director Simon Curtis and writer Julian Fellowes deliver the dual comedies of errors with cheer, sprightly/stately music and the lightest of drama. The scenery, both at Downton and in France, is worthy of Rick Steeves’ Europe. If this is a goodbye (and there are plenty of signals that it is, barring unexpectedly huge box office), it ends on a note of smiles, tears and no hard feelings.

This is a heavy-duty topic but rather than lecture or make an angry or ideological film, Diwan works here with restrained and even slightly distant tone, focusing on the character of Anne and her determination to control her own life.

I saw Firestarter at a late-night screening. A person in the audience talked loudly on their phone for much of the film's second half. No one asked them to stop. No one cared.

Weeraskathul also explores how identities emerge, dissolve, and connect but he steps onto that shifting ground of memory and experience through a poetic, reverent portal.

Vogt masterfully—undoubtedly infuriating for some - understates the horror in his film by filtering it through a bright summer Nordic sun while adults mill about oblivious to the violence around them.

The Sadness is good. Not just genre-specific good, but cinema good. And even when it arrives at the inevitable ‘who are the real monsters’ scene, The Sadness still has bite.

Apart from the inspired split-screen gimmick, the film works because the cast is superb, with Argento as the impatient, angry old lion holding on to his threads of power. Lebrun’s performance, though, is the heart of the film.

There is magic in French writer/director Céline Sciamma’s beautiful new film Petite Maman. Running just 72 minutes, this spare and gentle little film has an emotional core that feels true and authentic.