Promised Land deftly flits from biography to impact study to cinematic essay on the boom and bust of happiness-peddling myths, drawing a clear line from the music king to the current US leader.

Invested with a real sense of joy, Faces Places is also something of a lament for a fast disappearing France.

A Ciambra may be a conventional tale of a young man trying to find himself, but the writer-director’s attention to detail enriches that setup.

This is a loving tribute not only to the late Barbara (1930-97), the inimitable singing icon of the French chanson, but also to the star of this film, Jeanne Balibar, whose brilliant performance is boosted here by her uncanny physical resemblance to the late“Dame en noir”, as Barbara used to be called by her admirers.

Makala takes the observational approach to the hardships of Congolese life, charting a tough but insightful journey.

Gabriel and the Mountain offers a moving look at the transformative nature of travel, both on those hopping around the world in search of a new perspective and those they encounter along the way.

The ropey special effects and platitude-heavy climax mean that the film goes out with a whimper rather than a bang.

Despite the clear compassion the filmmakers have for the title character and those in her orbit, the result is an oddly alienating movie that treats every plot point with hyperbolic life-or-death stakes.

A few mid-section pacing issues not withstanding, this is a satisfyingly gritty addition to Iran’s tradition of humanist cinema.

How To Talk To Girls at Parties shouldn’t work, as it feels at times like a film made by a talented student collective who overheard a ‘punk vs aliens’ elevator pitch. But work it does: it’s all a bit mad, but ultimately rather moving.

Polanski and the supremely genre-savvy Assayas know exactly what they’re doing, and whenever you think you’ve seen it all before, you realise they’re actually doing something else entirely – the film is an expertly navigated maze of misdirection.

Desplechin delivers with flying colours thanks to an excellent cast and a sometimes serious, sometimes funny story that never lets up or becomes predictable. [Cannes Version]

Ramsay elevates the material way beyond the conventional by sheer filmmaking craft.

It’s a dazzlingly executed, hugely enjoyable act of stylistic homage, but also the poignant story of a dysfunctional marriage and an insightful recreation of a critical and contradiction-ridden period of modern French history.

An ambitious, thematically overstuffed drama that’s both a crackling action-thriller and a ponderous political commentary.

Haneke’s magisterial control of tone, actor and shot is not to be underestimated: there are scenes of quiet, nuanced authority and menace here that, true to form, compel our attention with their glacial brilliance.

Faithful to his title, Andrey Zvyagintsev (Leviathan) deivers a cruel, desolate, unforgiving image of Russia’s new middle class, ruled by selfishness, greed, frustration, envy, anger and anxiety in Loveless.

Rather than a chic bagatelle, this proves an acutely intelligent, finely acted and – despite its cerebral edge - emotionally rich piece.

It may not qualify as a movie entertainment in the full sense of the word, but it is most certainly an edifying picture of social stagnation at its saddest.

To say the performances are authentic is clearly stating the point, but the Blackburn family opens up to give an easily intimate portrait of themselves.

Although it could possibly be deemed a case of style over substance, Byun Sung-hyun’s The Merciless is an accomplished and well-structured South Korean noir thriller.

There is never any doubting Doillon’s sincerity or artistry but his film is overly cerebral, unfolding in a series of encounters that fade to black and never build a dramatic momentum.

Doggedly conventional in its approach, the film walks an uneasy line between unflinching honesty and crass emotional exploitation, before tipping into the latter in a questionable final act.

There are plenty of elements to admire in Amant Double but the endless twists and revelations grow tiresome.

A Gentle Creature is a grim state-of-the-nation fable, a bitter mix of tragedy, farce and road movie soaked in the bleak sardonic spirit of Gogol and Dostoyevsky, not to mention gallons of vodka.

BPM (Beats Per Minute) is a moving, lump-in-the-throat love story but should also resonate on a political level as a testimony to the power of activism to awaken an indifferent world.

There are wonderful, quintessentially French flourishes scattered throughout.

An inability to crack the movie’s central mystery — why abandon your dreams to help facilitate someone else’s? — leaves the project feeling a bit like a missed opportunity.

Franco manages to maintain credibility as he ramps up the emotional stakes, creating situations in which the viewer longs to jump into the screen and change the course of events.

In all its flawed brilliance, The Square remains an original, visceral, uncomfortable and essential viewing experience.

Wong’s indomitable spirit is what lends the film such an appeal.

Plenty of films revolve around heists gone wrong, but few have the desperate, grungy velocity of Good Time.

Typically delicate and as gentle as a balm, the film’s well-intentioned earnestness will not endear it to the more cynical end of the audience spectrum. But fans of Kawase’s small scale personal dramas will respond to the film’s wistful tone, as well as the plaintive prettiness of the photography.

All but the most dedicated fans of the director’s work might find this story a little too diffuse and meandering, its rewards too deeply buried beneath the evasive wordiness.

Undoubtedly the film’s charm comes from the performances of Kim and Huppert, and scenes involving the pair and their tangible chemistry resonate the strongest.

Miike is on fine form, never losing his sense of humour, or sense of character, even as yet another axe is embedded in yet another skull.

A remarkable study of poverty, family and personal responsibility, The Florida Project meticulously illustrates how life on the margins affects one impressionable six-year-old.

This is a ruthlessly controlled drama that achieves its powerful effect by holding back when its dramatic content is most intense.

The film consistently works as both a straightforward psychosexual thriller and something more troubling — almost unspoken — underneath.

With The Meyerowitz Stories (New And Selected), filmmaker Noah Baumbach writes a new, richly warm variation on a favourite theme: the maddening impossibility of family.

As an innovative filmmaker who naturally chimes with the perspective of the outsider looking in, Haynes takes a semi-graphic novel which comes with a strong visual identity, and makes it very much his own.

The film may pretend it’s more sophisticated than the show that spawned it, but its comedic stylings are alarmingly regressive.

Swiss director Baran bo Odar leans heavily on bone-crunching sound design and a percussive score which rumbles over the film like a pursuing helicopter.

A treatise on art, ambition, long-distance relationships and the struggles to find one’s own voice, the film unfolds with uncommon grace.

Gradually, the movie becomes a compassionate but constructive commentary on the danger of nostalgia — how it seduces us into sticking with worn-out pleasures at the expense of new experiences and challenges.

&t does effectively plunge the viewer back in those choppy seas for an object lesson in how politics can rapidly inflame a situation to dangerous levels, even when both countries had agreed the best place for him was Cuba.

This satire boasts plenty of ideas but is only occasionally compelling.

Screenwriter Jeff Nathanson (Catch Me If You Can), taking over from series regulars Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, doesn’t make much sense out of the typically (for the franchise) convoluted plot, but does manage to bring out a father-child theme that lends the film a little emotional resonance.

Okja is fun, if sometimes over-egged, as an adventure romp, but flounders in overstatement when it comes to satirical intent.

Soul on a String is visually stunning.

The film still stands as an imposing monument to the memory of a great artist.

Abacus: Small Enough To Jail isn’t as grand or engrossing a treatise as Hoop Dreams or The Interrupters, but in its intimate, well-observed way, the film is deeply moving and subtly shaming.

A luminous, heartbreaking performance from Olivia Cooke shines through every frame of Katie Says Goodbye.

Co-writers Julian Barratt and Simon Farnaby fly the flag for a rare original idea with the goofy, genial, fitfully inspired Mindhorn.

It is pleasant to watch, needs a much stronger structure to hold it together.

Italian artist Yuri Ancarani’s mostly-silent travelogue captures the Arabian peninsula without comment, its repetitive, dreamy imagery providing an insight to an age-old sport which plays out within the trappings of extreme wealth.

Often amusing but rarely shifting into a higher comedic gear, Snatched features fun chemistry between co-stars Amy Schumer and Goldie Hawn, some delightfully goofy moments of stray hilarity, yet not enough story or heart to keep this thin tale afloat.

Commercial considerations strangle the vitality from the movie, but Ritchie does his best to bring a bit of impish wit to the proceedings.

It’s a long, flat, no-frills journey which struggles to engage despite its many bloody shocks.

An effective, albeit somewhat artificial, exercise in suspense, The Wall derives much of its propulsion from Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s grunting, grimacing performance as a wounded US soldier squaring off with an unseen Iraqi sniper.

Judith Chemla is a perfect choice for the lead.

The film’s freewheeling energy is as appealing as its developments are unpredictable.

In its style as well as its psychological focus, Hounds of Love marks Young as a filmmaker to watch, though he’s not the feature’s only standout. His trio of leads has rarely been better.

The broad brushstrokes storytelling and the director’s over-fondness for slow-motion sequences are among the film’s failings but this is still a rousing, easily accessible epic.

A gentle, unassuming picture, it does have a satisfying, feelgood trajectory and empathetic central performance from Marie Leuenberger.

Whitney Can I Be Me delivers yet another tragic lesson in the toxic mix of fame and talent and children: it should be required viewing for all those who seek to follow this diva’s path to fame and fortune.

Ice Mother handles the lives of its older protagonists with sensitivity and admirable candour.

There is no shortage of drama to feed House Of Z.

Everyone loves a conspiracy—which is one of the reasons that A Gray State, a tantalising and fascinating real-life story, makes for compelling viewing. But it’s also supremely timely.

This incendiary true story boasts a charismatic central performance from rising star Peters (X-Men, TV’s American Horror Story), whose everyman charm helps drive a narrative which has a tendency to get entangled in its own worthy intentions.

Brian Shoaf does not break any new ground in Aardvark (besides featuring an actual aardvark in an independent film), yet his pairing of stalwart female characters with troubled men is a welcome twist of gender stereotypes.

The Lovers is shrewd, even if it’s not altogether satisfying.

Pointedly recounting the history of the LGBT movement in New York, director David France shines a light on how, even within that community, transgender people have been treated like second-class citizens.

No one says too much in this film’s underdeveloped dialogue, yet Ryan’s steely demeanor reflects the jumbled toughness and vulnerability of people dependant on land that isn’t giving them much.

We’re lucky that moralists like Ponsoldt and Eggers have a sense of humor.

Starting off as a strained farce before segueing into a sappy family film, How To Be A Latin Lover has its likeable, goofy moments, although it is consistently undercut by a main character who is very difficult to love.

Walk With Me is a slip of a film, at turns worthy and profound, yet also soporific and uneventful, an occupational hazard of spending three years embedded in a Zen community, no doubt.

Preposterous, nonsensical, but fun nonetheless, Unbroken frustrates as much as it entertains.

Although Wakefield’s ending leaves open the possibility for multiple interpretations, the filmmaker removes the sting from her story’s tale, which keeps its insights from cutting as deep.

Not only is it an affectionate and personal film – the subject, Elsa Dorfman, is a long-standing friend and Morris’s emotional investment in her story is evident in every frame. It’s also far more informal in approach than his normal forthright technique.

Underneath Vol. 2’s sarcastic exterior, Gunn’s script has a big, bleeding heart, pinpointing the characters’ insecurities and emotional scars.

Tramps is a good-natured little film.

It’s all glossily camped-up nonsense with an amusingly inappropriate title, but luridly – and ludicrously – entertaining nonetheless.

Connery extends the film’s appeal with enjoyable sequences depicting how the game was run back then – extravagantly be-whiskered golfers would push and shove their way around the course, casually moving balls while being followed by unruly, whisky-swilling crowds.

Expertly paced, Glory builds to a cleverly staged off-camera climax that perfectly caps everything that has gone before.

Essentially a feature-length version of the cute animal videos that proliferate on social media, Born In China is a feast for the eyes while also being an irritant for the ears.

The problem with City Of Tiny Lights is a plot that is all too easy to second guess and stretches of dialogue which fail to sparkle.

In what is only fitting for a story literally and figuratively embroidered around hearts, the film’s visual and emotional beats are perfectly in synch.

The spectacle gives you enough action from enough famous names to sustain the momentum of its legacy.

Editing is clearly complex given the variable footage, but each emergency call and every character is successfully individualised and identifiable, and several arcs snap into the overall narrative drive.

All credit to Dan Stevens for rendering so vividly a selfish, abrasive character.

While enjoyable in parts, its episodic pacing lets down the real-life story of a bold and remarkable woman.

Though perhaps low on insights, this is an evocative portrait of a brief, intense window of hedonism, self discovery and Olympic levels of self-indulgence experienced by young people on the cusp of adulthood.

A lazy heist comedy that asks little of its appealing leads, Going In Style goes down smoothly even if the only thing that really gets stolen is the audience’s time.

It’s certainly a striking location for a story: a blinding white sun-baked blank slate on which anything can be written. It’s just a little unfortunate that the story Herzog chooses to tell is so frustratingly enigmatic and unformed.

Lacking the visual flair of 127 Hours or the satisfying resilience of Robert Redford’s character in All Is Lost, the film leans heavily on Armie Hammer’s performance. And while he is a charismatic leading actor, he is not given enough to work with here to sustain the picture.

While Schwarzenegger is solid – almost literally, his face like granite and his movements stiff – and McNairy is completely committed in this tragic two-hander, Lester’s film is resolutely one-note.

A genuine, likeable, loose-limbed buddy dramedy about impending death.