There’s a great movie buried somewhere in American Honey — heck, there might be two of them. But at its current length, it resembles nothing so much as fine spirit overly diluted with water. The care and quality is all there, but in this iteration they ain’t coming through.

The film traces a strong, steady line to a foregone conclusion, and that steadiness is exactly the point.

If Personal Shopper doesn’t spell everything out for its viewers, it’s no more accommodating to Maureen; she, like us, must use her skills to intuit what’s happening around her and what the future will hold. It’s a captivating swirl for all involved.

Its languid pace befits the Recife setting, and Filho sets many scenes on long walks down the coast or just after a particularly satisfying mid-day nap. His world is filled with music, dance and wine, and if the film takes a some time to get where it’s going, the beachfront setting remains a pleasant place to stay. Call it an escapist tale about stubbornly staying put.

Filipino director Brillante Mendoza’s neorealist indictment of police corruption looks unlike any other film playing in Cannes’ Official Competition. It’s just that what sets the film apart is its visual ugliness.

A spectacularly misjudged mix of humanitarian intentions and gonzo-terrible execution.

Though a vengeance riff, it remains a Farhadi film all through, so dancing around each other means a lot of talking about action instead of doing action. And that’s fine – the former playwright is uncommonly gifted in writing third acts, where each line of dialogue and simple gesture are imbued with meaning.

The film is riotously funny, and Isabelle Huppert has never been better.

A small, cyclical film about the value of a small, cyclical life, Jim Jarmusch‘s Paterson is a perfect version of itself. His ode to small pleasures and the simple life comes in the form of a simple film that is a small pleasure.

Neruda raises thought-provoking questions, offers no easy answers, and does it in with top-notch performances and a cinematic style that is intellectually, artistically and thematically compelling.

Call it scenery in search of a film. Call it a film in search of a purpose. Call me when Guiraudie releases his next one, because, damn, the guy’s got talent.

Kriegman and Steinberg’s incredible access allows you to ride the whole roller coaster.

Dolan shoots in tightly held close-ups, forgoing spatial staging for the immediate pleasures of fabric and light. Whereas similar imagery filled his previous films with energy and life, here it just makes the somber piece feel more claustrophobic and inert.

Like any artist, Miller has the right to reinvent herself, but we don’t need one more director of winsome, Sundance-ready rom-coms. That said, as winsome, Sundance-ready rom-coms go, Maggie’s Plan is a pretty winning one.

There’s a tipping point at which comedy goes from black to bilious, and that’s a balancing act that The Nice Guys doesn’t always nail. The laughs from this frequently entertaining action comedy get stuck in the throat, keeping this altogether good movie from being a great one.

If Lanthimos’ gloom-vision is decidedly more blunt, it’s no less accurate an assessment of every heartless thing human beings already inflict on one another. His is a wild, sad, mordantly funny dystopia, but one that gives sexual desperation the bad name it deserves.

Sundown is the misbegotten lovechild of “The Hangover” and “Project X”: Stupendous in its stupidity, offensive in its attempts to be funny, and downright unpleasant from beginning to end.

This impulse to do less, to avoid excess, is admirable — something the current wave of Conservative Evangelical filmmaking could bear to emulate — but in the end it reads as timid, eventually making “Last Days” feel small and insignificant, hobbled by its own restraint.

Who knows what Pelé: Birth of a Legend could have been had it tapped more into that mysterious life force and the true messiness in harnessing it and making it glorious. Instead we get what the man himself was canny enough to ignore: a familiar game plan tediously followed.

There are moments in Sunset Song that rank with Davies’ most poignant.

A bewilderingly facile and preposterously plotted misfire that offers few pleasures as either a star-driven thriller or a big-screen indictment of the forces that devastated global bank accounts.

It’s a perfectly enjoyable, perfectly forgettable nostalgi-comedy that will be taken to task for not being anything more.

What Alice Through the Looking Glass constantly underscores, however, is that even the greatest cinema trickery serves little purpose without stories and characters to support. The pictures are pretty (or scary or awe-inspiring) but they ultimately don’t mean anything.

X-Men: Apocalypse provides a hint at what might one day take down the ubiquitous superhero genre: utter dullness. For all its bangs, the movie is ultimately a whimper.

It’s inarguable that some fans, somewhere, will relish every detail.

The Angry Birds Movie basically hits all the squares on the Lazily Conceived Family Cartoon bingo card.

Though Dheepan is another triumph for Audiard, it could have just as easily not worked had its leads not been so affecting

This crime comedy doesn’t consistently deliver, but the highs make the lows worth enduring.

Neighbors 2 never lags, and the laughs keep coming, even though they’re coming from a fairly familiar place. If that’s all you want, that’s what you get. But, hey at least you get it, which is more than you can say for most sequels.

Visually, Ratchet & Clank has its appeal.... But the story is ultimately too predictable and forgettable to make Ratchet & Clank anything but a kid-targeted holdover between slavishly awaited tentpole behemoths from the comic book world.

There’s a sadistic streak in High-Rise that’s simultaneously hypnotizing and unnerving. If there’s a morality to Wheatley’s world, it’s nebulous at best.

The film constantly reveals itself as having no idea how human beings speak or behave.

[Gervais] abandons all sharp edges and serves up a bland, toothless picture that isn’t particularly scathing and doesn’t have anything much to say, even though the basic premise might have allowed for some satirical jabs at journalism and politics.

Everyone’s so damn happy and grateful to have been meddled with that it undercuts both the comedy and the drama in this film from writer-director Lorene Scafaria.

A Hologram for the King succeeds at putting us in Alan’s meandering headspace, but that doesn’t mean you’ll find his journey as meaningful as he does.

Nina, an infuriatingly amateurish picture about the great singer and pianist Nina Simone, is a new low for the musical biopic genre.

Inoffensive as it is inconsequential, this first foray into big-budget filmmaking from director Liza Johnson (“Hateship Loveship”) is a painful disappointment from start to finish, a frustratingly safe and unimaginative effort that squanders the potential of its story.

Movies don’t get much juicier, funnier, creepier, sadder, or smarter than writer-director Justin Kelly‘s King Cobra.

Despite the descent into madness that appears on screen, the movie is controlled and measured.

The bulk of these stories just aren’t very engaging — or even good.

If you’re put off by the filmmaker’s previous work, then the autobiographical Sing Street isn’t going to be the movie that wins you over. But fans of Carney’s lush romanticism and hook-laden lyricism will be thrilled to add this one to their playlist.

“Civil War” strikes that admirable balance: serious-minded action that never forgets to indulge in serious fun.

With its combination of workplace sitcom and social activism, Barbershop: The Next Cut feels more like a binge-viewing of multiple episodes of a TV series than a movie, but even on that level, it’s a show worth watching.

This is a fine, funny and moving film tribute to the efforts and passions of its titular heroine, a woman who lived out her dreams, at any price.

Despite the title, this is a quiet, intimate story of a family reeling from tragedy, but it’s no less loaded with revelations and breakthroughs, all set at a recognizably human volume.

Demolition strikes a tricky balance; it’s a comedy of manners that never judges its hero’s bizarre behavior. Had it stuck to its emotional guns, it would stand much taller, but even its ultimate flaws can’t erode its sturdy foundation.

The movie equivalent of a diverting beach read.

Presented with a moral universe where annihilation is all, it’s difficult to invest in the film as anything more significant than a breathless series of punishing vignettes.

It isn’t comedy, and it isn’t drama, much less comedy-drama.

If all else fails, at least it’s a movie smart enough to know that, frankly, you can’t beat Charlize Theron, covered in gold, shooting lethal spiky tentacles out of her midriff.

It’s a testament to the total-immersion powers of The Jungle Book, from its visual splendors to its sound design, that the seams never show; even more impressive is the film’s use of its craft not merely to dazzle us but also to further its dramatic agenda.

Its pulls back from the original film’s cruelty and comeuppances for non-believers, yet its non-Christian characters are still parodies of human evil: greedy, bitter, violent, and out to prove that “God is dead.”

Everybody Wants Some!! may not achieve the lasting status of some of Linklater’s more acclaimed work, but there is something wonderful in watching a movie remain joyfully plotless, as intentionally lacking in direction as so many college students manage to be before society harangues them about the importance of responsibility.

Hiddleston, who does his own singing, doesn’t get to show off his chops very often. But when he does, the film comes alive, particularly when Williams finally makes it to the Opry.

Hawke is terrific as the jazz legend, so soft-spoken that he sometimes appears a little frightened of the people around him.

Take Me to the River isn’t a horror movie, but then it’s not not a horror movie, either. It’s a slowly tightening vise, all about suspicion and hostility and resentments and what people aren’t talking about when they talk to each other. A stunning debut feature from writer-director Matt Sobel, Take Me to the River is Polanski, with cicadas.

All the performances are terrific and lend the film a vérité so keen it may leave you as uncomfortable as the titular outcast.

That face-off between two comics legends becomes but one in a series of big things bashing into other big things, which is what Snyder and writers Chris Terrio and David S. Goyer mistake for storytelling. The trio do manage to cough up an acceptable number of ooh-that’s-cool moments, and fans who will be satisfied with those will be satisfied with those, but any other ideas and characters the movie might offer get lost in the rubble.

The raunchy awfulness of The Brothers Grimsby is overwhelmed by a constant flow of chuckles, guffaws and flat-out belly laughs it elicits throughout.

My Golden Days is lovely and thoughtful, yet it has elements of a thriller, too.

Unsettling and bizarrely humorous, The Clan is the sort of film that ups the ante of any movie that dares open with those dreaded five words: “Based on a true story.”

It’s sweet, just like the original movie. It was faint praise then, and it still is.

The film offers one or two surprises. And when its humor lands, Rauch ensures that it sticks.

The film’s real power comes from Garner, whose solid, memorable work anchors everything around her.

Mirren, as ever, is both polite and brusque, her petite va-va-voomness never undermining her credibility as a tough military top-ranker. And Rickman — oh, that dryly sarcastic voice.

Midnight Special goes off its own narrative cliff, capping a compelling story with a third-act resolution so misguided that’s it’s the dramatic equivalent of punching the gas and plunging into the abyss.

Filmed in five long 35mm takes, this murder mystery features a fair amount of cinematic virtuosity, but it’s too self-conscious and uneven to be entirely successful.

Young Messiah is more quiet than action-driven, more sober than fantastical (that slinky Satan notwithstanding), and more dull than poetic.

Field uses her considerable powers as an actress to imbue some humanity into Doris, but the film kneecaps her efforts at every turn.

It doggedly follows the well-worn rom-com path, down to saving all the personality and occasional laughs – very, very occasional ones – for the supporting cast.

Even if this material might have been better served as a 40-minute short than as a full-length movie, first-time feature director Dan Trachtenberg has cast a trio of actors at the top of their game, and they elevate the material.

Director Laura Gabbert pairs her wide-ranging, blithely fawning approach to Gold with a vision of Los Angeles as blinkered as it is tempting.

Iranian-born director Babak Najafi (“Sebbe”) and the four credited screenwriters... make things move fast enough to keep you awake, but not fast enough to finesse its plot absurdities past an alert viewer’s mind.

“Allegiant” ends up feeling like a mid-season climax to serialized TV drama. The pieces are in play, the wheels in motion. Stay tuned, loyal viewers, and you’ll get your answers next year.

It’s the movie equivalent of a multi-course banquet of colorful foams: wisps of flavor emerge here and there, and admiration reigns, but in the end you’re unlikely to believe you’ve actually had a meal.

The acting is universally excellent, particularly Fey, who’s shrewdly fulfilling our expectations while playing off them.

The filmmakers are more concerned with shock-cuts, loud bangs, and creating Indian characters that are either servants or monsters, than with pushing the genre forward into satisfyingly visceral or psychological territory.

Gods of Egypt might have merited a so-bad-it’s-good schadenfreude fanbase had it maintained the unintentional laughs of its first 10 minutes. Instead, it skids into dullness, thus negating the camp classic that it so often verges on becoming.

Unlike the first half, which felt like a fresh look at Biblical events from an unfamiliar POV, the latter section simply recreates the end of the Gospel of Matthew with little of the urgency or humanity that fueled it before.

The Jesse Owens to cheer on here is, sure, the fastest man in the world, but also the canny would-be celebrity who knew exactly how to bet on himself in a world that had little use for his dignity and intellect. If that’s not an inspirational story, I don’t know what is.

A howlingly inane movie that somehow managed to collect an impressively A-list cast on its way toward becoming a cop movie that’s not just dumb, it’s disastrous.

Writer-director Tobias Lindholm knows how to keep a human perspective in his storytelling, no matter how outsized the drama or the dilemmas facing his characters.

This is the kind of serious horror movie that will live in your head for days afterward, like a bad dream that’s difficult to shake.

Thankfully the creators of this expansive adventure, a crime-solving saga starring a bunny who wants to be a cop, have a bit more in mind than the usual strains of aww-dorable humor and frenetic action.

The script offers enough laughs to keep the movie from feeling completely disposable...and it outshines many of its genre peers through little touches like not punishing its female characters for enjoying sex and casting Damon Wayans Jr. (as a romantic interest for Alice) in a role in which his race is thoroughly irrelevant.

There are no build-ups or pay-offs here, just a lot of random moments of people saying stupid stuff, and fashion people being gently lampooned.

Deadpool is one of those movies that’s all the more successful for how easily it could have gone so very wrong. It’s suffused with an arch, self-aware wit...yet it takes its romance and revenge storylines just seriously enough to keep us engaged.

The scenery is nice. Everything and everyone is very clean. Walker and Palmer, as the lovers, work with what little they’ve been given. But none of those elements are of any real consequence. There is no surprise, and there is nothing to care about.

This movie is so crushing mainly because it was made by obviously smart people who are trying to dumb themselves down, and there’s nothing more excruciating than that.

Despite arriving a decade too late, there’s a version of the small-town coming-out comedy 4th Man Out...that could feel relevant. But first-time director Andrew Nackman’s emotionally shallow, vaguely misogynistic take isn’t it.

The Coens revel in both the glamour and the squalor of post-war Hollywood with a film that more than makes up in wit and flash what it might lack in substance.

Jane Got a Gun takes long pauses in the action to chronicle through flashbacks how this love triangle comes to defend a single home. The film’s greatest surprise is that these unabashedly emotional flashbacks work.

A slapdash movie that’s more unbearable than the heavy-breathing best-seller and its emotionally timid screen adaptation.

As cinema, it’s an avalanche of feel-good clichés, but as an audience-pleasing machine, it relentlessly pursues its goal and will probably win over viewers who surrender to it.

Certain Women gives us female characters who are smart and complicated and funny and imperfect, and it never hand-delivers a message regarding what we’re supposed to think about them.

The movie really belongs to Mortensen, who allows Ben to be exasperating, arrogant and impatient but also warm, loving and caring. He’s a tough but adoring father, a grieving widower and an angry defender of his wife’s final wishes, and Mortensen plays all these notes and more with subtlety and grace.

Kate Beckinsale and Chloe Sevigny spin intrigues, break hearts and flirt with scandal just as effectively in the 1790s setting of “Love” as they did in “Disco,” which took place in the early 1980s.

Along with an ending that some will find either enigmatic or unsatisfying, the movie could benefit from some minor re-editing. But there’s still much that works here, from the chillingly droning score to a uniformly strong cast.