John Bleasdale

★★★★☆ One of the leading lights of the Romanian New Wave, director Cristian Mungiu returns to Cannes with Graduation, a contemporary morality tale about how, in attempting to free his daughter from the confines of a corrupt country, a previously honest man himself becomes corrupt. Dr. Romeo Aldea (Adrian Titieni) is a good doctor with…

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★★☆☆☆ When Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne premièred Two Days, One Night at Cannes two years ago, they explained that it was their first western. As they return to the Croisette with The Unknown Girl, they describe it as an old-fashioned detective story, an investigation. These genre identifications are telling in that it feels as if…

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★★★☆☆ Personal Shopper sees former Twilight star Kristen Stewart continue her Cannes run with a bracingly mad little ghost story that reunites her with Clouds of Sils Maria director Olivier Assayas. As with the former film, Stewart plays Maureen, someone who in reality might be working for the actress. After playing personal assistant to Juliette…

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★★★☆☆ The first words that come to your mind after seeing a film by Pedro Almodóvar are usually ‘flamboyant’, ‘over-the-top’, or perhaps ‘fabulous’. His latest offering, showing at the 69th Cannes film festival, is more likely to have you thinking ‘efficient’, ‘workman-like’ and possibly the dreaded ‘average’. It’s as if Will Self suddenly wrote a…

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★★☆☆☆ The camera passes over some scrubland, tracking close to the ground like a sniffer hound and then out over a pond of algae-covered water where, in the middle, a couple of bubbles break the surface and a grisly object rises suddenly: a severed human foot. So begins Bogdan Mirică’s debut thriller Dogs (Caini), competing…

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★★★☆☆ Not to be confused with the plethora of superheroes currently smashing each other to bits on our cinema screens, Matt Ross’ Captain Fantastic is an effective, comic road movie which doesn’t quite dare to be as radical as its protagonists. Viggo Mortensen plays Ben, a man who has taken his family into the wilds…

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★★★★☆ It’s been a busy year for Jeff Nichols. His Midnight Special received its premiere in Berlin back in February and now his fourth feature, Loving, arrives at Cannes. Playing in competition, it should confirm Nichols’ reputation as a mature filmmaker of great tact and intelligence. Richard Loving (an immense Joel Edgerton) is a hardworking…

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★★★★☆ There are a lot countries which are apparently no longer for old men. However, despite treading some familiar territory, British director David Mackenzie’s new film Hell or High Water proves itself a brilliantly executed, sharply written genre gem. The Texas Midland Bank is about to open when two masked men follow the woman with…

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★★★☆☆ The buzz competition title of this year’s Cannes so far, German director Maren Ade’s third feature Toni Erdmann is a well-made, occasionally hilarious, sometimes touching drama about a career-centric daughter contending with her prankster father. Peter Simonischek plays Winfried Conradi, a piano teacher who enjoys indulging in practical jokes. A set of grotesque false…

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★★★★★ “No ideas but in things” wrote William Carlos Williams, the patron saint of Jim Jarmusch’s sumptuous sonnet to poetry and ordinariness, Paterson. The film presents us with a week in the life of bus driver and lunchtime poet Paterson (Adam Driver). In many way, Paterson’s life is idyllic. He is deeply, almost boyishly in…

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