Joaquin Phoenix is in full beast mode in Lynn Ramsay’s “You were never really here,” a head-scratching drama whose action begins in Cincinnatti, curiously, and moves to New York City. Phoenix is muscular, wears a scowl for much of the film, a glint of evil in the stare. There’s a little bit of something for everyone in this film: a sexually-deviant governor, murders with a hammer, underage prostitutions, ghosts, PTSD and battle scars.

There are still two movies left to watch in this year's program but here are the movies, thus far, that I believe should win this year, and the prizes they should deserve: PALME D'OR The Square (directed by Ruben Oestlund) BEST DIRECTING Michel Hazanavicius ("Le Redoutable") BEST ACTRESS Diane Kruger, "In the Fade"

The characters in director Fatih Akin’s movies are flawed, they use drugs, they take a contrarian approach to life, they survive life rather than live it (and they listen to fantastic music). While studying the humanities in college Katja (Diane Kruger, in a very strong performance) enjoyed the instant gratification of chemicals and fell for her drug dealer, the virile and handsome Nuri (Turkish-German actor Numan Acar).

A24, an independent film studio, is like Weinstein or Focus but for the millenial set: their output possesses an edge and an immediacy that isn’t seen very often these days in the film production landscape. "Good Time," which debuted this morning, is the latest film out of this studio. In the Ben and Josh Safdie-directed “Good Time,” about a bank robbery gone wrong, I saw Lou Reed’s New York. The city lay under cover of darkness, full of danger

Every year at the Cannes Festival the “Pierre Angénieux ExcelLens [...]

There’s something mildly sadistic about a master-filmmaker botching his own, brilliant, film with an underwhelming ending, such as that which Sergei Loznitsa did with “Krotkaya” (“A gentle creature” in the Russian original). A woman whose husband is in prison gets the care package she’d sent to her husband returned to her. A delivery attempt was made, person is no longer at that jail cell. In want of news she sets off

The first thing that I noticed while watching Kantemir Balagov’s new film “Tesnota” (“Closeness” in the original russian) is the performance by lead actress Darya Zhovner. Her Ilana, the character from whose point of view the film is told, is a tomboy who works in her step-father’s garage and whiles away the days hanging out with her boyfriend. Zhovner, for whom this film represents a first role (she graduated from Moscow’s Art Theater