On many occasions, Broken Flowers has more in common with the major works of turn-of-the-century Bill Murray's renaissance (Rushmore, Lost in Translation) than the filmography of its director, Jim Jarmusch. Jarmusch's films often bury feeling under stylistic affectation, pop-culture nostalgia and carefully calibrated set design. In this case, Don (Murray) has a series of encounters with former lovers to pin down the identity of the mother of his illegitimate son. Catharsis has to find its way out through the fissures…

When Terrence Malick increased his productivity following Tree of Life, his work also traded in much of its clarity and shape for a more impressionistic approach. 2012's To the Wonder may not have much narrative impetus, as the scenes involving Rachel McAdams' love interest and Javier Bardem's priest often come across as preludes, or intersections of other films. Yet it's two hours of pure, haphazard feeling; for all the criticism of Malick's poetic cinema, the principal characters portrayed by Ben…

Task a filmmaker well-versed in film history to make a stop-motion film set in Japan—especially one as obsessed with the minutiae of mise en scène as Wes Anderson—and one would expect a litany of visual quotations of the Japanese cinematic giants. Isle of Dogs certainly does some namedropping (keep an ear out for a cue from a Kurosawa classic) but Anderson seems to have discovered a greater affinity with the country’s traditional pictorial mediums instead. The whole film feels closer…

"Serving as a clear counterpoint to last year’s dour opener, Les Anarchistes, this year’s Cannes Critics’ Week is kicking off with Justine Triet’s sophomore fiction feature, In Bed with Victoria. Triet’s film embodies the youthful, vibrant filmmaking spirit that one comes to expect from this Cannes Film Festival sidebar. Although what is reductively a romantic comedy may seem to be an odd choice for the opening showcase, In Bed with Victoria is buoyed by irresistible performances on the part of…