A.J. Goldmann

Creaking doors, rustling leaves and leaky taps make up the soundtrack of Olivier Assayas’ improbable horror film Personal Shopper. But the most unnerving (and grating) sound in this supernatural fashion show are the iMessage alerts that may or may not be coming from the beyond. If that sounds ridiculous, that’s because, like so much else in this baffling film, it is. Assayas has made some excellent films over the past two decades and more, and I think his nosedive with Personal Shopper can be explained by his latest muse, Kristen Stewart. Sure, she’s pretty – if that emaciated-junkie look turns you on. But why the former Twilight star has turned Assayas’ head is simply beyond me.

Parsifal Bayreuth Festival, until 28 August In the days leading up to this year’s Bayreuth Festival, Bavaria was rocked by a spate of violent attacks. Security measures ran high for the premiere of a new Parsifal rumoured to be awash in Islamic symbolism. Such reports proved true, with the production set in a contemporary Middle Eastern country under threat, possibly from Isis. Far from being lauded as avant, however, the staging by Uwe Eric Laufenberg was instantly dubbed 'Provinztheater', or 'provincial theater', the worst insult that the well-heeled festival audience could come up with. I disagree.

From the Oscar winning classics of the early Seventies — The French Connection (1971) and The Exorcist (1973) — to the southern trailer trash noir Killer Joe (2011), William Friedkin has been behind some of the darkest films ever to come out of Hollywood. He has also had a famously bumpy career, careening from great successes to big flops (does anyone remember Jade?). Somehow, he’s always rebounded. Currently, the 80 year old director is developing Killer Joe into a television series, set to star Nicholas Cage as the cowboy hat wearing detective/hitman played so mesmerisingly in the film by Matthew McConaughey. At the Cannes Film Festival in May, Friedkin was basking in the sort of adoration he hadn’t known for half a lifetime.

'This film would not have been possible without the following encryption tools,' is one of the least expected film credits I can think of. But then again, Laura Poitras’s Risk is not exactly your run-of-the-mill documentary. After her Oscar-winning Citizenfour, a gripping hour-by-hour account of Edward Snowden’s NSA surveillance disclosures from his Hong Kong hotel room, Poitras’s latest is an intimate portrait of WikiLeaks founder and editor-in-chief Julian Assange. Poitras started filming Assange at work in 2010 and her film follows the whistleblower’s mission and his various legal travails since then. As a result, Risk is far less dramatically sensational than Citizenfour, which unfolds over the course of several history-making days.

The first time we see Elle Fanning in The Neon Demon, Nicolas Winding Refn’s cannibalistic catwalk, she’s reclining on a silk couch in a purple dress, her blonde hair up in an elaborate crown braid and her throat slashed. Colourful gemstones circle her eyes and deep red is streaking all the way from her neck down her arm. It doesn’t take long for us to figure out this isn’t a crime scene but a fashion shoot. In the next scene, Fanning ritualistically wipes the stage blood away while a makeup artist (Jena Malone) undresses her with her eyes. Malone is the first of several women who will look at Fanning with desire, envy or sheer hatred. In this film, looks don’t just kill. They lacerate, massacre and exterminate.

Pedro Almodóvar’s last two films were affronts to his reputation as a director. The Skin I Live In (2011) was a grotesque horror show starring Antonio Banderas as a mad plastic surgeon. I’m So Excited was a wacky romp in an airplane that badly needed fuel. His latest, Julieta, currently in competition at Cannes, was a box office disappointment in Spain, where it opened last month – possibly due to the director being named in the Panama Papers – but it’s better than a lot of what he’s done lately, as well as the closest thing to a mainstream movie that one can imagine from the Spanish eccentric.