Illustration by Franz Lang.The last time a Tom Cruise blockbuster premiered in Cannes, the year was 2022, and among the 21 Palme d’Or hopefuls was Albert Serra’s Pacifiction, the kind of work that, in my book at least, exemplifies the electrifying cinema the festival’s Official Competition was designed to showcase. I’ve been chasing an equivalent high at all the editions I attended since, with very mixed results. This year, the festival’s top program promises another cinematic cornucopia, but the menu feels almost conspicuously familiar. A good number of the titles announced so far were directed by Cannes regulars and/or Official Competition habitués; even the few exceptions, like Ari Aster’s Eddington, aren’t exactly debut features. And yet, naïve as this will sound, I like to think that the tidal forces that keep pulling us back to this overpriced stretch of the French Riviera have...