‘The Whistlers’ Updates Noir to the Age of Digital Surveillance
Whereas Arnaud Desplechin found his unique artistic vision smothered by the conventions of the police procedural in his middling Oh Mercy!, Romanian filmmaker Corneliu Porumboiu uses...
Author : James Slaymaker
Ken Loach’s ‘Sorry We Missed You’ is a Searing Look at the Underclass
At first glance, Sorry We Missed You may appear to be merely a re-tread of Loach’s 2016 Palme d’Or winner; both films focus on the...
Cannes 2019 Round-Up: The Best and Worst of the Fest
“Is this the end of the world? Is this the death of light?” ponders a character roughly an hour in Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life,...
Cannes Film Festival 2019: ‘A Hidden Life’ is a Majestically Orchestrated Epic
Terrence Malick’s majestic A Hidden Life is orchestrated around dialectical clashes — the physical vs the metaphysical, inner integrity vs external honour, and individual rights...
Cannes Film Festival 2019: ‘The Lighthouse’ Presents a Vision of Ravishing Savagery
Robert Eggers delivers on the promise of his acclaimed 2015 slow-burn horror The Witch and then some in The Lighthouse, an altogether more playful, experimental,...
Cannes Film Festival 2019: ‘The Wild Goose Lake’ is a Stylish, Substantive Thriller
Just as he accomplished in his outstanding 2014 breakout hit Black Coal, Thin Ice, Diao Yinan uses neo-noir tropes to explore the socio-economic conditions of...
Cannes Film Festival 2019: ‘Little Joe’ is Planted Too Shallow
It’s almost criminal how aggressively Jessica Hausner’s English-language debut, Little Joe, works to drain the fun out of a juicy exploitation premise. Hausner has crafted...
Cannes Film Festival 2019: ‘Liberté’ is a Unique Cinematic Experience
Following a trajectory introduced in 2009’s Honour of the Knights and continuing though to the great The Death of Louis XIV, Albert Serra pushes his...
Cannes 2019: Xavier Dolan’s ‘Matthias & Maxime’ is Tiring in its Lack of Maturity
Quebecois director Xavier Dolan returns to Cannes It’s been a full decade since Xavier Dolan’s first feature, I Killed My Mother, premiered at Cannes when...
Cannes 2019: ‘The Bears’ Famous Invasion of Sicily’ is a Pleasant Diversion
Illustrator Lorenzo Mattotti makes his feature directorial debut with The Bears’ Famous Invasion of Sicily, a well-mounted, perfectly diverting adaptation of the cult 1945 children’s...
Cannes 2019: ‘Tommaso’ Wrestles With Painful Behavior and Emotions
Willem Dafoe Stars in Abel Ferrara’s moving character study “That film made me a Buddhist. I got so Catholic I became a Buddhist.” – Abel...
Cannes Film Festival 2019: ‘Parasite’ is a Crowd-Pleaser for the Class-Conscious
A black-comic thriller from South Korean director of Memories of Murder and Snowpiercer Parasite combines the broad satire of Bong Joon-Ho’s recent output with the...
Cannes Film Festival 2019: ‘Oh Mercy!’ is a Tale of Two Desplechins
The latest from French auteur regular Arnaud Desplechin For a while, it seemed that Arnaud Desplechin was the closest filmmaker we had to a modern-day...
Cannes Film Festival 2019: ‘Young Ahmed’ is Lacking in Sophistication
Dardenne Brothers Deliver a Coming-of-Age Tale of a Young Terrorist “A true Muslim doesn’t shake a woman’s hand,” says the title character in the first...
Cannes Film Festival 2019: Gaspar Noé’s ‘Lux Æterna’ Corrupts a Solid Notion With Shameless Self-Justification
Gaspar Noé’s pint-sized Lux Æterna is an exercise in self-aggrandizement disguised as a feminist deconstruction of the injustices of the film industry. Running a brisk...
Cannes Film Festival 2019: ‘Atlantics’ Voyages Into Haunting, Nuanced Genre Territory
French actor-writer-director Mati Diop returns to Cannes with the first feature competition entry ever directed by a black woman. In combining seductive sensuality, sophisticated genre...
Cannes 2019: Pedro Almodavar’s ‘Pain and Glory’ is Solid, But Arouses Few Emotions
Longtime collaborator Antonio Banderas stars in Pedro Almodóvar’s semi-autobiographical Pain and Glory It’s not difficult to detect the autobiographical details in Pedro Almodóvar’s Pain and...
Cannes Film Festival 2019: Too Old To Die Young is Clownish Shock-Mongering
Too Old to Die Young brings the genre provocateur Nicholas Winding Refn to Amazon for a 13-hour miniseries. Maintaining a distinct authorial presence is one...
Cannes Film Festival 2019: ‘The Climb’ is a Carefully Crafted Comedic Ride
The Climb is a Brilliant Reinvention of the Buddy Comedy. In the opening moments of Michael Covino’s The Climb, which follows a peaceful biking trip...
Cannes Film Festival 2019: ‘Beanpole’ is Beautiful, but Suffocating in its Measured Style
Kantemir Balagov follows Closeness, his accomplished-but-slight debut feature, with the significantly more ambitious Beanpole, an exploration of the interconnection between national and personal trauma. Loosely...