Cannes 2013: Day Eight
Most veteran critics partaking in Cannes see four films per day (five, if they’re really vampiric), and I just about manage to average between two to three, the most number my lousy mind and body can handle. It’s the eighth day of the festival and I’m already running out of steam – the early rise,...
Cannes 2013: Only God Forgives
Watching a revenge movie through the eyes of the perpetrators is not easy, and Only God Forgives will divide the house as sharply as guillotine sever heads. But then so many great films have been misunderstood over the years. This is a darkly amoral, sensually immersive and atmospheric slow-burn to hell that flips the conventional...
Cannes 2013: Day Seven
A film-packed day preceded by a literally packed early bus trip, almost as worse as being trapped in a tin of tuna, featuring Somebody Who Forgot To Wash - the smell and all. Thankfully, I got into Behind The Candelabra all right sans the stink, and I'm happy to report that the Grand Theatre Lumiére...
Cannes 2013: Day Six
As some of you followers might know (predictably closer to none), this is the day I got into Inside Llewyn Davis after 2 days of major ranting about the elitist wonderful priority system of Cannes Film Festival. Things in life are earned, and I genuinely appreciated the moment I walked into Salle de Soixantiéme, thinking I might be one...
Cannes 2013: Inside Llewyn Davis
It's been a while since the Coens have done something so tender, sad and soulful, and Inside Llewyn Davis hits all the perfect notes - like a bittersweet folk song that sings an ode to life's disappointments and unfulfilled dreams. Beneath a deceptively simple narrative and offbeat humour of an artist's mischief and tribulations lies...
Cannes 2013: Stranger By The Lake
Part-psychodrama, part-sexual thriller and 100% French, Stranger By The Lake is engrossing and rigorously shot. It elevates exploitation to bold, subversive cinema, studying queer morals and desire in the most casual, straightforward, matter-of-fact way imaginable. Expect plenty of puritanical bashing.
Cannes 2013: Day Five
Day off. It's the first day during my time in Cannes so far where I've never attempted to queue and see any film. In other words, I've done fuck-all. But it was worth every minute to saunter around the Boulevard de Croisette, catch the blazing sun along the beach and indulged in cocktails.
Cannes 2013: The Past
The Past has the right ingredients of a tour-de-force family drama, but feels slightly overcooked. It's not as compelling as Farhadi's masterful A Separation. However, he weaves a tangle of relationships that's equally complex and nuanced, and peels layers of human depth that most filmmakers today could ever dream of achieving.
Cannes 2013: Day Four
The Order of the Day was supposed to be comprised with the Benecio del Toro-starring Jimmy P. as the starter, to be followed by the new Coen brothers' latest Inside Llewyn Davis as the main course. Turns out I failed to wake up for the former, and missed out on not only one but two screenings of the latter....
Cannes 2013: Fruitvale Station
Fruitvale Station has all the potential of a compelling socio-political human drama calibrated to wrench hearts and rouse anger about the injustices of authority, but if it weren't for its contrived, stilted dramatisation and inconceivably pedestrian first hour, it would have fared to be a far better film than what everyone in Sundance and Cannes...
Cannes 2013: The Bling Ring
This is easily Sofia Coppola's funniest, snarkiest film to date. The Bling Ring has less melancholy and soul-gazing than other Coppola's works, but with more biting, satirical poking at the vacuous celebrity worship and religious high-end brand adulation by imbecilic, aimless youths, one of whom portrayed to comic precision by Emma Watson, who throws her...
Cannes 2013: Day Two
I cannot remember the last time I've woken myself up at an ungodly hour of 6am to go and queue up for a film screening. Not ever in my lifetime so far. I consider this actively insane. But this is what cinemagoing in Cannes meant to people here, and it's beyond pure bloody determination. Waking...
Cannes 2013: Jeune & Jolie
Many have made films about sad, beautiful whores, and Jeune & Jolie is a welcome addition to the gallery. François Ozon's masterstroke here isn't provocation but rather the power of understatement, subtlety and nuance, delicately portraying youth when it denies the banality of age and sexuality.
Cannes 2013, Day One
A few years ago, I thought the Cannes Film Festival regularly takes place on Planet Jupiter - surreal, far-fetched, an unattainable figment of the fabulous imagination. Now I'm on this planet, and it's fucking awesome to be here.
Cannes 2013: The Great Gatsby
This Gatsby adaptation is far from perfect - but Luhrmann does his damnedest to achieve a gloriously elaborate, beautifully mounted domestic drama that does justice to Fitzgerald's transcendent novel. Faithful in narrative yet irreverent in style, it balances craftsmanship and excess, storytelling and style and most of all, grand emotion and depth, anchored by a...
Feast yourself on the Cannes Official Selection film buffet
And so the competitors (and showmakers) of the world's most esteemed film festival have been revealed this morning during the Conférence de Presse in Paris, officially kickstarting the butt-clenching excitement that is next month's 66th Festival de Cannes. It is quite a list - Polanski, the Coen brothers, Payne, Ozon, Sorrentino, Gray, Farhadi, Soderbergh and...
‘God’ and ‘Gatsby’ ramp up the excitement
There are two things running around my mind this week: 1) Ryan Gosling can punch you right in the face and drag you across the floor by the jaw whilst maintaining his cool and looking adorable, and 2) Baz Luhrmann could either deliver this year's most glorious cinematic feast or the most weirdly anachronistic misfire...
The Paperboy (2013)
This may be the trashiest, raunchiest, riskiest motion picture event you'll ever likely to see in recent memory - and all the better for it, especially in an industry where 90% of films are mainly playing it dull and discreet. Lee Daniels clearly couldn't give a toss about what you think and risks his career...
No (2013)
Don't let the television aesthetic distract you, this is the crown jewel in Pablo Larrain's trilogy of Pinochet's dictatorship. No is incisive, insightful and unexpectedly moving, anchored by an understated, sensitive performance by Gael Garcia Bernal.
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011)
It's bleak, languid and excruciatingly slow, but Once Upon a Time in Anatolia will reward those who are patient and tried to stay awake throughout the entire running-time of what seems to be cinema's Longest Night of Crime Investigation. Ceylan transforms a mere police procedural film into an existential road movie that haunts, baffles and...
‘Laurence Anyways’ Trailer is Here
For fans of the French-Canadian talent extraordinaire Xavier Dolan (me, included), it's a good week for us. His latest creative output, the sex-change drama Lawrence Anyways, will be premiering in Cannes Film Festival this May and the trailer has just been released for us to devour. It's in French, so unless you wear a beret,...
The Tree of Life (2011)
Nobody makes films like Malick does. The Tree of Life is a profoundly beautiful ode to childhood, nature, life and the universal human experience. Yes, it's bloody ambitious for your average celluloid, but watch closely, listen carefully and open your heart and soul, it will make you think about your existence.
We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011)
A chilling take on a very unsettling tale of beleaguered motherhood and parental torment. Ramsay's vision opts for a bold, raw aesthetic that brilliantly eschews common book-to-screen tropes. Plus Swinton is so fucking terrific. And you'll never listen to Buddy Holly's 'Every Day' the same way again.
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010)
Possibly the most bizzare, mind-numbingly opaque Palme D'Or winner in recent memory that invests more in creating mood, Zen-like atmosphere and spiritual rhetoric rather than compelling cinematic experience. It's seductively hypnotic and soothing like a Thai massage, but one that doesn't leave a lasting impression.
