Clik here to view.
Restless: Gus Van Sant Draws a Blank
The other night we had the pleasure of meeting Mia Wasikowska, the wan, wonderful young actress who has played the title roles in Alice in Wonderland and Jane Eyre and was in Cannes to promote her new...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Lars von Trier: “O.K., I’m a Nazi”
Within the hour, Richard Corliss will be posting his review of Lars von Trier’s (in my view, excellent) new film Melancholia, which had its world premiere this morning. But von Trier, the wildly...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Sean Penn Leads a Fast Five Films for Friday
The countdown ticks toward Sunday’s Palme d’Or ceremony. With two days left, only two of the 20 film in competition are left to see. In a Festival that began with big names and high hopes, a gentle...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Artist: Cannes’ Beauty Spot
Delight is not a word frequently associated with the films at Cannes. Seriousness, slowness, strangeness: the movies on the Grand Palais screen are often dour and demanding. This year the world’s most...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Sarah Polley’s Stories We Tell: Secrets and Lies
It’s a wise child, the saying goes, that knows its own father. And its own mother. Diane MacMillan Polley, a Canadian actress and casting director, died of cancer in 1990, when her youngest daughter,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Robert Redford’s The Company You Keep: Old Radicals Die Hard
For how many decades of your life do you have to be the person you were in your twenties? Small-town lawyer Jim Grant (Robert Redford) wonders that when he hears the news that Susan Solarz (Susan...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Paperboy: Down and Dirty with Zac, Matthew and Nicole
For pure shock value, few scenes from this year’s movies can equal the moment in The Paperboy when a swim-suited Zac Efron suffers a jellyfish sting on a Florida beach and, as lovely young things...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Rust and Bone: Marion Cotillard and Oscar Mania
One of the most repellent phrases in the English language is “Oscar buzz.” The nattering about contenders for the Academy Awards begins more than a year before Oscar night, at Sundance; it balloons at...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Dragon: The One-Armed Swordsman With a Heart
When a mild-mannered peasant unsheathes the powers he has long kept hidden, the results can be spectacular. The same can be said for Peter Chan Ho-sun’s Dragon, a martial-arts morality play as lithe as...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Amour: A Love Story for the Aged
In the first scene of Amour, firemen break down the front door of a Paris apartment and find a bedroom door sealed to discourage entry. Inside is the corpse of an elderly woman, her hands folded,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Mud: Matthew McConaughey as an Outlaw in Love
Mud is the place where the earth meets the water. In a rural stretch of Arkansas, a few folks live in wooden shacks along the Mississippi, as comfortable on the river as on land. One of these is...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Lock Up Your Daughters! Part 2: François Ozon’s Young & Beautiful
The first full day of Cannes screenings featured two films — Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring and François Ozon’s Jeune & Jolie — about middle-class teenage girls who chose a life of crime. Our...
View ArticleClik here to view.
All Is Lost: Robert Redford Is Our Man
A man sails the Indian Ocean alone on his 37-foot yacht, 1700 nautical miles from the Sumatra Straits. He is awoken one morning by a crash: a metal container off a cargo ship has struck his boat,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Philomena at Venice: Reserve an Oscar for Judi Dench
The biggest thunderclap of cheers and applause heard in ages at the Venice Film Festival came halfway through the press screening of Stephen Frears’ Philomena, when Steve Coogan, as journalist Martin...
View ArticleClik here to view.
All Is Lost: Robert Redford’s See-Worthy Adventure
Fall 2013 is the season of the ordeal movie. The protagonists of some of the most acclaimed new films do not have the customary goals of getting the girl or saving the planet. They want to stay alive...
View Article