Grounded in the Maxi Trial of 1986, the largest anti-mafia trial in history, Bellocchio strays from some historical details, creating an at first enrapturing but ultimately superficial and overextended look into Tommaso Buscetta’s experiences.
The film’s cast, consisting of an eclectic mix of street-cast actors and international stars, experienced a number of “firsts” in making “Give Me Liberty.”
25 years after he won the Palme d’Or for “Pulp Fiction,” Quentin Tarantino is back at Cannes with his most recent film, “Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood.”
Director Midi Z attempts to engage with the #MeToo movement, but relies on the sheer shock value of the abuse of power that ensues to ground the thriller.
For Bong, it’s not just the rich against the poor — it’s much more complicated, which he reveals as his film diverges from a heartfelt comedy into a gripping thriller full of vengeful violence.
What do you do when death is knocking at the door? Director Ira Sachs answers this cliché question through the eyes of Frankie (Isabelle Huppert), a 60-something famous actress with a terminal cancer diagnosis.
Sciamma treads the fine line between subversion and historical accuracy marvelously and with a keen eye for detail, and has produced her best work yet that will surely be among this year’s prize winners.
It’s entertaining and clever, and Porumboiu attempts originality by centering his story on a centuries-year-old secret whistling language inspired by the birds in La Gomera, an island in the Canaries — but beyond that, there’s not a lot of novelty to be found in this twenty-first century film noir.
Gaspar Noé’s message is far more explicit than usual, which thankfully takes away the typically harrowing experience of trying to make sense of his creations.
Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson come together as a bitingly funny and erratic spectacle, drunkenly singing and dancing just minutes before damning each other to death because of a sly remark.
Five days into the festival, the initial excitement has worn off a bit — but then boots right back up when I unexpectedly see Quentin Tarantino at a screening.
Chinese director Tian Zhuangzhuang’s 1986 feature, “Dao Ma Zei” (“The Horse Thief”), is one of 19 films to be presented as a Cannes Classic film in this year’s festival.
Though Lessovitz features an underrepresented perspective in a non-cisgender primary character, it’s still a pretty formulaic love story that had potential to be so much more.
In “Nan Fang Che Zhan De Ju Hui” (“Wild Goose Lake”), director Diao Yinan explores the landscape of impoverished semi-rural China through a thrilling criminal manhunt. In spite of its undeveloped characters, the result is a spectacularly shot and edited film that shows great promise for the emerging director.
“Little Joe” doesn’t have a climax, nor does it spiral into action — instead, it beautifully sustains its psychological horror and unfolds at the same, unassuming pace at which Little Joe takes over the laboratory.
Set in Senegal, the film focuses on a uniquely female angle of migration: the perspective of those who are left behind by the men that set out to find a better life elsewhere.
The two-hour film, a fantastical musical production, includes some of Elton’s greatest hits, and every scene shimmers with a sense of showbiz glitz. But beyond mapping out well-known biographical facts of Elton’s life, the film does little to tell more of his story.
While the French elite join Miles Teller and Cate Blanchett for cocktails, I’m sitting in the Wi-Fi cafe typing a review with one hand and feeding myself a lukewarm kiosk focaccia with the other.
Just when the humor-filled fighting begins to feel cheesy, the film erupts into colorful cartoon animation, complete with speech bubbles, as three survivors escape from battle in a car.
While the film could be mistakenly simplified as just another critique of police brutality, Ly constructs a vastly more complex landscape that brings nuance to deeply rooted racial and social tensions.
Loach’s critical take on the new and growing industry begs a serious evaluation of how its rapid rise in scale has unforeseen detrimental effects on society.
Director Kantemir Balagov conveys a beautifully painful story of two women and how disjointed their lives become after the various traumas of World War II. He doesn’t simplify their struggles — instead, his dramatic portrayal of the everyday lives of his characters reflects the physical and mental wounds they have suffered from the war.
The town of Bacurau that Filho and Dornelles construct isn’t so much a utopia as it is a proposed philosophy, one that challenges the endless developments of modernization and knows how much moderate change it really needs.
Knowing that we’d be exhausted from the journey over and the activities of the previous day, Kaylee and I set our first screening for 11 a.m. We started the morning with Jim Jarmusch’s “The Dead Don’t Die,” which, despite its comedic elements, was still pretty gruesome.
The film’s answer to its driving question is egregiously inconsistent with its original ambitions, which nearly outweighs the otherwise careful construction of the story.
It’s obvious that “The Dead Don’t Die” is intentionally campy, though it’s often hard to tell whether Jarmusch is playing on tropes or inadvertently perpetuating them.
