Cannes
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Cannes 2012: Haneke’s ‘Amour’ wins Palme d’Or
After two weeks of screenings, press conferences and red carpets, Austrian director Michael Haneke’s latest film Amour was awarded the coveted Palme d’Or this evening. Haneke joins an elite club of directors to win the prestigious prize twice, having also won in 2009 for The White Ribbon, and fought off competition from Leos Carax, Cristian…
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Cannes 2012: Palme d’Or and other award predictions
As the 65th edition of the Cannes Film Festival draws to a close, predictions are rife about who will win the prestigious Palme d’Or prize, amongst a host of other awards on offer. The field is packed full of former winners (Haneke, Loach, Mungiu and Kiarostami) and each of these all have good claims on…
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Cannes 2012: ‘Holy Motors’ review
★★★★☆ French-born director Leos Carax returns to cinema screens this year with Holy Motors (2012), his first feature film for over a decade (since 1999’s Pola X ), which premiered at the 65th Cannes Film Festival and has since become somewhat of a late favourite for the prestigious Palme d’Or prize. It’s a truly bizarre,…
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Cannes 2012: ‘The Angels’ Share’ review
★★★★☆ Named after the term that describes the amount of alcohol that evaporates from a cask of whisky, The Angels’ Share (2012) finds director Ken Loach – Cannes’ only British Palme d’Or contender – returning to more light-hearted, yet invariably true-to-life and politically-tinged form. Newcomer Paul Brannigan plays Robbie, an untoward young man who, by…
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Cannes 2012: ‘After Lucia’ review
★★★★☆ Showing in the Un Certain Regard section at the 65th Cannes Film Festival, Michel Franco’s After Lucia (Después de Lucía, 2012) is a devastating and harrowing look into high school bullying. Following the death of her mother in a car accident, teenager Alejandra (Tessa Ia) and her father Roberto (Hermàn Mendoza), a successful high-end…
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Cannes 2012: ‘The Hunt’ review
★★★★☆ Danish director Thomas Vinterberg enters the chase for the Palme d’Or with The Hunt (Jagten, 2012), a tense thriller about a primary school teacher unjustly accused of paedophilia. Mads Mikkelsen plays Lucas, a recent divorcee in the midst of a bitter custody dispute over his teenage son Marcus (Lasse Fogelstrøm), who despite this enjoys…
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Cannes 2012: ‘Student’ review
★★☆☆☆ An contemporary re-telling of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Darezhan Omirbaev’s Student (2012) paints a grim portrayal of post-Soviet Kazakhstan, with occasional moments of wry, bitter humour. The film follows a poor, unnamed philosophy student who lives in the basement flat of an old lady’s house, with barely enough money to do anything other than…
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Cannes 2012: ‘Amour’ review
★★★★★ Austrian director Michael Haneke gives us the first real masterpiece of the 65th Cannes Film Festival with French language effort Amour (Love, 2012), a surprisingly warm meditation on old age and death and undoubtedly a strong contender for the coveted Palme d’Or. His most personal film to date, Amour revolves around a married couple,…
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Cannes 2012: ‘Antiviral’ review
★★☆☆☆ This year’s 65th Cannes Film Festival welcomed not one but two Cronenberg’s as David’s son Brandon premiered his debut film Antiviral (2012). Set in an alternative/near future, the cult of celebrity has become so extreme that the masses now pay to contract their illnesses. For a price, you too can have Angelina Jolie’s cold…
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Cannes 2012: ‘Lawless’ review
★★☆☆☆ Australian singer/songwriter Nick Cave’s numerous collaborations with fellow countryman John Hillcoat stretch back to video shoots, debut film Ghosts…of the Civil Dead (1988), Aussie western The Proposition (2005) and The Road (2009). With Lawless (2012) (formerly The Wettest County), the pair team up once again for an adaptation of Matt Bondurant’s Prohibition era novel,…