Cannes
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Cannes 2018: Shoplifters review
★★★★★ Cannes favourite Hirokazu Kore-eda returns to the Croisette for the seventh time with Shoplifters, a quietly devastating portrayal of family and theft in contemporary Japan, and one of his best works of recent years. The survival of families has been a constant concern for Kore-eda. Whether it’s the abandoned children of Nobody Knows, the…
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Cannes 2018: Mandy review
★★★☆☆ Italian-Canadian director Panos Cosmatos enters Cannes Critics’ Week with his second film, the psychotropic arthouse horror Mandy, starring Nicolas Cage and Andrea Riseborough as a couple terrorised by cultists. Over the years, Nicolas Cage has acquired a reputation as a mad dog actor. Whether gurning through Bad Lieutenant or the simply bad The Wicker…
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Cannes 2018: BlacKkKlansman review
★★★★☆ Spike Lee goes for the jugular of the alt-right movement and President Trump in this hilarious and vital Palme d’Or contender. A comic thriller about a black police officer going undercover to infiltrate the KKK, it’s amazingly based on a true story – despite what looks to be a satirical scenario. Lee directs BlacKkKlansman…
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Cannes 2018: 3 Faces review
★★★☆☆ Being in the wrong place at the wrong time is the theme of Jafar Panahi’s 3 Faces, a Chekhovian portrait of lives going to waste in an Iranian society of gender inequality and rural tradition. A young woman speaks directly to her phone, delivering a message, a plea to be heard by a famous…
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Cannes 2018: Climax review
★★★★☆ Gaspar Noé is back on form with Climax, a frenzied tale of a dance group training for an American tour. Their after-work party descends into a bacchanalian rave with episodes of drug-fuelled transgression, thanks to a bowl of sangria spiked with LSD. Set in 1996 and based on a true story, Noé has made something…
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Cannes 2018: Girls of the Sun review
★★★★☆ French journalist Matilde H. (Emmanuelle Bercot) joins a battalion of female Kurdish fighters taking back their hometown against misogynist psychopaths ISIS, in Eva Husson’s impressive and righteously angry war film, Girls of the Sun. Based on a true events which occurred in 2015, with names changed to protect the identities of those involved, Girls…
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Cannes 2018: Ash Is Purest White review
★★★☆☆ Returning to Cannes for a fifth time, leading Chinese auteur Jia Zhangke presents his new film Ash Is Purest White, a story of love, sacrifice and betrayal spanning seventeen years of contemporary Chinese history. From as early as Platform, Jia has been linking the trajectories of his characters’ lives with the rapidly changing scenery…
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Cannes 2018: Cold War review
★★★★★ Oscar-winning Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski (Ida, My Summer of Love) enters the front-running for the Cannes Palme d’Or with his new film Cold War, a beautifully composed tone poem to doomed love in Cold War Europe. Less is most definitely more in Cold War. Using the same academy ratio and frosty black and white…
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Cannes 2018: Yomeddine review
★★★★☆ Leprosy, poverty and a story of social exclusion are the unlikely ingredients for the deeply engaging and often funny road movie Yomeddine, which entered the competition for the Palme d’Or at the 71st Cannes Film Festival earlier today. Beshay (Rady Gamal) is a man who has recovered from leprosy but still bears the horrible…
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Cannes 2018: Rafiki review
★★★☆☆ The Kenyan government had already banned Wanuri Kahiu’s second feature, Rafiki, before it even premiered in Cannes. Telling the story of a pair of young women who fall in love only to be ostracised by their local community, the government feared it would “promote lesbianism” which remains illegal in Kenya. All of which has…