Cannes
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Cannes 2015: ‘Alias María’ review
★★★☆☆ Showing in the Un Certain Regard sidebar at Cannes, Colombian director José Luis Rugeles’ sophomore effort Alias María (2015) is a tense thriller about a child soldier’s attempt to survive war and pregnancy in the jungle. Deep in the Colombian bush a group of freedom fighters are given their regular check up by the…
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Cannes 2015: Love review
★★★☆☆ Trailing poster-fuelled controversy and its French director’s reputation as an arch provocateur, Gaspar Noé’s NSFW 3D erotica Love (2015) was the most midnight of midnight movies at Cannes this year. The film tells the tale of a love affair played out by the only two twentysomethings in the western hemisphere without tattoos. Electra (Aomi…
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Cannes 2015: ‘Youth’ review
★★★☆☆ Paolo Sorrentino’s Youth (2015), his latest meditation on aging, memory and mortality, premièred at Cannes in competition today to assorted cheers and boos. This review is going to fall somewhere between the two. Retired composer Fred Ballinger (Michael Caine) is spending his holiday undergoing a variety of health treatments in a spa resort in…
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Cannes 2015: ‘Mountains May Depart’ review
★★★☆☆ Following his well-regarded A Touch of Sin (2013), which played in Cannes a couple of years ago, Jia Zhang-ke is back in competition with a new three-part drama, Mountains May Depart (2015). Each section takes on a different period in time starting in 1999. China is moving toward the new millennium with confidence and…
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Cannes 2015: ‘Marguerite & Julien’ review
★★☆☆☆ The second French actress turned director to enter the Palme d’Or race, Valérie Donzelli brings to Cannes an overwrought, overblown raspberry of a literary bromance in Marguerite & Julien (2015). When Baz Luhrmann made his adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, he signalled his intention to remix the Bard’s tale of star-crossed lovers by replacing…
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Cannes 2015: ‘Green Room’ review
★★★★☆ Jeremy Saulnier’s follows up Blue Ruin (2014) with the gloriously entertaining Green Room (2015), a siege movie that pits pit bulls and murderous Neo-Nazis against a young punk band. The Ain’t Rights are a punk band touring the country and desperate for money and gigs. They syphon gas from parked cars and scrounge anything…
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Cannes 2015: ‘Maryland’ review
★★☆☆☆ Screening in the Un Certain Regard sidebar at Cannes, Parisian director Alice Winocour’s Maryland (aka Disorder, 2015) is a neat little thriller which unfortunately never achieves plausibility. Belgian actor Matthias Schoenaerts – most widely seen in Rust and Bone (2012) and The Drop (2014) – plays Vincent, a soldier with some medical problems who…
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Cannes 2015: ‘Louder Than Bombs’ review
★★★☆☆ Following the acclaimed Reprise (2006) and Oslo, August 31st (2011), anticipation was high for Joachim Trier’s English language debut, the family drama Louder Than Bombs (2015). Unfortunately, the accompanying blast of reaction following its Cannes premiere wasn’t as clamorous as expected. In fact, it could barely be heard. Gabriel Byrne plays Gene, a teacher…
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Cannes 2015: ‘The Sea of Trees’ review
★★☆☆☆ My Own Private Idaho and Drugstore Cowboy director Gus Van Sant competes for the Palme d’Or with The Sea of Trees (2015), a tediously slick melodrama of staggering foolishness and mawkish gall. Matthew McConaughey stars as Arthur Bryant, a suicidal American who travels to Japan and the almost legendary Aokigaharam, the forest also known…
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Cannes 2015: ‘Irrational Man’ review
★★☆☆☆ Woody Allen returns to his beloved Cannes with his story of crime and punishment in a sleepy up-state town, Irrational Man (2015), which was screened this morning to press outside of the main competition. Joaquin Phoenix plays Abe, a maudlin philosophy professor who, following his umpteenth scandal, finds himself teaching at a backwoods college.…