Festivals
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Cannes 2018: Kore-eda’s Shoplifters wins Palme d’Or
The 71st edition of the Cannes Film Festival came to a close earlier today with Japanese auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda winning the coveted Palme d’Or for his devastating, brilliant and unconventional family portrait Shoplifters. This year’s Cannes began under a cumulus of clouds: the spat with Netflix, the selfie ban, the Harvey Weinstein scandal, a selection…
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Cannes 2018: Ayka review
★★★★★ Sergey Dvortsevoy’s Ayka follows a young woman over five days bitterly cold days in a city she doesn’t really know. Attempting to flee from a terrible situation, but only finding an indifferent world and uncaring people, the Kazakhstani director has made one of Cannes 2018’s most formidable entries. Ayka (Samal Yeslyamova) is a 25-year-old…
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Cannes 2018: At War review
★★★★☆ Stéphane Brizé and Vincent Lindon are fast becoming the Scorsese and De Niro of French social realist cinema. Their latest effort, At War, depicts union workers involved in strike action and a fight for self-respect and dignity. At War is a gripping leftist polemic about the plight of the working class when faced with…
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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…
