John Bleasdale

★★☆☆☆ Screening in the Un Certain Regard sidebar at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Jaime Rosales’ Beautiful Youth (2014) aspires to a gritty realism but its narrative slackness make it a gimmicky and occasionally complicit portrayal of Spanish love on the dole. Carlos (Carlos Rodríguez) and Natalia (Ingrid García Jonsson) are a young couple, both…

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★★★☆☆ With an unprecedented third Palme d’Or firmly in the brothers’ sights, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne return to the Croisette this year with a tale at the hard end of the financial crisis, Two Days, One Night (2014). Shucking off her Hollywood glamour, Marion Cotillard plays Sandra, a worker at a factory that makes solar…

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★★★★☆ Australian director David Michôd made quite the impression with his outstanding first feature, 2010’s Animal Kingdom, so expectations were understandably high for his follow-up, The Rover (2014), which screened out of competition here at Cannes. Whilst not quite on the same level of his debut, Michôd’s sophomore outing is still a high quality piece…

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★★☆☆☆ Appearing in the Un Certain Regard sidebar at Cannes in a shortened version of the film previously screened at Toronto, Ned Benson’s The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby (2014) is now subtitled ‘Them’ rather than the initial two-parter, ‘Him’ and ‘Her’. The ‘Them’ in question are Conor and El (James McAvoy and Jessica Chastain), a…

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★★★★☆ A brutal, crackling and savage Hollywood satire, Maps to the Stars (2014) is also David Cronenberg’s return to the monster movie almost thirty years on from the release of The Fly (1986). This time, however, the monsters are plural and most of them are related. First up is Benjie (Evan Bird), an obnoxious child…

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★★★★☆ Competing for the Palme d’Or at the 67th Cannes Film Festival, Italian director Alice Rohrwacher’s sophomore feature, The Wonders (2014), is a gripping coming-of-age drama set amidst the bees and beauty of the Tuscan countryside one hot summer. In an old ramshackle house, Gelsomina (Maria Alexandra Lungu) lives with her three sisters, Caterina, Luna…

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★★★☆☆ “I’m the last,” an aging Yves Saint Laurent mutters towards the end of Bertrand Bonello’s stylish biopic (one of two in the last twelve months) of the legendary fashion designer, Saint Laurent (2014), showing in competition today at the Cannes Film Festival. Gaspard Ulliel plays the young version of Yves as an otherworldly genius…

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★★★☆☆ Following on from his 2010 Best Director win for On Tour, Mathieu Amalric returns to the Cannes Film Festival with his latest directorial effort – a terse little nugget of a crime drama entitled The Blue Room (2014), competing in the Un Certain Regard strand. Based on the Georges Simenon novel, the film opens…

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★★★★☆ A past Palme d’Or winner and first of two British heavyweights in competition, Mike Leigh returns to Cannes with a beautifully realised portrait of one England’s greatest ever landscape artists, J.M.W. Turner – entitled simply Mr. Turner (2014). Similar to 1999’s Topsy-Turvy, Leigh is interested in the warts and all, spit and filth, rag-and-bone…

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★★☆☆☆ From Canadian director Atom Egoyan (Next of Kin, The Sweet Hereafter), The Captive (2014) is a troubling abduction thriller set in the frozen Ontario wastes. Buried star Ryan Reynolds plays Matthew, a father who, on leaving his nine-year-old daughter Cass (Alexia Fast) in his pickup while he pops into a store to grab some…

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