Cannes Film Festival

05/17/2022

Festival Reviews

La Chimera

by Boyd van Hoeij | May 26, 2023 | Cannes, Cannes 2023

The latest wondrous creation from Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher casts Josh O’Connor as a grave robber in 1980s Etruria.

In Our Day

by Boyd van Hoeij | May 26, 2023 | Cannes, Cannes 2023

The latest feature from South Korean auteur Hong Sang-soo, a rather slender drama, closed the Directors’ Fortnight.

Last Summer

by Boyd van Hoeij | May 25, 2023 | Cannes, Cannes 2023

Catherine Breillat’s first film in ten years is a more romantic update of the Danish film ‘Queen of Hearts’.

Perfect Days

by Stephen Dalton | May 25, 2023 | Cannes, Cannes 2023, Featured, Festivals, International Oscars 2024

In his minor-key but charming Cannes contender ‘Perfect Days’, German art-house veteran Wim Wenders delivers a poetic paean to Zen and the art of toilet maintenance.

Pictures of Ghosts

by Jay Weissberg | May 24, 2023 | Cannes, Cannes 2023, Festivals, International Oscars 2024, Spotlight

Kleber Mendonça Filho’s poetic docu-essay Pictures of Ghost is a passkey to his previous films as well as a personal reflection on his relationship with Recife and cinephilia, but this terrifically edited meditation is also a more universal ode to the way memories become ghosts that inhabit the physical spaces of our lives.

Asteroid City

by Stephen Dalton | May 23, 2023 | Cannes, Cannes 2023, Featured, Festivals, Spotlight

Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jason Schwartzmann and a cast of thousands reach for the stars in director Wes Anderson’s visually ravishing retro rom-com ‘Asteroid City’.

Club Zero

by Stephen Dalton | May 22, 2023 | Cannes, Cannes 2023, Featured, Festivals

Austrian director Jessica Hausner’s offbeat school thriller about a classroom cult of teenage diet extremists, ‘Club Zero’ is visually delicious but lacks dramatic bite.

Man in Black

by Clarence Tsui | May 22, 2023 | Cannes, Cannes 2023, Festivals

Chinese filmmaker Wang Bing’s second entry at Cannes 2023 is an intensely physical portrait of the life and tribulations of Chinese composer Wang Xilin.

The Other Laurens

by Jay Weissberg | May 22, 2023 | Cannes, Cannes 2023, Festivals

In his feature-length debut, Claude Schmitz aims to simultaneously pay homage to, and blow up, film noir tropes, and while that’s not exactly the result, his film is a handsome, largely enjoyable play on the genre that becomes a bit too shaggy by the end.

Fallen Leaves

by Boyd van Hoeij | May 22, 2023 | Cannes, Cannes 2023, International Oscars 2024

Aki Kaurismäki’s latest is a largely familiar but lovely new work.

The Book of Solutions

by Stephen Dalton | May 21, 2023 | Cannes, Cannes 2023, Festivals

Back after a long hiatus with his most personal film to date, French writer-director Michel Gondry’s ‘The Book of Solutions’ is a scrappy, self-indulgent but entertaining love letter to asshole artists.

Anatomy of a Fall

by Boyd van Hoeij | May 21, 2023 | Cannes, Cannes 2023

German actress Sandra Hüller plays a woman accused of murdering her French husband in Justine Triet’s latest, an unconvincing and overlong drama.

Mambar Pierrette

by Boyd van Hoeij | May 21, 2023 | Cannes, Cannes 2023

Cameroonian documentary director Rosine Mbakam makes her fiction debut with this modest look at the life a seamstress in Douala.

May December

by Stephen Dalton | May 21, 2023 | Cannes, Cannes 2023, Featured, Festivals

The combined talents of Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore and veteran indie auteur Todd Haynes are largely wasted on humdrum Cannes competition contender ‘May December’.

Killers of the Flower Moon

by Stephen Dalton | May 20, 2023 | Cannes, Cannes 2023, Festivals, Spotlight

Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro compete to out-grimace each other in Martin Scorsese’s latest monumental but lumbering period true-crime thriller ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’.

Banel & Adama

by Jay Weissberg | May 20, 2023 | Cannes, Cannes 2023, Festivals

French-Senegalese director Ramata-Toulaye Sy’s strikingly shot, solid debut set in the Senegalese Sahel features a compelling central figure whose monomaniacal love for her husband sets nature itself against their village.

The (Ex)perience of Love

by Boyd van Hoeij | May 20, 2023 | Cannes, Cannes 2023, Festivals

Ann Sirot and Raphaël Balboni’s sex comedy, a Critics’ Week title, is always light on its feet.

The Zone of Interest

by Stephen Dalton | May 20, 2023 | Cannes, Cannes 2023, Featured, Festivals, International Oscars 2024

‘Sexy Beast’ and ‘Under The Skin’ director Jonathan Glazer makes his Cannes debut with his coldly compelling, boldly experimental Holocaust drama ‘The Zone of Interest’.

Four Daughters

by Jay Weissberg | May 20, 2023 | Cannes, Cannes 2023, Festivals, International Oscars 2024

An enthralling “fictional documentary” by Kaouther Ben Hania exploring the psychological states of a strong-headed Tunisian mother and her four daughters, two of whom joined Islamic State, through staged recreations and interactions with actors playing their roles.

About Dry Grasses

by Jay Weissberg | May 19, 2023 | Cannes, Cannes 2023, Festivals, International Oscars 2024, Spotlight

Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s melancholy, dialogue-heavy rumination on personal responsibility, politics and the weight of provincial isolation is intellectually rigorous and always engrossing but largely lacks the well-earned emotional gifts of his more recent masterworks.

The New Boy

by Boyd van Hoeij | May 19, 2023 | Cannes, Cannes 2023

Warwick Thornton’s latest may star Cate Blanchett but newcomer Aswan Reid steals the show in this historical drama.

Black Flies

by Jay Weissberg | May 19, 2023 | Cannes, Cannes 2023, Featured, Festivals

A punishing, loud plunge into the brutality of EMT work in Brooklyn’s grittiest hoods that banks on Sean Penn’s stardom but is tone-deaf to its problematic treatment of immigrant communities and women.

On the Edge

by Carmen Gray | May 18, 2023 | Cannes, Cannes 2023, Festivals

Nicolas Peduzzi’s doc following a devoted Paris psychiatrist on hospital rounds is as warmly human as it is indignant at the capitalist gutting of public services.

Homecoming

by Boyd van Hoeij | May 18, 2023 | Cannes, Cannes 2023

Catherine Corsini’s latest film is a schematic family drama.

Tiger Stripes

by Stephen Dalton | May 17, 2023 | Cannes, Cannes 2023, Featured, Festivals

Malaysian writer-director Amanda Nell Eu’s groundbreaking Cannes premiere ‘Tiger Stripes’ is an offbeat body-horror monster movie with sharp feminist claws.

Occupied City

by Stephen Dalton | May 17, 2023 | Cannes, Cannes 2023, Festivals, Spotlight

’12 Years a Slave’ director Steve McQueen exhaustively chronicles the Nazi occupation of his adopted hometown Amsterdam in his formally adventurous but lumbering. disjointed documentary ‘Occupied City’.

Jeanne du Barry

by Boyd van Hoeij | May 16, 2023 | Cannes, Cannes 2023, Festivals, Spotlight

Maïwenn’s Cannes opener is rich in irony and metatextual commentary, which compensates for the rather superficial treatment of a fascinating historical character.

99 Moons

by Jordan Mintzer | Jun 2, 2022 | Cannes, CANNES 2022, Cannes 2022, Festivals

Sex and love don’t always make for ideal bedmates, and the strain one places on the other is at the heart of Swiss writer-director Jan Gassmann’s latest feature, 99 Moons. Provocative but also thought-provoking, this story of a couple that meets through a Tinder-like...

Son of Ramses

by Jordan Mintzer | May 30, 2022 | Cannes, CANNES 2022, Cannes 2022, Festivals

Clément Cogitore is less known in France as a feature filmmaker than as young and highly coveted visual artist, with shorts like the Siberia-set documentary, Braguino, and the crunk dance battle/opera piece Les Indes galantes — both released in 2017 — sealing his...

More Than Ever

by Jordan Mintzer | May 23, 2022 | Cannes, CANNES 2022, Cannes 2022, Festivals

Death hovers over director Emily Atef’s fifth feature, More Than Ever (Plus Que Jamais), in unsettling ways. First, it fuels this solemn and emotionally gripping story about a woman in a relationship who's diagnosed with a rare lung disease and faced with her imminent...

The Five Devils

by Boyd van Hoeij | May 23, 2022 | Cannes, Festivals

The second feature as a director from in-demand screenwriter Léa Mysius tries to be about five different films at once, and ends up being one right mess.

EO

by Clarence Tsui | May 19, 2022 | Cannes, Cannes 2022, Cannes Marché du Film, Festivals, International Oscars 2024

Polish auteur Jerzy Skolimowski’s mix of beauty and bombast makes a donkey of a promising premise of making audiences observe a chaotic, cruel world through a braying animal’s eyes.

Rodeo

by Jordan Mintzer | May 19, 2022 | Cannes, CANNES 2022, Cannes 2022, Festivals

Writer-director Lola Quivoron’s debut, Rodeo, belongs to a recent class of French films made by and about young women, with stories that combine the coming-of-age genre — what the French call un film d’initiation — with elements of a Hollywood thriller or horror...

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