Cannes Film Festival

05/17/2022

Festival Reviews

The Worst Person in the World

by Oris Aigbokhaevbolo | Jan 20, 2022 | Cannes, El Gouna, Festivals, Jerusalem, Karlovy Vary, London, Oscar shortlist, Spotlight, Sundance, Toronto, Vancouver

An insightful exploration of youth, ambition, romance, and meaning through the lens of a young woman you both identify with and love to hate.

Drive My Car

by Deborah Young | Jan 13, 2022 | Antalya, Buenos Aires, Busan, Cannes, Festivals, Karlovy Vary, Mar del Plat, Oscar shortlist, Rotterdam, San Sebastian, Tallinn, Thessaloniki, Toronto

Winner of the Academy Award for best international feature, Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s ‘Drive My Car’ is the story of how love survives death in a long, measured, ultimately mesmerizing examination of the human soul.

Lamb

by Stephen Dalton | Dec 19, 2021 | Cannes, Featured, Festivals, Oscar shortlist

Noomi Rapace stars in Iceland’s boldly original Oscar submission Lamb, a twisted folk-horror thriller about fantastic beasts and family trauma.

A Night of Knowing Nothing

by Jordan Mintzer | Dec 18, 2021 | Busan, Cannes, IDFA, Spotlight, Toronto

A haunting low-fi meditation on memory, social class and political protest that won the Golden Eye documentary award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Where Is Anne Frank

by Jordan Mintzer | Dec 14, 2021 | Cannes, Featured, Jerusalem, Toronto

‘Waltz with Bashir’ director Ari Folman’s animated adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary makes some valid points but takes a few too many creative liberties.

Authentik

by Jordan Mintzer | Dec 1, 2021 | Cannes, Festivals

France’s most famous rap duo gets an energized if standardized biopic in this first of two projects to tackle the legacy of hip-hop group Suprême NTM.

Moneyboys

by Jay Weissberg | Nov 19, 2021 | Busan, Cannes, Festivals, Jerusalem, Thessaloniki

A high-end gay sex worker in China longs for the family affection he felt as a child in C.B. Yi’s beautifully crafted if not always satisfying debut that showcases the talents of actor Kai Ko.

Titane

by Stephen Dalton | Nov 13, 2021 | Cannes, Festivals, London

A gloriously extreme Oscar submission, French writer-director Julia Ducournau’s prize-winning erotic thriller about a gender-blurring serial killer with a fetish for sex with cars is funny, fast and furious.

A Hero

by Stephen Dalton | Nov 3, 2021 | Cannes, Festivals, London, Oscar shortlist, Spotlight, Toronto

Feted Iranian director Asghar Farhadi’s latest Oscar contender is a classy but underpowered drama about moral complexity and social media shaming.

Invisible Demons

by Deborah Young | Oct 28, 2021 | Cannes, El Gouna, Festivals

Rahul Jain follows up his festival mega-hit ‘Machines’ with an apocalyptic vision of Delhi’s life-threatening pollution that floods the screen with present-day disasters.

Clara Sola

by Deborah Young | Oct 27, 2021 | Cannes, El Gouna, Festivals, London

Costa Rica dancer Wendy Chinchilla Araya gives an eerie, riveting perf but it only goes so far in this unstructured tale of magic realism and female power from debuting director Nathalie Alvarez Mesen.

Compartment No. 6

by Deborah Young | Oct 26, 2021 | Cannes, El Gouna, Festivals, Oscar shortlist

You can’t say no to a relationship this mismatched in Juho Kuosmanen’s warm-hearted but melancholy voyage to nowhere, starring Russian actor of the moment Yuriy Borisov and Seidi Haarla as the Finnish tourist who stumbles across him.

Murina

by Deborah Young | Oct 22, 2021 | Cannes, El Gouna, Festivals

‘Murina’, which won this year’s Camera d’Or in Cannes for first-time director Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic, extols female rebellion but walks a dangerous tightrope connecting the male gaze with the body of a rebellious 17-year-old girl.

Mariner of the Mountains

by Boyd van Hoeij | Oct 9, 2021 | Busan, Cannes, Karlovy Vary, Spotlight

A beautifully textured travel diary disguised as a highly personal quest — or is it the other way around? Either way, Mariner of the Mountains (Marinheiro das Montanhas) from director Karim Aïnouz — whose swoony feminist melodrama The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão...

A Tale of Love and Desire

by Jay Weissberg | Sep 2, 2021 | Cannes

There are so many good ideas in Leyla Bouzid’s second feature A Tale of Love and Desire, so many rarely-addressed issues deserving attention, that it’s especially frustrating how faintly the sparks fly between her two main characters, university classmates at the...

Feathers

by Jay Weissberg | Sep 1, 2021 | Cannes, Featured

The distinctive vision that Omar El Zohairy brought to his two prize-wining shorts is much in evidence in his meticulously crafted absurdist feature debut Feathers. It’s amusing to imagine how he pitched the project at the start, given the narrative’s unlikely...

Onoda — 10,000 Nights in the Jungle

by Boyd van Hoeij | Aug 31, 2021 | Cannes

Onoda Hiroo was the name of the famous Japanese soldier who refused to believe that WWII had ended, so he remained in hiding on a sparsely populated island in the Philippines for almost three decades. His story of endurance, as impressive as it is insane and as...

The Stronghold

by Jordan Mintzer | Aug 31, 2021 | Cannes, Festivals

Over the past decade or so, the French city of Marseille has worked hard to clean up its image, gentrifying a significant area around its touristy Vieux-Port, opening a brand new museum and conference center — both architectural marvels — and attracting a swatch of...

Our Men

by Jordan Mintzer | Aug 31, 2021 | Cannes, Festivals

Claire Denis sublimely explored the sweaty, dust-coated bodies of French legionnaires in one of her best movies, Beau Travail, which focused on a platoon of lonesome fighters marooned at a remote outpost in East Africa. In Our Men (Mon légionnaire), the second feature...

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.

Awards Corner

Cannes

No awards yet.