Great Movies
Festivals & Awards
Cannes 2024: It's Not Me, Filmlovers!, Misericordia
On three more from the Cannes Film Festival, including the latest from Leos Carax.
On three more from the Cannes Film Festival, including the latest from Leos Carax.
An interview with with Mathieu Amalric about his new film Hold Me Tight, starring Vicky Krieps.
The Rendez-Vous with French Cinema runs from March 3-13 at New York's Walter Reade theater.
An essay about Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch, as excerpted from the latest issue of Bright Wall/Dark Room.
A review of the new film by Roman Polanski, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival.
61 films from all 28 EU nations will screen this month at the Chicago European Union Film Festival.
A dispatch from the New York Film Festival, including thoughts on the latest from Arnaud Desplechin and Claire Denis.
Three films from TIFF, including "Families" and "I Smile Back".
Lists from our critics and contributors on the best of 2014.
An interview with Emmanuelle Seigner, star of Bitter Moon, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and the new Venus in Fur.
Motion picture film lives after all, er, maybe; what makes a person fall in love with film festivals; breaking down the great direction on Breaking Bad; Alain Resnais' You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet; Night of the Hunter & childhood fear; great dads in pop culture not named Atticus Finch; Girls, Season 38.
Roman Polanski's "Venus in Furs" served as a perfect closing movie of this year's Main Competition at Cannes.
Marie writes: Now this is really neat. It made TIME's top 25 best blogs for 2012 and with good reason. Behold artist and photographer Gustaf Mantel's Tumblr blog "If we don't, remember me" - a collection of animated GIFs based on classic films. Only part of the image moves and in a single loop; they're sometimes called cinemagraphs. The results can be surprisingly moving. They also can't be embedded so you have to watch them on his blog. I already picked my favorite. :-)
After duds "Jimmy P." and "Grand Central," the Coen brothers' "Inside Llewyn Davis" saves the day for Barbara Scharres.
I have always wondered what it would be like to repeat a year at school, and I often thought about what the consequences of this particular action would be on my social life. This is the primary reason why I went to see the French film, "Camille Redouble" (in English, "Camille Rewinds"). As I hadn't seen the trailer before seeing the movie, and trusting only the title -- the world "redouble" in French has come to mean to repeat a year a school -- I was expecting to watch the story of a young girl repeating a year of her education.
Marie writes: Once upon a time, a long time ago and in a childhood far, far away, kids used to be able to buy a special treat called a Frosted Malt. Then, with the arrival of progress and the subsequent destruction of all that is noble and pure, the world found itself reduced to settling for a frosty at Wendy's, at least where I live. Unable to support a "second rate" frosted malt for a second longer, I decided to do something about it!
Haneke, Riva, Trintignant
• Chaz Ebert at Cannes
Who will win the Palme D'Or? I expect top prizes for Michael Haneke for his film, "Amour," with Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva, but I am terrible at the awards-guessing game. I think "Amour" is one of the very best films in the festival with its harrowing portrait of the mental and physical deterioration of an esteemed piano teacher after a series of strokes, and the husband who must bear witness to this as he takes cares of her.
Haneke's film is so mature and well done that its emotional impact builds quietly, from the core. You marvel at how he layers the scenes of a marriage so naturally that you know the couple has been together for decades in a relationship that is comfortable and emotionally enriching. And so when they make their choices you are right there with them emotionally until the bitter end, and there is no judgment about the choices made.
It's another day for umbrellas and rain slickers, not to mention sweaters. The Riviera is just not delivering the usual idyllic sunshine and warm Mediterranean breezes this year. The film market stands that border the beach in little cabanas have their doors closed for protection from the wet, and their inviting tables and deck chairs on the sand are vacant and dripping.
The first film in competition this morning, "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet" by Alain Resnais, didn't deliver either, and I can only hope that the title is prophetic, and that the revered 90-year-old director ("Hiroshima Mon Amour," "Last Year at Marienbad") has some future masterpieces in store for us yet.
For "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet," Resnais assembled a large cast of famous French actors with whom he's worked over the years, including Sabine Azema, Anne Cosigny, Mathieu Amalric, Michel Piccoli and Lambert Wilson. This distinguished cast was supplemented by the young stage actors of the fledgling theater company Colombe. The visual techniques and acting style of the stage are pertinent to the look of "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet." In the film's press book, Resnais says, "In my films, I'm constantly looking for a theater-style language and musical dialogue that invites the actors to get away from the realism of everyday life and move closer to a more offbeat performance."
