Cannes review: Ari Folman turns to sci-fi with "The Congress"

by Ben Kenigsberg  |  May 16, 2013  | 

Ben Kenigsberg reviews the new sci-fi reverie from the director of "Waltz with Bashir."

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Marie writes: The unseen forces have spoken! The universe has filled a void obviously needing to be filled: there is now a font made entirely of cats. Called Neko Font (Japanese for "cat font") it's a web app that transforms text into a font comprised of cat pictures. All you need to do is write something in the text box, press "enter" on your keyboard and Neko Font instantly transforms the letters into kitties! Thanks go to intrepid club member Sandy Kahn for alerting the Ebert Club to this important advancement in typography. To learn more, read the article "There is now a font made entirely of cats" and to test it out yourself, go here: Neko Font. Meanwhile, behold what mankind can achieve when it has nothing better to do....

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It seems to be an unwritten rule that every superhero origin movie should have a scene in which the main character excitedly experiments with his or her powers before fully donning the mantle of the titular hero.

Consider the scene from "Spider-Man" in which Peter Parker scales walls and jumps from building to building joyously, or the one from "Iron Man" in which a reckless Tony Stark flies too far into the higher reaches of the atmosphere just to break that altitude record, or that scene from "Superman" in which the young Clark Kent races with a train.

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This prickly film haunts me. I am now older than James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Jimi Hendrix, and Malcolm X. I am at that age where the infinite world of my childhood bedroom is now replaced by a complicated mass of interwoven needs, wants, and concerns. The soundtrack of my youth is a summer of wind blowing through fragile leaves, with katydids buzzing along. The rattling taps of rain on our roof has now given way to the plastic clicking of this keyboard and various other mechanical monsters. Under it all is an ongoing hiss of noise. I also sometimes fall into that trap of looking at today through the telescope of an idealized yesterday; that outlook is a slick valley that is difficult to climb out of and easy to slide back into. Jack Nicholson in Sean Penn's"The Pledge" (2001) is likewise watching the world change. More than that, he is watching his world slip away from him.

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