I've just finished combing through the list of films in this year's Toronto Film Festival, and I have it narrowed down to 49. I look at the list and sigh. How can I see six films a day, write a…
Revised, updated 6/25.In a stunning surprise, the number of Best Picture nominees was increased from five to ten Wednesday by the Motion Picture Academy.
May 22, 2009--One of the trade papers on Thursday was touting the French film "A Prophet" by Jacques Audiard, which received excellent reviews early in the festival, as a hot contender for the Palme d'Or. Rumors of this sort seldom…
May 22, 2009--Austrian Michael Haneke's "The White Ribbon" is shot in black-and-white and set in an Austrian village in the two years leading up to the outbreak of World War I. A series of increasingly disturbing happenings over a period…
May 20, 2009-The premiere of Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds" will likely dominate the international press for days. The screening itself was a bit less than a crazy event than I had been expecting. After experiencing the wild, all-out adoration of…
May 17, 2009--Yesterday's most blazingly good (and funny) film was Bong Joon-ho's "Mother," another dark comedy from Korea. Although he had a cult hit in the U.S. with his 2006 film "The Host," his earlier features "Barking Dogs Never Bite"…
Maybe Simone Signoret was right after all. The title of her 1978 autobiography was La nostalgie n'est plus qu'elle était ("Nostalgia Isn't What It Used To Be".)
May 15, 2009--The most gutsy, powerful film I've seen here so far is without doubt "Precious" by African-American director Lee Daniels. "Precious" already had its world premiere at Sundance in February, where it was greatly acclaimed by audiences and critics…
The programming director of the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago is blogging from Cannes for us. Thursday, May 14--You can't beat the weather here in Cannes. After the cold rain and dark skies in Frankfurt, where I changed planes…
With a perfect score, George E. Barletta is the top prize winner of a trip for two to the world premiere of Pixar's "Up" at Disney's El Capitan Theater on Hollywood Boulevard. Ten other winners get each get ten DVDs…
Great Movies