Toni Erdmann | Cannes 2016
An observational, 160-minute-long family drama-cum-screwball comedy took critics by surprise at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
Film-Forward
Elle | Cannes 2016
Though rife with sexual violence and graphic dialogue, the last film to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival was also the most elegantly made in the competition: Paul Verhoeven’s blunt, button-pushing, stinging comedy.
“The Red Turtle” and “My Life as a Courgette” | Best First Films at Cannes 2016
This year, the two best films made by first-time feature filmmakers at Cannes were animated. Both movies are told with precision but without rigidity. In both cases, you won’t know where the free-flowing story is headed.
Standing Tall
Emmanuelle Bercot’s empathetic and clear-eyed film presents a pungent portrait of a young adult. Its lead actor won the César Award, the French equivalent of the Oscar, for most promising actor.
Marguerite
Meryl Streep has recently undertaken to play Florence Foster Jenkins in a film by Stephen Frears that will come out later this year. French writer/director Xavier Giannoli, though, has beaten that production to the punch with his deluxe variation of Jenkins's biography.
More Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2016
Within 11 days’ time, New Yorkers can see a significant slice of current French films that have won acclaim at Cannes and earned praise back home.
Overlooked Gems of 2015
Early on in the year may be as good a time as any to look back at 2015, before the number of films begins to snowball and as the awards season slowly winds down. What has been overlooked? What made the festival rounds but is conspicuously missing from this year’s lineup, having perhaps gotten lost […]
Rams
The opening credits spell it out: 800,000 sheep among 320,000 Icelanders. Living in the remote northern part of the country, two brothers, bachelor sheep farmers past middle age, live alone on side by side farms. Their family has lived in the region for generations, raising prized thoroughbred stock. Both brothers have an attentive, paternal relationship with their herds—their constant companions—yet the men haven’t said a word to each […]
The Club
Talk about your tough sell. Critics have their work cut out for them when discussing well-made but audience-repelling films. For example, Room, centered on a mother and her five-year-old son kept captive in a shed for years on end, is one of the lowest grossing films to be nominated for the best picture Oscar. The Auschwitz-set Son of Saul has earned wide acclaim, but it […]