Three Asian films at the DOC NYC festival reveal spaces we rarely see and people we are unlikely to meet, even in a globalized, connected world. These outwardly calm works contain unpredictable emotions, immense risks, and power games sometimes unseen, sometimes thrust into the open. “We had to destroy the village in order to save […]
One challenge at the Toronto International Film Festival is having enough time to check out films and directors that you may not know, in search of a gem that you (and thousands of others) can discover and claim as your own. Fortunately, a handful of shot-in-the-dark experiences were among the most memorable this year. A […]
The Toronto International film festival is so vast that it’s hard to get a handle on it. With a selection of 288 feature films, TIFF is really about a dozen festivals under the umbrella of one. A viewer can only hope to taste a slice of the programming. Even if festivalgoers intend on solely exploring, […]
The premieres of films by internationally known directors attracted most of the coverage at Cannes: consider the critical love that was bestowed upon Todd Haynes’s Carol or the thumping Gus van Sant received for The Sea of Trees. Big names were represented from all over: Asian auteurs (Jia Zhang-ke and Hou Hsiao-Hsien) and the big […]
It was only the third day of the Cannes Film Festival when Chicago Tribune critic Michael Phillips rightfully predicted that the first feature film by Hungarian director Laszlo Nemes would win a top jury award. He wasn’t exactly sticking his neck out. Even if the official competition’s lineup were strong this year, and it wasn’t […]
John C. Reilly was a triple threat at Cannes, costarring in Lobster and sharing screen time with Salma Hayek in Tale of Tales, two films in the competition. He also popped out of nowhere in a cameo in Thomas Bidegain’s debut, the French-language Les Cowboys, one of the most ambitious films in the entire festival. […]
French actors did very well at Cannes 2015, and it was definitely the year of Emmanuelle Bercot. Standing Tall, a drama she co-wrote and directed, opened the festival, and she went on to share the best actress award (in a tie with Carol’s Rooney Mara) for starring in fellow actress/director Maïwenn’s rowdy hothouse drama Mon […]
The classy thriller Maryland singlehandedly jolted me from encroaching jet lag during my first full day at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. (The not-as-elegant English title is the blunter Disorder.) The screening was in the early afternoon after lunch, making it particularly sleep inducing. The movie’s initial slow pace and the often dreamy, bordering on […]
We’re right in the thick of summer, and usually what that means, as far as movies go, is Hollywood throwing billions of dollars at us in bombastic Dolby surround sound, 3-D, and outsized spectacle at the multiplexes. But here in New York, if you’re willing to look beyond the realm of dinosaurs, revived Terminators, and […]