Tag: cannes2015
Cannes 2015 Review: Kurzel's MACBETH Is Shakespeare For The GAME OF THRONES Crowd
Justin Kurzel's Snowtown was a remarkable film, a brash feature debut that signaled the emergence of a unique talent joining a slew of them coming out of the Australian independent scene. Following up a powerful true crime story with...
Cannes 2015 Review: RAMS, An Exceptional Tale Of Exceptional Stubbornness
Oh, Iceland. With your otherworldly landscapes and ability to extract cool, dry drama like you're farming permafrost, your cinema is like your vistas - inspiring and intimidating. Add to that some of the special spice that has made the...
Cannes 2015 Review: COSMODRAMA, A French Metaphysical Star Trek
Science-fiction has never taken particularly strong roots in French cinema despite being born in hands of a certain Monsieur Meliés on French soil. And Gallic helmer Phillipe Fernandez is not likely to alter the status quo with his sophomore feature...
Cannes 2015 Review: DHEEPAN, Powerful With Moments Of Sheer Bravado
It begins with chaos: shouting voices calling out in alarm, a cacophony of sound, and a flourish of a camera moving through a thick crowd. It ends with similar sounds and a similar shot, one far less sinister and...
Cannes 2015 Review: KRISHA Introduces An Exciting New Director In The Home Movie From Hell
Jean-Luc Godard once said that all you need for a movie is a gun and a girl. With Krisha, a rich psychological thriller about family secrets, mental-breakdown and addiction, director Trey Edward Shults proves that one can make compelling...
Cannes 2015 Review: Noé's LOVE Is Both Sticky and Sweet
Gaspar Noé. For some even the name sends shudders. Thoughts of the visually bombastic Enter the Void cause a kind of PTSD, and his Irreversable still haunts some 13 years on. The Argentine-born, France-based director occupies a unique and...
Cannes 2015 Review: Wrestling With THE ASSASSIN's Beautiful Nothing
The first thing that strikes you in The Assassin is the quiet. Hou Hsiao-Hsien's ruminative tone-poem, about a Tang Dynasty sell-sword tasked with killing kin, is a remarkably hushed affair. Be it dialogue, sound-effects or music, at no point does...
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Cannes 2015 Review: MADONNA, A Riveting Tale Of Sorrow And Redemption
Following her accomplished sophomore film, the absorbing high school revenge tale Pluto (2012), Shin Su-won returns in glorious fashion with the searing Madonna. Meticulous, layered and yet seemingly effortless, this rewarding tale of mingled sorrow and redemption should go a...
Cannes 2015 Review: MEDITERRANEA, A Humanist Masterclass On Society's Forgotten Few
Mediterranea is a powerful neorealist punch, so loaded with prescience, so relevant to our here and now, that it practically explodes off the screen. At one point in the film, a middle class family sits down to dinner and the father...
Cannes 2015 Review: SICARIO, A Beautifully Executed Hitman Film
In white writing on a black screen we're taught that Sicario was the name given to Hebrew Zealots (the name means "dagger men") who fought to expel the Romans in Judea. Now the name is used in Mexico to refer...
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Cannes 2015 Review: OFFICE Works Up An Intriguing Salaryman Chiller
Life is hard for the average Korean salaryman, and sometimes that engenders a need to blow off a little steam. For many that involves drinking to excess, but for others it can spill over into the homestead. New Korean horror-thriller...
Cannes 2015 Review: MY GOLDEN DAYS, Nicotine-Fuelled, Incredibly French and Incredibly Good
Those allergic to French film clichés should consider running in terror from My Golden Days. The hits are all there in director Arnaud Desplechin's latest, a pseudo-prequel to his even more comically cliché-titled My Sex Life... or How I Got...
Cannes 2015 Review: CAROL, Tremendously Accomplished, Yet Cold
Todd Haynes' Carol is an objectively beautiful film. It is exquisitely acted, hauntingly shot and meticulously well-designed. And it left me surprisingly cold. The same-sex melodrama presents an interesting case where form and content match up a little too well....
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Cannes 2015 Review: THE SHAMELESS Delivers Hardboiled Melodrama With Top Drawer Performances
"Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist." -Pablo Picasso Today's Korea, whether looking at its entertainment, fashion or culinary scenes, is a society awash with fusion. Nowhere is this more true than in...
Cannes 2015 Review: SLEEPING GIANT, Provocative And Probing
Despite a seemingly endless number of tries, pulling off the 'coming-of-age' film well is miserably difficult. There's a balance between precociousness versus pandering that makes the balance extremely delicate, as complex and awkward as any pubescence. When it goes...
Well Go USA Nabs Hou Hsiao Hsien's THE ASSASSIN Ahead Of World Premiere At Cannes
Hou Hsiao Hsien's The Assassin has not even hit screens yet but that did not stop Well Go USA from picking up the North American rights for the Chinese auteur's Taiwanese martial arts pic.Well Go USA CEO Doris Pfardrescher was quoted...
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Cannes 2015: Critics' Week Selection Rich In French Flair
The Cannes Film Festival is just weeks away, and as April winds its way towards May things are really picking up steam. Last week heralded both the Official Competition and the Un Certain Regard lineups, and today we saw...
