You might have heard that Amazon’s new film opened the Cannes Film Festival with a five-minute standing ovation. What you also should know is the Cannes audience is made up of international participants whose tastes rarely align with the mainstream. “Annette” might be the first and last high-profile experimental film Amazon Studios sends to Prime […]
The first Korean film to win the Palm d’Or ignited expectations at Cannes as Internationally acclaimed filmmaker Bong Joon-Ho’s latest work leaps to the front of the international film awards race. “Snowpiercer” and “Okja” are the most recent examples of a filmmaker that’s sure of his craft and working at a level above most. He
Brazil’s entry to compete in the Academy Award for best International Film debuted at Cannes earlier this year where it received the Un Certain Regard Award for director Karim Aïnouz. “Invisible Life” has some stereotype issues, all women are victims in a story set in the 1950’s and that all men are pushers. Beyond that
Academy Award winning filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar has a divisive range of films that include an Oscar-nominated performance from Penelope Cruz in “Volver”, to airplane orgies in “I’m So Excited“. His latest “Pain and Glory” premiered at Cannes earlier this year to rave reviews and awards buzz, especially for frequent collaborator Antonio Banderas. Almodóvar turns the
By the time you read this, “Roma” will have already won Best Foreign Language film at the 91st Academy Awards last month. “Dogman,” Italy’s submission for the race, won’t have even been nominated, and for good reason. Matteo Garrone, the visionary director of “Tale of Tales,” entirely misses the mark on this story that pits the wimp against
Shoplifters became the first Japanese film to win the Palme D’or since 1997. Typically that honor shortlists the winner for the Academy Awards best foreign language top five. Hirokazu Koreeda’s slow, meditative drama about a family living in poverty is the type of cinematic story that unfolds through patience and understanding. Shoplifters presents some difficult
You might wish you never really watched Lynne Ramsey’s latest film You Were Never Really Here. Her first film since Need to Talk About Kevin (2011), she has a thing for long titles. My first reaction to this film, which debuted unfinished at Cannes in 2017 to standing ovations, was one of annoyance. For the
Five-year-old smoking cigarettes. Even in the confines of Jonas Carpignano’s latest film, is still a disturbing sight. A Ciambra is the curious and odd official selection from Italy for the 90th Academy Awards foreign film submission. The young filmmaker takes the audience into a world of disadvantage where a family of Gypsy’s live a life
A colleague of mine said, “if the film is too much ‘inside-baseball’, then it fails, and that’s on the filmmaker for not setting up his world clear enough.” For me that’s what happens here in The Square, the Cannes Palm d’Or winner and very likely foreign film nominee at the 90th Academy Awards. If we
Following up his Oscar nominated film The Lobster, Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos continues to stun and impress cinephiles with his metaphorical cinematic creations. If The Lobster (also starring Colin Farrell) was Yorgos + comedy, The Killing of a Sacred Deer is Yorgos + horror. Even looking at his work, prior to becoming a more mainstream