Will Smith, Jessica Chastain, Maren Ade, Fan Binbing, Park Chan-Wook, Paolo Sorrentino and Gabriel Yared (a French-Lebanese composer known for writing the score for "The English Patient") have just been announced as this year’s jurors at the 2017 Cannes Festival, celebrating seventy years this year. These brave men and women will help jury president Pedro Almodóvar in choosing a winner among this year's

The premise of Nacho Vigalondo’s "Colossal," a Godzilla monster comedy starring Anne Hathaway, is such a creative burst that the movie earned a decent review just by getting to paper. A drink-til-you-drop party girl gets dumped by her boyfriend, moves home to a small town, takes a job as a waitress, and tries to sober up. Meanwhile across the world, a giant lizard creature appears and disappears each night to attack Seoul, Korea. When she scratches her

The footage is muddy, but we see it clearly enough: a pink dolphin—one of many endangered species populating the Brazilian Amazon—is harpooned to death by a group of fishermen, to be used as bait for the pirapitinga, a breed of scavenger catfish. This is just the beginning of Mark Grieco’s wrenching documentary “The River Below,” currently showing at Tribeca. Filmed over two difficult years

“Flower," Max Winkler’s directorial debut, looks and feels like any other coming-of-age teen dramedy to come out in recent memory. And yet, looking at how great the films in this new wave of teen films have been, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Zoey Deutch stars as Erica, a girl who gets joy in life from hanging out with friends and blackmailing unsuspecting men with the power of oral pleasure. All is fine in Erica’s life, but things begin to take a

This afternoon the Cannes Festival, still ensconced in their rue Amélie offices in central Paris, announced that Uma Thurman will preside over this year's Un Certain Regard jury. The Un Certain Regard ("a certain perspective") program offers a mishmash of diverse films by known and unknown filmmakers. Past jury presidents have included Isabella Rossellini and Pablo Trapero.

One of the films to appear out of competition this year at the Cannes Festival is Takeshi Miike's adaptation of the manga opus "Blade of the immortal" ("Mugen no Junin" in the romaji original). The film combines magic with swordsmen, valor, many good sword fights, and the need for revenge. Manji's (played by Japanese actor Takuya Kimura) younger sister is killed in front of him. He goes on a quest to avenge her. A mysterious

Gentlemen, start your engines!

The filmmakers, their movies, all of these, and more, were announced during a well-attended press conference at a grand movie theater on the Champs Elysées this morning.

Two notable comebacks this year are Fatih Akin, with “Aus Dem Nichts” (“In the Fade”) and John Cameron Mitchell, who was last in