The characters in director Fatih Akin’s movies are flawed, they use drugs, they take a contrarian approach to life, they survive life rather than live it (and they listen to fantastic music). While studying the humanities in college Katja (Diane Kruger, in a very strong performance) enjoyed the instant gratification of chemicals and fell for her drug dealer, the virile and handsome Nuri (Turkish-German actor Numan Acar).

A24, an independent film studio, is like Weinstein or Focus but for the millenial set: their output possesses an edge and an immediacy that isn’t seen very often these days in the film production landscape. "Good Time," which debuted this morning, is the latest film out of this studio. In the Ben and Josh Safdie-directed “Good Time,” about a bank robbery gone wrong, I saw Lou Reed’s New York. The city lay under cover of darkness, full of danger

Every year at the Cannes Festival the “Pierre Angénieux ExcelLens [...]

There’s something mildly sadistic about a master-filmmaker botching his own, brilliant, film with an underwhelming ending, such as that which Sergei Loznitsa did with “Krotkaya” (“A gentle creature” in the Russian original). A woman whose husband is in prison gets the care package she’d sent to her husband returned to her. A delivery attempt was made, person is no longer at that jail cell. In want of news she sets off

The first thing that I noticed while watching Kantemir Balagov’s new film “Tesnota” (“Closeness” in the original russian) is the performance by lead actress Darya Zhovner. Her Ilana, the character from whose point of view the film is told, is a tomboy who works in her step-father’s garage and whiles away the days hanging out with her boyfriend. Zhovner, for whom this film represents a first role (she graduated from Moscow’s Art Theater

Ever since “Marie Antoinette” filmmaker Sofia Coppola has seemed to suffer from indolence, and that was the case again with “The Beguiled,” her new film debuting today in Cannes. I could not get into this movie in spite of its bravura visual palette, its many funny moments and primo cast composed of Colin Farrell, Kristen Dunst and Nicole Kidman. It’s three years into the civil war. Farrell plays Corporal McBirney

Roger Moore, third actor in the James Bond franchise, died at age 89. Considered the most suave personification of the legendary secret agent, the actor thought there were worse labels to wear the rest of one’s life. As a matter of fact, he considered himself incredibly lucky to have been selected to step into the uninimitable Sean Connery's shoes whom he wisely didn’t try to copy, becoming his own James Bond.