[post_author_posts_link] [post_date] [post_comments] [post_edit] [rating=4] “Cyrus” is a movie so loveable [...]

Today I spent almost half the day inside movie theatres. I started with Korean director Lee Changdong’s "Poetry," competing for the Palme D’Or. Even though I will confess to being less inclined to liking Korean films lately, this was an important film to watch because it is in competition and also I’ve never missed the 8:30am screening. “Poetry” did not disappoint. As much as I did not appreciate the other Korean film in Cannes this year, “House Maid,” the aptly-named “Poetry” is a winner. Mija lives with her grandson in a provincial town—she’s slightly eccentric, dresses chic and takes a poetry course at the city’s cultural center. In her quest for beauty (since that’s the class assignment ) she finds cruelty and deviance. Top honors for best feminine interpretation for Yun Junghee? Bet.

James Franco’s short film “The Clerk’s Tale” will close Critics’ Week at Cannes. Screen Comment’s Ali Naderzad did a close reading with Franco on the Spencer Reece poem it is based on.

Ali Naderzad - “The Clerk’s Tale” has a hint of sweet hopelessness. It reminds me of Thoreau’s famous sentence “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”I found the following sentence especially striking:

He does this because his acceptance is finally complete—and complete acceptance is always bittersweet. And then, there’s the extraordinary. We are changed when the transactions are done— older, dirtier, dwarfed."

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