As the countdown to the seventy-first Cannes Festival begins, the official poster was released today. This year’s poster (see full image at the end of this article) was taken from 1965’s “Pierrot Le Fou.” Everyone at the Festival next month will see it, here, there, and everywhere. It’ll adorn the many sides of the Palais, the streets nearby, lampposts, ice-cream parlors and souvenir shops. A lively visual leitmotiv

Asghar Farhadi's eighth film was shot entirely on location in Spain. Laura (Penelope Cruz) lives with her husband (played by Javier Bardem) and their children in Buenos Aires. When they return together to her native village in Spain for a family event, the trip gets derailed after unexpected events bring secrets out into the open. The family, its ties and the moral choices imposed on them are all leitmotifs of Farhadi's films and figure front and center in the script.

In these ghoulish American times, it’s heartening that “The Shape of Water,” a film that unified so many of us around its themes, that of cinema, the other (and the unknown), earnest love, a fairytale world full of possibilities, should win the world’s most prestigious film award. And for British actress Sally Hawkins, she of “Happy-go-lucky” fame—in the film she plays Elisa—to be feted in Hollywood, could one possibly ask for anything more?

In “Darkest hour,” what Gary Oldman’s Churchill has to contend with in a time of war reminded me of what a newspaper editor does: tense negotiations, the reworking of sentences, an overarching need to get the message out, loudly and clearly. The real context of the story, the history, is, evidently, a very different one from this. In the early forties European countries were falling like dominoes as Hitler’s panzer division closed in

Some time ago I attended a screening of “A girl walks home alone at night” in Paris, where I'm based. The film felt novel and contrarian enough to warrant attention. Its diminutive director, Ana Lily Amirpour, present at the screening, appeared to me like one of independent cinema's great new hopes, a stentorian counterpoint to the languid cinema of Sofia Coppola. The Q&A afterward was a little perplexing, though. A squeamish Amirpour stood

“Year by the sea” is based on the New York Times best-selling memoir by Joan Anderson. It stars Karen Allen (“Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “Animal House”). Executive-produced by Tony-award winners Daryl Roth (“Kinky Boots,” “Indecent”) and Terry Schnuck (“Beautiful”), “Year” was written, directed and composed by Alexander Janko. “Year” recounts empty-nester Joan Anderson’s (Karen Allen) decision not to follow

Heading to cinema screens July 21st is "Kuso," a nightmarish B-movie that depicts the aftermath of The Big One in Los Angeles. The viewer is made to experience aftershocks through TV screens and apocalypse-tinged vignettes of the twisted lives of the survivors. It's like David Cronenberg married David Firth and together they gave birth to Ren & Stimpy V.2. "Kuso" is a little chaotic at times. The film comprises about seven storylines