Eight years may not be that long to turn into film that most iconic of iconic novels, Jack Kerouac's "On the Road," the book that has launched many into sustained bouts of daydreaming. Because eight years is the time it took for the project to mature. Plus, the film was lensed by one of our better filmmakers and is based on the ultimate American myth, the road story (the open road is there for the taking, there’ll always be someone motoring

“All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring” (Chuck Palahniuk). I think that Chuck Palahniuk must be a fan of Leos Carax’s films. Because the diminutive French filmmaker’s “Holy Motors,” which is competing for the Palme D’Or, is never boring as his new film shows. “Holy Motors” represents everything that’s cinema ought to be: poetic, unpracticed in following convention and filled with mystery. He-

A fishing boat in which Senegalese men from different ethnic backgrounds will have to huddle for two weeks during an ocean crossing. Filmmaker Moussa Touré ‘s “La Pirogue,” currently shown in the Un Certain Regard section, wants to incite a dialogue between people confined in a small living space. But the stakes are very high, and the fiction film is very much based on reality. Thirty men (a mixture of Peuls, Guineans, and Muslims

A community slides into mass hysteria after accusations of child molesting surface. But instead of a full-blown witch-hunt or courtroom drama story we’re treated to a cool-headed and transfixing tale of a life coming undone. Thomas Vinterberg co-founded Dogme 95 along with Lars Von Trier and several others. He’s the brain behind “The Celebration,” having written and directed the 1998 feature film which came to embody the nascent

Opening shot: a bird’s eye view of Naples, with Mount Vesuvius in the background, as if God were gazing at his Creation. Director Matteo Garrone’s camera glides toward some unknown destination, a shot which is set to the sound of the enchanted Alexandre Desplat-composed score (in affect, at least, it’s reminiscent of the “Nutcracker Suite”). We get closer to earth when, steadily, a white horse-drawn carriage, festooned with tall

The reserve of goodwill directed at filmmaker Benh Zeitlin is [...]

There’s potential for vice in the leitmotif of Ulrich Seidl’s [...]