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
Midway through the 70th Cannes Festival the focus has veered sharply away from missing persons to domestic entanglements: or put another way, from people who have checked out of your life – voluntarily or involuntarily – to those you have no choice but to coexist with. It’s always difficult living in the shadow of a famous parent, but what if that parent isn’t exactly the genius you always thought he was? That question hugs
Characters in Yorgos Lanthimos’s movies seem moved by strange spirits and unknown motivations. From the beginning of “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” questions come up: what is the relationship of Dr. Steven Murphy, an established surgeon, to Martin (Barry Keoghan), a teenager who has no connection to the doctor or his family? Why is Martin so weird, anyway? Martin’s father died on the operating table a couple years earlier.