Will Smith, Jessica Chastain, Maren Ade, Fan Binbing, Park Chan-Wook, Paolo Sorrentino and Gabriel Yared (a French-Lebanese composer known for writing the score for "The English Patient") have just been announced as this year’s jurors at the 2017 Cannes Festival, celebrating seventy years this year. These brave men and women will help jury president Pedro Almodóvar in choosing a winner among this year's

This afternoon the Cannes Festival, still ensconced in their rue Amélie offices in central Paris, announced that Uma Thurman will preside over this year's Un Certain Regard jury. The Un Certain Regard ("a certain perspective") program offers a mishmash of diverse films by known and unknown filmmakers. Past jury presidents have included Isabella Rossellini and Pablo Trapero.

One of the films to appear out of competition this year at the Cannes Festival is Takeshi Miike's adaptation of the manga opus "Blade of the immortal" ("Mugen no Junin" in the romaji original). The film combines magic with swordsmen, valor, many good sword fights, and the need for revenge. Manji's (played by Japanese actor Takuya Kimura) younger sister is killed in front of him. He goes on a quest to avenge her. A mysterious

Gentlemen, start your engines!

The filmmakers, their movies, all of these, and more, were announced during a well-attended press conference at a grand movie theater on the Champs Elysées this morning.

Two notable comebacks this year are Fatih Akin, with “Aus Dem Nichts” (“In the Fade”) and John Cameron Mitchell, who was last in

CANNES FESTIVAL - Film critics and festival jurors: two divergent forces that make the weather for the eleven days that the festival lasts. And yet, there's hardly any consensus between the two, with nary an exception. Last night, "I, Daniel Blake" won the Palme D'Or. I'll venture that this is the film both jurors and press met each other halfway on. With last night's win Loach joins that small club whose members--eminent directors

I’ve watched all twenty-one films in competition this year and must give credit to Thierry Frémaux and his team for having put together such a strong program. I room with one of France’s most eminent TV critics and there’s been some grousing coming from him and from some around the press rooms about the questionable quality of the films this year. But it seems to me that every year people are complaining about the mediocrity

“Elle,” last to be shown in competition, isn’t the best or the most accomplished film. It made sense to show it last in the festival for several reasons, however: the storied career of Paul Verhoeven, its director (at 77, Verhoeven is the oldest filmmaker among this year’s competition directors and has two major hits under his belt, “Basic Instinct,” 1992 and “Starship Troopers,” 1997), the cast, made up of A-plus-plus actors