Quentin Dupieux is not only an electronic musician (who earned a UK number one back in 1999) but also the finest surrealist filmmaker of our times. To say his movies are unpredictable, illogical, ridiculous and violent is an understatement. But their wildness and their misbehaviour has the feel of ordinary …
It was notable at this year’s Cannes how many movies re-examined France and the Second World War. It’s been obvious for some years now how the French film industry has been retelling its own stories and creating blockbusters for home audiences without caring too much about how they’ll land overseas. …
Tin Castle aka Irish Travellers is the very rare documentary worth seeing for its cinematography. Unfortunately the cinematography is the best thing about the film. Director Alexander Murphy also shot the film and some of its images are among the most surprisingly beautiful that have ever been captured in a …
Dollars to donuts director Rodrigo Sorogoyen was not happy to learn about Sentimental Value. Its brief outline is the same to that of The Beloved – volatile director tries to reconnect with his daughter by working with her on a movie – but of course Sentimental Value came out last …
The most shocking thing in Parallel Tales is Isabelle Huppert lighting a cigarette with a toaster. There’s a sense of unpredictability in that one moment that the rest of Parallel Tales was aiming for and somehow didn’t achieve. It’s hard to say why it falls so flat, since there is …
There was an unusual preoccupation with performance art at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Perhaps this is because performance art is by definition tied to a specific place, people and moment, providing an experience that can never be replicated. On the other hand, in a world where all our moments …
Emmanuel Marre won the Best Screenplay Award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for A Man of His Time aka Notre Salut, because it does the impossible: it is a comedy about the slide into fascism. But the film is clearly of personal as well as professional importance to Mr. …
The end credits confirm genAI was used for parts of Titanic Ocean. This is a disgraceful choice by writer-director Konstantina Kotzamani because it insults all the hard work of her cast and crews. This is especially unforgivable because the young actresses had to do a large amount of underwater work …
Quentin Dupieux is a cinematic rascal. A troll, even. He delights in getting a reaction, and his impish films are more or less shaggy dog stories with just enough bite to get people riled up. So, in a way, my dislike of Full Phil, his bloated-in-more-ways-than-one farce, is exactly what …
French family film Words of Love aka Quelques Mots d’Amour is about a tough but ordinary topic: how a child comes to terms with the fact the family they have is not the family they want. It features a single professional actor, Hafsia Herzi, as Erika the mother. All the others …
Writer-director Katharina Rivilis is clearly telling an personal story with I’ll Be Gone in June, an observant film about one German girl’s year as an exchange student in New Mexico. (How personal? According to the press notes some of the costumes are her own clothes from the time.) The southwestern …
It’s rare that the context of a movie’s making is as important to appreciating it as that of A Girl’s Story. It’s not only that the writer whose story has been adapted, Annie Ernaux, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2022. Ms. Ernaux has spent her life documenting, well, …
The title comes from a song; this isn’t really a Christmas movie. There are ups and downs in every career, but Pedro Almodóvar has been on a downswing lately. He commented at the Cannes Film Festival in 2023 that he is no longer interested in exploring human sexuality onscreen, though …
In The Black Ball directors Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo (known as Los Javis) and cinematographer Gris Jordana have created an unusually beautiful work of art. The Black Ball is kind and tender, very clear-eyed about the trauma of war and the misery of addiction. But above all it is …
Rwandan filmmaker Marie Clémentine Dusabejambo won the Camera d’Or – the prize for best debut feature in any of the festival’s competition strands – at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for Ben’Imana. This is a double achievement as Ben’Imana is also the first Rwandan film ever to compete at Cannes …
Tang is the powdered drink mix marketed as enjoyed by astronauts and which purportedly had more vitamins and minerals than orange juice. One of the guests at the titular wedding, Guy (Xavier Lacaille), has recently become its regional head of sales so at one point he goes into his full …
Critics have been enjoined not to spoil Karma’s big plot twist, which basically means we’re not supposed to mention two-thirds of the film. Normally that would be a problem, but Karma’s initial set-up is so preposterous that everything which follows just gets more and more ridiculous. This is just an …
Nagi is a real town in rural Japan. It is next to a ‘self-defence force’ base which uses live ammunition in its training. As compensation for the constant sounds of shooting in the background, the town was given a world-class art museum, the Nagi Museum of Contemporary Art. There is …
We must congratulate director Andrey Zvyagintsev both for winning the Grand Prix at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, and for using his thank-you speech to ask Putin to stop the carnage of the war in Ukraine. Mr Zvyagintsev now lives in exile in France thanks to his political beliefs, but …
The French title of this film, Garance, is the uncommon name of the heroine and also that of the flower which is known in English as the rose madder. The choice to use Another Day instead of something like “Rose Madder” for the English title dampens the effect of that …