“THE SQUARE” WINS TOP PRIZE AT CANNES

In an awards ceremony that produced few, if any, surprises, the jury at the Cannes Film Festival, headed by Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, awarded its top prize, the Palme d’Or, to the biting satire The Square, directed by Sweden’s Ruben Östlund. The runner-up Grand Prix award went to French director Robin Campillo’s BPM, which chronicled […]

CINEMA ART AND CINEMAS’ BUSINESS COLLIDE AT CANNES

When Bong Joon-ho’s Okja and Noah Baumbach’s The Meyerowitz Stories were screened for critics at the Cannes Film Festival this week, audience members booed when the opening credit for Netflix, which financed the two films, appeared on the screen. But as the screenings ended, the same spectators rose in standing ovations. Those clashing reactions illustrate […]

R-PATZ SINKS TEETH INTO NEW ROLE, AND CRITICS ARE SEDUCED

Vampire makeup never provided much of a disguise for British actor Robert Pattinson. His young female fans still swooned when they saw his pasty face on screen in the Twilight series. His attempts to reinvent himself sans makeup since that franchise came to an end, in such stylish films as Cosmopolis, The Lost City of Z, […]

THE BEGUILING BACKSTORY OF “THE BEGUILED”

When producer-director Don Siegel’s The Beguiled premiered in 1971, the screenplay was credited to John B. Sherry and Grimes Grace. In fact, however, John B. Sherry was the name blacklisted writer Albert Maltz had taken on as a pseudonym in the 1950s. Maltz was a member of the infamous Hollywood 10 (the group of Hollywood writers […]

CANNES’S ELITE GATHER FOR 70TH BIRTHDAY PHOTO

When MGM celebrated its Silver Jubilee (25th birthday) in 1949, it brought together all of its contract stars for what became a classic photo shoot. Several of the stars strolled over from the stages where they were filming, still wearing their costumes. They included Lassie (well, one of several Lassies who took turns in front […]

WAITING FOR GODARD

Six years ago, Michel Hazanavicius brought his silent, black-and-white movie The Artist to the Cannes Film Festival and was drenched with critical praise. The film did not receive the festival’s top award, the Palme d’Or (although its star, Jean Dujardin, was named best actor), but it did go on to receive a slew of Oscars, […]

SCHWARZENEGGER: THE TERMINATOR WILL BE BACK

Arnold Schwarzenegger, who headed directly to Southern California’s Muscle Beach when he arrived in the U.S. nearly 50 years ago, was back at the beach again this weekend. Only this time the beach was on the French Riviera, at the Cannes Film Festival, where he was promoting a documentary, Wonders of the Sea 3D, which […]

WONDERFUL CRITICAL RESPONSE TO “WONDERSTRUCK” AT CANNES

Director Todd Haynes’s Wonderstruck successfully struck wonder in the eyes of most critics as it opened Thursday as the first film screened in competition at the Cannes Film Festival. Several of those critics predicted that it will also be among next year’s Oscar contenders. “Wonderstruck Stakes Oscar Claim” headlined Gregg Kilday’s review in the Hollywood […]

CANNES’ OPENER: SOME CRITICS RELISH IT; OTHERS SPIT IT OUT

Hollywood movie premieres ain’t what they used to be. The days when a film’s debut at movie “palaces” attracted stars wearing dresses created by famous coutouriers just for the event (and often never worn again), arriving in limousines and descending onto a red carpet as dozens of press photographers captured their beauty for people to […]