Andrea Arnold is aware that cows roaming the countryside is an image cut straight from the cloth of pastoral English iconography, the stuff of Victorian novels and Renaissance paintings. “[For] a lot of our modern lives, our sort of view of nature is a very romantic one,” she says. “It’s a very sort of postural, are we going to have a picnic and a nice bit of nature? We engage with the romance of it as opposed to the reality of it.” 

READ MORE: Best Of Cannes 2021: 15 Must-See Movies From The Festival

The reality of nature, in all its unglamorized truth, is the driving force of Arnold’s new film, “Cow,” which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.

Continue reading Filmmaker Andrea Arnold On ‘Cow’: The Beauty & Brutality Of Nature In All Is Unglamorized Truth [Interview] at The Playlist.

“This stuff is junk, what we’re doing,” Bill Murray deadpans in the middle of “New Worlds: The Cradle of Civilization.” The live audience onscreen—a strange sight after a year and a half of social distancing and no live performances—laughs. Murray hams it up: “Is it too late to get some moussaka?” Then he smiles knowingly and nods. “Trust me when I say that the worst is over,” he says. 

Continue reading ‘New Worlds: The Cradle of Civilization’: Bill Murray-Led Classical Music Special Is An Ode to Live Music [Cannes Review] at The Playlist.

Though “Nitram” never depicts the unspoken horrific massacre that its protagonist commits, the entire film queasily pulses in the anxious anticipation of the unspeakable event. It’s not an easy film to watch, knowing what’s coming but remaining completely powerless, not unlike watching a car crash in motion and being unable to stop it. 

READ MORE: Cannes Film Festival 2021 Preview: 25 Films To Watch

All the warning signs are there for Martin Bryant (Caleb Landry Jones, in a truly chameleonic performance that has since taken the Best Actor prize at Cannes), whom the film never names directly.

Continue reading ‘Nitram’: Caleb Landry Jones Is Chilling In Justin Kurzel’s Portrait Of An Infamous Australian Mass Shooter [Cannes Review] at The Playlist.

It’s rare for the last ten minutes of a film to radically change your opinion of the movie at large, let alone your entire viewing experience, but in “Hold Me Tight” (“Serre-Moi fort”), which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, director Mathieu Amalric does precisely that. The preceding hour and a half is certainly rich and evocative thanks to a bravura performance by Vicky Krieps (“The Phantom Thread”), but the material is so disjointed that it impedes comprehension until the very end.

Continue reading ‘Hold Me Tight’: Mathieu Amalric Deconstructs Loss With Vicky Krieps in A Fractured Family Drama [Cannes Review] at The Playlist.

In one scene of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s “Memoria,” Jessica (Tilda Swinton) and a friend browse refrigerated cabinets designed to preserve flowers. “In here, time stops,” the saleswoman says proudly, gesturing at the blue cupboards. The same could be said of the film at large. A master of slow cinema, Weerasethakul takes his time with every shot; long stretches of time pass without any dialogue or movement.

Continue reading ‘Memoria’: Apichatpong Weerasethakul Meditates on Ecology & Time With Tilda Swinton In A Slow Burn Dream [Cannes Review] at The Playlist.

Few films have accurately captured the definitive Millennial experience—lovelorn, cash-strapped, self-absorbed, and tech-addicted—though a few have tried, and some even succeeded. Modern love is no joke, as films and shows like “Frances Ha” and “Girls” know, and neither is modern friendship, or any part of early adulthood these days. Friendship, love, and all the strange gradations in between coalesce at the center of Jacques Audiard’s quartet romance, “Paris, 13th District” (“Les Olympiades”), which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.

Continue reading ‘Paris, 13th District’: Jacques Audiard Dreams Up A Millennial New Wave ‘Jules & Jim’ [Cannes Review] at The Playlist.

In “A Hero” (“Ghahreman”), Asghar Farhadi blurs the line of innocence and guilt in a fraught drama about the true weight of a good deed. During a two-day reprieve from prison, Rahim Soltani (Amir Jadidi) and his girlfriend Farkhondeh (Sahar Goldust) discover a handbag full of golden coins. Though Rahim briefly debates selling them to help offset the cost of his debts to Braham (Mohsen Tanabandeh), the gold exchange rate is unsatisfactorily low, and he resolves to track down the original owner and return them.

Continue reading ‘A Hero’: Asghar Farhadi’s Moral Quandary Film Questions The Weight of a Good Deed [Cannes Review] at The Playlist.

In Arnaud Desplechin’s “Deception” (“Tromperie”), one character’s husband is described as “passionate about dazzling, interesting women.” In this adaptation of Philip Roth’s novel of the same name, one can’t help but wish the director shared the character’s interest. Instead, Desplechin and his film seem to have a perverse and single-minded fixation not on “dazzling, interesting” women, but lost, tragic ones—women who can gravitate toward and glom onto Philip (Denis Podalydès), an inexplicably francophone version of the author, who lavishes the attention. 

READ MORE: Cannes Film Festival 2021 Preview: 25
Films To Watch

In the stuffy and garrulous adaptation, a rotating cast of women populates Philip’s imagination: There’s an unnamed English actor (also inexplicably francophone, played by Léa Seydoux), whose affair with Philip is a convenient escape from a languishing marriage with an American novelist.

Continue reading ‘Deception’: Arnaud Desplechin’s Chatty Philip Roth Adaptation With Léa Seydoux Needs Less Talking, More Action [Cannes Review] at The Playlist.

What do we really know about children? Until the Renaissance, artists were still painting them as freakish shriveled adults. Only in the last century-ish did American society decide they probably should go to school instead of laboring all day in sweatshops. And though modernity affords parents all the luxuries of developmental psychology and helicopter parenting, perhaps children still remain more of a mystery than we may think. In “The Innocents,” which debuted in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival, Norwegian filmmaker Eskil Vogt (Joachim Trier‘s longtime screenwriter, who also directs) posits that we don’t know much about children at all. 

Continue reading ‘The Innocents’: Eskil Vogt’s Latest Is A Violent & Disturbing Nightmare Of Childhood [Cannes Review] at The Playlist.

What do fans of Sylvan Esso dance house remixes and Bob Dylan have in common? Almost nothing, you’d imagine, and you’d probably be right. But in Clio Barnard’s sweet, unlikely romance “Ali & Ava,” which premiered as part of Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight program, the two titular characters—both from opposite musical camps—learn to find common ground in each other’s preferences and more, to share in each other’s lives.

Continue reading ‘Ali & Ava’: Clio Barnard’s Unlikely Romance Strikes a Sweet Chord [Cannes Review] at The Playlist.

Just a few days on the heels of “Stillwater,” another American entry in the Cannes Film Festival main competition section explores the complicated relationship between a father and daughter rooted in down-home Americana and close brushes with the law. “Flag Day” marks Sean Penn’s latest directorial return to Cannes since the critically-lambasted “The Last Face” from 2016.

Continue reading ‘Flag Day’: Sean Penn’s Family Drama Is A Fine Showcase For Dylan Penn, But Otherwise Plays It Safe [Cannes Review] at The Playlist.

A sweeping social protest met with utter chaos in an emergency room—especially to the American festival-goer at Cannes, this brief sounds like an unpleasant evocation of 2020. And indeed, filmed in the immediate aftermath of the gilets jaunes protests in France, Catherine Corsini’s “The Divide” (“La fracture”) both reflects the past year and eerily foreshadows the true disaster in emergency rooms that followed the events of the film.

Continue reading ‘The Divide’ (‘La Fracture’): A Dark, Exhausting Dramedy Chronicles Divorce & the Gilets Jaune Protests [Cannes Review] at The Playlist.

“Once upon a time,” begins any good fairy tale. Though it too begins with this simple phrase, “Mothering Sunday” is no such fairy tale. Rather than dragons, knights, and princesses, filmmaker Eva Husson offers us a maid, a trio of bourgeois families, and a lush yet ultimately bleak view of post-World War I England. The film marks a great tonal departure from Husson’s last trip to the Croisette, “Girls of the Sun,” her 2018 war film about a female battalion in Kurdistan. 

Continue reading ‘Mothering Sunday’: Eva Husson’s Drama Is Richly Sensual, Yet Occasionally Disjointed [Cannes Review] at The Playlist.

It’s been a rocky four-plus years in American foreign policy, and nowhere is this more apparent than in “Stillwater,” the new thriller-slash-family drama from “Spotlight” director Tom McCarthy, which premiered out-of-competition at Cannes. Partially inspired by the Amanda Knox trial, but mostly a strangely affecting family drama concocted by screenwriting team Thomas Bidegain, Noé Debré, and Marcus Hinchey, the film totters uneasily between the two modes over the course of 140 minutes, never quite finding its footing.

Continue reading ‘Stillwater’: Matt Damon Thriller From Tom McCarthy Never Quite Changes the Tide [Cannes Review] at The Playlist.

There is so much noise in Nadav Lapid’s “Ahed’s Knee” (“Ha’berech”): from the whitewash of the opening frames, which roar into a revving motorcycle engine, to an unexpected Vanessa Paradis needle drop, to the strange host of anatomical noises as Y (the choreographer Avshalom Pollack, very much in control of his physicality) breathes heavily and pads across the floors of his rented apartment in Arava, the desert where he’s screening his new film.

Continue reading ‘Ahed’s Knee’: A Searing Autobiographical Takedown Of Corrupt Government [Cannes Review] at The Playlist.

The female ass is the main character of “Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo,” and that’s not an exaggeration. After auctioning off the Palme d’Or statuette he won for “Blue Is the Warmest Color” in order to finance this film, director Abdellatif Kechiche returns with —  judging by its title — the second installment in a godforsaken trilogy. The rumors are true: “Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo” clocks in at around four hours, each hour more excruciatingly mind-numbing than the last.

Continue reading ‘Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo’: Abdellatif Kechiche’s Torturous, Four-Hour Sequel Is the Butt of the Joke [Cannes Review] at The Playlist.

“Matthias and Maxime” ticks almost every checkbox of a Xavier Dolan movie: Canadian slang, which often takes the form of idiomatic English; plentiful shouting and stylized aesthetic flourishes set to synth-heavy soundtrack backing.

READ MORE: 2019 Cannes Film Festival: The 21 Most Anticipated Movies

But perhaps truest to Dolan’s form, the film, is a story of a complicated, evolving male friendship and sexual relationship between two friends.

Continue reading Xavier Dolan’s ‘Matthias Et Maxime’ Sparks A Magnetic Love Story [Cannes Review] at The Playlist.

“For men, identity comes from work,” Michael Hainey says in the Esquire cover story interview with the stars of Quentin Tarantino’s new film, Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, as well as the controversial auteur himself.

READ MORE: 2019 Cannes Film Festival: The 21 Most Anticipated Movies

Seated around Hainey, the stars and their director agree. “To be a young leading man is to be macho and masculine and sexy and handsome and chiseled,” Tarantino says, of the previous expectations for leading men, which undergo a major transformation in the 1960s.

Continue reading ‘Once Upon A Time In Hollywood’: Quentin Tarantino’s Obsession With Revisionist History Continues [Cannes] at The Playlist.

This article contains spoilers for “The Lighthouse.”

Despite what the Batman backlash might indicate, Robert Pattinson has come a long way from his sparkly vampire days. Pattinson made his first major appearance as Cedric Diggory in “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,” but it wasn’t until his leading role in the “Twilight” saga in 2008 that he became a household name.

Continue reading Enough Already, ‘The Lighthouse’ Performance Proves Robert Pattinson Is More Than Worthy Of Respect [Cannes] at The Playlist.

A few great family dramas mark recent Cannes history — last year’s Palme d’Or winner “Shoplifters” comes to mind, as well as Bong Joon-ho’s “Parasite,” in competition this year. Ira Sachs’ “Frankie” is unfortunately not among them.

READ MORE: 2019 Cannes Film Festival: The 21 Most Anticipated Movies

Sachs’ meandering, slow-to-develop, and slower-to-finish family drama introduces Isabelle Huppert as Françoise, an aging French movie star whose terminal illness means the remaining days with her (confusingly fractured) family are limited.

Continue reading Ira Sachs’ ‘Frankie’ Is An Overstuffed Family Drama That Somehow Stifles The Great Isabelle Huppert [Cannes Review] at The Playlist.

Eight years after her move to Taiwan, Nina Wu (Wu Ke-Xi) finally gets the audition she needs to jump-start her career: “Romance of the Spies,” a 1960s-era spy noir. To her discomfort, after exclusively working on short films and small projects, this glamorous new role calls for full frontal nudity and explicit sex scenes, including a threesome. As Nina acclimates to the bizarre world of the film set, in which comfort and safety are deprioritized in favor of art, she also grapples with family illness, the return of an old flame (Vivian Sung), and the mysterious recurrence of a menacing figure who haunts her dreams (Kimi Hsia).

Continue reading ‘Nina Wu’: Midi Z’s Lukewarm Take On The #MeToo Era Film Set [Cannes Review] at The Playlist.

A strange pinkish glow emanates from the greenhouse of Planthouse Biotechnologies, the laboratory where Alice Woodward (Emily Beecham), a dedicated geneticist, works. With the help of her partner Chris (Ben Whishaw), Alice cultivates a unique plant that allows its carer — so long as they water it regularly, keep it out of the cold, touch, and talk to it — to feel happy. But when Alice brings the plant home to show her son Joe (Kit Connor), for whom the plant is named, she begins to observe strange behavior from everyone who comes into contact with the plant, which seems to infect those in proximity by releasing an inhalable, dusty cloud of pollen with neurological consequences.

Continue reading Jessica Hausner’s ‘Little Joe’: A Chilling Take On Happiness In The Bioengineering Age [Cannes Review] at The Playlist.

Alfred Hitchcock’s advice for aspiring filmmakers famously included a succinct but pertinent recommendation: “Torture the women.” Known for other provocative titles like the erotic drama “Love” and last year’s trippy dance thriller “Climax,” Gaspar Noé takes a cue from Hitchcock’s book in what Noé describes as a “modest essay about beliefs and the art of filmmaking.” For “Lux Æterna,” which screened out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival, the only necessary trigger warning is “directed by Gaspar Noé.”

READ MORE: 2019 Cannes Film Festival: The 21 Most Anticipated Movies

Indeed, the women in Noé’s self-referential film-within-a-film are subjected to a number of grisly outcomes.

Continue reading Gaspar Noé’s ‘Lux Æterna’ Descends Into Self-Referential Pandemonium [Cannes Review] at The Playlist.

In portraiture, representing someone’s likeness is more than an act of looking — it’s an act of learning another person. From the curves of her ear cartilage to the contours of her hands at rest, to paint a subject is to commit her to memory, even down to the smallest mannerisms. As Greta Gerwig asserted in “Lady Bird,” another film with a central female gaze, love is fundamentally an act of paying attention.

Continue reading Céline Sciamma’s ‘Portrait Of A Lady On Fire’ Is A Searing Love Story [Cannes Review] at The Playlist.

Comedies are few and far between in Cannes’ usually somber line-up, so for many festival-goers, “The Climb” is a refreshing change of pace. Compartmentalized into six tidy vignettes, sometimes spaced years apart, Michael Angelo Covino’s directorial debut follows two average joes Kyle (Kyle Marvin) and Mike (Covino himself) as they chart the rocky course of their friendship from one feud to the next.

READ MORE: 2019 Cannes Film Festival: The 21 Most Anticipated Movies

Unlike other buddy comedies of its genre, though, the plot structure of “The Climb” is more accurately charted as a series of sequential peaks, rather than building to one easily-defined climax.

Continue reading ‘The Climb’: Michael Angelo Covino’s Debut Is An Endearing, Relentlessly Funny Buddy Comedy [Cannes Review] at The Playlist.