Having previously won the Palme d’Or in 2001 for “The Son’s Room” and premiered the majority of his films in competition, Italian filmmaker Nanni Moretti has been a mainstay at the Cannes Film Festival for several decades. His latest film, “A Brighter Tomorrow,” marks a welcome return to the French Riviera following the poorly-received “Three Floors.” Getting special permission from Cannes to release his films locally prior to hitting the Croisette, Moretti’s 14th feature was released in Italian theaters on April 20, where it has greatly resonated with audiences and earned around $4 million. 

Continue reading ‘A Brighter Tomorrow’ Review: Nanni Moretti’s Latest Is A Messy Meta Comedy About Filmmaking [Cannes] at The Playlist.

Surprise endings aren’t just reserved for M. Night Shyamalan films, you know. Sometimes, a seemingly straightforward family drama can keep the twists and turns going until the very final moments, which is something that is key to the new film, “Hold Me Tight.”

As seen in the new trailer for “Hold Me Tight,” from director Mathieu Amalric, the film follows the story of Camille (Vicky Krieps), who abandons her family for an adventurous life on the road.

Continue reading ‘Hold Me Tight’ Trailer: Vicky Krieps Stars In Mathieu Amalric’s Twisty Family Drama 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.

When playwright/deviant Oscar Wilde famously remarked that imitation was the most sincere form of flattery, he probably never predicted the idea applying to a new Netflix original, but well, it fits, and here we are. Their new sci-fi horror thriller, “Oxygen,” is a film that borrows heavily from such intimate looks at claustrophobic spaces like 2010’s “Buried” and a dash of, say, cryonic-freezing drama, “Forever Young.

Continue reading ‘Oxygen’: Alexandre Aja’s Derivative ‘Buried’-Like Thriller Still Asphyxiates With Breathless Tension [Review] at The Playlist.

Each year, countless films premiere at festivals across the world. Filmmakers are celebrated for their artistic vision. Projects are praised for their ability to push the boundaries of what we expect from national cinemas. Then, just as quickly as these films burst on the scene, many disappear from the public eye. Some fall through the cracks of distribution. Others are snapped up by discriminating studios but languish in the vault as executives work to puzzle out the perfect date and platform for their release.

Continue reading The 25 Best Movies Of 2020 We’ve Already Seen at The Playlist.

It is my personal belief that one of the greatest challenges an actor can face is that of making stoicism into compelling drama. The term actor definitionally refers to one who performs an action, and remaining stilly stone-faced can sometimes come off as the absence of a thing rather than a thing itself. Riz Ahmed spends long passages of Darius Marder’s arresting new character study “Sound of Metal” stewing in the surly, resentful silence of the furious-yet-resigned; a fragile self-control punctuated by outbursts of rage and violence.

Continue reading ‘Sound Of Metal’: Riz Ahmed Stars In A Visceral Blue Valentine Painted Black at The Playlist.

Toward the end of Arnaud Desplechin’s “Ismael’s Ghosts,” an actress character declares that a film director is “all over the film,” and that certainly seems to be the case for Desplechin himself. The personal nature of “Ismael’s Ghosts” is tangible in every frame: Ismael, the film’s protagonist played by Mathieu Amalric, shares Desplechin’s obsessions with death, women, and obsession itself. And like Desplechin, Ismael is a filmmaker.

Continue reading Marion Cotillard And Charlotte Gainsbourg Elevate ‘Ismael’s Ghosts’ [New Cut Review] at The Playlist.

Last spring, “Ismael’s Ghosts,” the latest from acclaimed auteur Arnaud Desplechin (“A Christmas Tale,” “Kings & Queens,” “My Golden Days“), premiered at the Cannes Film Festival with very little buzz. We called it a “watchable amalgam of all his best and worst tendencies.” However, it’s now landing stateside with a new version that might turn the tide of critical opinion.

Continue reading ‘Ismael’s Ghosts’ Trailer: Arnaud Desplechin’s Latest With Charlotte Gainsbourg & Marion Cotillard Gets A Director’s Cut at The Playlist.

Ten days of cinephile heaven have wrapped for another year as the red carpet was rolled out for one last time at the Cannes Film Festival for the awards ceremony.

READ MORE: The 20 Most Anticipated Films Of The 2017 Cannes Film Festival

Ruben Östlund‘s “The Square” walked away the big winner, the unexpected recipient of the Palme d’Or. Continuing his tremendous run at Cannes, Andrey Zvyagintsev (who previously won Best Screenplay and a Special Jury Prize from Un Certain Regard) took home the Jury Prize for “Loveless.” The hotly buzzed “12o Beats Per Minute” landed the Grand Prix, though many expected it to take the Palme. 

Continue reading Cannes 2017 Awards: Ruben Östlund’s ‘The Square’ Wins Palme d’Or, Joaquin Phoenix Takes Best Actor at The Playlist.

The ever prolific Mathieu Amalric, with his bulbous eyes that tempt to twitch at any given second, and frazzled, half-cracked smiles, is a brilliantly neurotic actor. It’s what makes watching him on screen so utterly compelling. But those qualities don’t always translate when they’re brought behind the camera as well. Case in point: “Barbara.” Stretching out the film-within-a-film trope to its outer limits, “Barbara” is Amalric’s ambitious attempt at detailing the creative process through the life of popular 1960s French singer Barbara.

Continue reading Jeanne Balibar Shines In Mathieu Amalric’s Messy & Incoherent ‘Barbara’ [Cannes Review] at The Playlist.

What do Joyce’s “Ulysses,” Tajikistan, night terrors, Bob Dylan, fraught fatherly relationships, Russian spies, astrophysics, Jacques Lacan, dependent disabled brothers and Jackson Pollock have in common? In the unlikely infinite-monkeys-infinite-typewriters scenario whereby this becomes an actual riddle, you now have an answer: nothing, but they all pop up in Arnaud Desplechin‘s “Ismaël’s Ghosts.” If storylines were measured in yardage, laid end to end the film’s narratives could comfortably lasso the moon, but its very fundamental problem is that they’re not laid end-to-end.

Continue reading ‘Ismaël’s Ghosts’ Starring Marion Cotillard & Charlotte Gainsbourg Is Arnaud Desplechin At His Best & Worst [Cannes Review] at The Playlist.

With the current state of the world, movies about the making of movies seem a bit frivolous, but perhaps they are just the sort of meta-layered escape we need. Certainly, Mathieu Amalric is hoping his journey into cinematic obsession with “Barbara” can resonate when it premieres at the Cannes Film Festival.

READ MORE: The 20 Most Anticipated Films Of The 2017 Cannes Film Festival

Amalric directs and co-stars in the movie, led by Jeanne Balibar, about an actress and director who both become consumed with the character of Barbara in the film they’re making…or are they simply attracted to each other?

Continue reading First Trailer And Clip For Mathieu Amalric’s Cannes Entry ‘Barbara’ at The Playlist.

Now that Arnaud Desplechin‘s “Ismael’s Ghosts” is set to open the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, the film has released its first official trailer, complete with its brand new Sundance badge. “Ismael’s Ghosts” and Cannes are a strong match: not only is Desplechin a five-time Palme d’Or nominee — beginning with his 1992 film “La sentinelle” and continuing through 2013’s “Jimmy P.

Continue reading Marion Cotillard Shines In The Trailer For Cannes Film Festival Selection ‘Ismael’s Ghosts’ at The Playlist.

With so many movies coming out each week and premiering at festivals across the year, it’s inevitable that some will be forgotten. Especially on the foreign film scene, it can be difficult for those movies to grab the attention necessary not just to land U.S. distribution, but to make any kind of stateside wave. But Kino Lorber are hoping they can find a crowd for “The Son Of Joseph,” a film we called “genuine, generous and joyful” when we saw it in Berlin back in February.

Continue reading New U.S. Trailer For The Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne Produced ‘The Son Of Joseph’ Starring Mathieu Amalric at The Playlist.

Although he’s one of the great post-modernist novelists — or perhaps because of that — Don DeLillo’s work has mostly resisted adaptation. The sole one of his books to reach the screen until now was “Cosmopolis,” in the form of David Cronenberg’s disappointing translation, with the rest of his work being too dense, or too ambitious, to bring for the screen.

But a number of filmmakers have, over the years, been interested in making DeLillo’s 2001 book “The Body Artist” into a film — “A Bigger Splash” director Luca Guadagnino nearly made a version with Isabelle Huppert a few years back.

Continue reading Watch The Trailer For Benoit Jacquot’s Don DeLillo Adaptation ‘Never Ever’ Starring Mathieu Amalric at The Playlist.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa, know for delivering both dramas (“Tokyo Sonata“) and horror/thrillers (“Pulse“) takes a turn towards fantasy with his next effort, “Daguerrotype,” which is gearing up for a World Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. It’ll mark the director’s first French-language film, but he certainly has some strong help in front of the camera.

READ MORE: The 30 Most Anticipated Films Of The 2016 Toronto International Film Festival

Starring Tahar Rahim, Constance Rousseau, Olivier Gourmet, and Mathieu Amalric, the film tells the story of an employee of an aging photographer, whose photographs of his daughter grow increasingly disturbing, in a story that offers a bounty of intrigue.

Continue reading First Trailer For Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s ‘Daguerrotype’ With Tahar Rahim & Mathieu Amalric at The Playlist.

While Arnaud Desplechin, the director behind celebrated films like “Kings & Queens” and “A Christmas Tale,” stumbled a bit with “Jimmy P.” in 2013, be bounced back in a big way with last year’s “My Golden Days.” It was a return to form for the director, and he’s already jumping into his next project, which has assembled a promisingly starry cast.

Continue reading Mathieu Amalric, Charlotte Gainsbourg & Marion Cotillard Team For Arnaud Desplechin’s ‘Les Fantomes d’Ismaël’ at The Playlist.

Berlin Review: Eugène Green's Droll, Adorable 'Le Fils De Joseph' With Mathieu Amalric

Continue reading Berlin Review: Eugène Green’s Droll, Adorable ‘The Son Of Joseph’ With Mathieu Amalric at The Playlist.

Watch: U.S. Trailer For Arnaud Desplechin's 'My Golden Days' Starring Mathieu Amalric

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Mathieu Amalric To Star In Benoît Jacquot's Adaptation Of Don DeLillo's 'The Body Artist'

Continue reading Mathieu Amalric To Star In Benoît Jacquot’s Adaptation Of Don DeLillo’s ‘The Body Artist’ at The Playlist.

Cannes Review: Finely Honed 'My Golden Days' Is One Of Arnaud Desplechin's Best

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Watch: First International Trailer And Images For Arnaud Desplechin's 'My Golden Years' Starring Mathieu Amalric

Continue reading Watch: First International Trailer And Images For Arnaud Desplechin’s ‘My Golden Years’ Starring Mathieu Amalric at The Playlist.

Continue reading Review: Mathieu Amalric’s Beautifully Shot And Crafted ‘The Blue Room’ Could Use A Little More Seediness at The Playlist.

Watch: New U.S. Trailer for Mathieu Amalric’s Sexy Cannes Drama ‘The Blue Room’

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Review: Emmanuelle Seigner Is Terrific, But Roman Polanski's 'Venus In Fur' Is Overwrought

Continue reading Review: Emmanuelle Seigner Is Terrific, But Roman Polanski’s ‘Venus In Fur’ Is Overwrought at The Playlist.