Tag: 2021 Cannes Film Festival
Unclenching the Fists | Review
So Daddy, I’m Finally Through: Kovalenko Explores Familial Dysfunction in Rural Melodrama
The suppression of women by the heteropatriarchy is tale as ancient as civilization,...
Are You Lonesome Tonight? | Review
Unhappy Together: Shipei Concocts Romantic Neo-noir
Director Wen Shipei strikes an oddly satisfying balance between broody Neo-noir and simmering romance with his debut Are You...
A Radiant Girl (Une jeune fille qui va bien) | Review
Games of Hate & Chance: Kiberlain Curates Characterization with Tragic Wartime Portrait
In the eye of a swiftly gathering storm in the summer of 1942,...
Petrov’s Flu | Review
Delirium Tremens: Serebrennikov Maddens with Post-Soviet Magical Realism
Historically, Russian cinema (and literature) always tends to go for broke. Challenging narratives, endless characters, and opulent...
Down with the King | Review
King Without a Crown: Ongaro Crafts a Rap Trap in Portrait of Creative Crisis
Fifteen years ago, Jay-Z defiantly declared “Thirty’s the new twenty” in...
The Tale of King Crab | Review
Shellfish People: Rigo de Righi & Matteo Zoppis Craft Unique Narrative Steeped in Oral Tradition
For their directorial debut The Tale of King Crab, directors...
Paris, 13th District (Les Olympiades) | Review
Same Old Song & Angst: Audiard Misfires with Millennial Love Tugs
Jacques Audiard turns to youth culture amour fou with his latest feature, Paris, 13th...
Zero Fucks Given (Rien à foutre) | Review
Ground Control: Exarchopoulos Takes Flight in Portrait of Repressed Anguish
For their directorial debut Zero Fucks Given, Julie Lecoustre and Emmanuel Marre opt for a...
Nitram | Review
A Pleasure to Burn: Kurzel Explores the Making of a Murderer in Disturbing Portrait
On April 28, 1996, lone gunman Martin Bryant shot and killed...
Ahed’s Knee | Review
Kneedful Things: Lapid Highlights Complex Conflicts in Indignant Screech
The entirety of Ahed’s Knee, the fourth film from Israel’s Nadav Lapid, is formatted to aggravate...
Bloody Oranges | Review
Strange Fruit: Meurisse Gets Gonzo with Slice of Cinema Bizarre
Director Jean-Christophe Meurisse follows up his 2016 comedy Apnee with something a bit more uncomfortable...
The Worst Person In The World | Review
Sometimes She Loved Them Too: Trier Formulates Winning Composite of Love and Self Discovery
For his fifth film, The Worst Person in the World, Norway’s...
France | Review
France de France: Dumont Soars with Offbeat Melodrama on Media & Misogyny
Few and far between are odd cinematic delights so deliberately off-center and...
Red Rocket | Review
Nude Illusion: Baker Returns to Sex Work in Bristling Character Study
You can’t go home again, especially when no one missed you in the first...
Benedetta | Review
Blaspheme, Queen: Verhoeven Turns to Nunsploitation in Erotic Melodrama
Occupying a dazzling intersection of exploitation and queer historical recuperation is the long-awaited Benedetta from Dutch...
Drive My Car | Review
Lamprey Love: The Play’s the Thing in Hamaguchi’s Brooding Saga of Regrets
“When one has no real life, one lives on illusions,” is one of...
The French Dispatch | Review
Repetition Commission: Anderson Flatlines with Twee Aesthetic
Since cinema requires a semblance of participation by the audience, a passive relationship of sorts, the latest curio...
Bergman Island | Review
The Passion of Mia: Hansen-Love Makes Her Own Place at the Table
For her complex and absorbing seventh feature, Bergman Island, Mia Hansen-Løve returns to...
Titane | Review
Car Crash Set: Ducournau Crafts a Cult Classic with Grotesque Odyssey of Dysfunction
In J.G. Ballard’s seminal 1973 cult novel Crash, infamously adapted in 1996...
Flag Day | Review
Americana Trauma: Penn Returns with Hysterical Melodrama
After the formidable misfire of his last directorial effort The Last Face (2016), Sean Penn unfortunately doesn’t fare...
Annette | Review
Henry Fool: Music & Misogyny Explored in Glossy Return of Carax
Like nearly all of Leos Carax’s films over the past thirty years (of which...
2021 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Hamaguchi’s “Drive My Car” is Tops
The Japanese drama based on the short story of the same name by Haruki Murakami landed on the top spot of IONCINEMA.com's 2021 Cannes...
2021 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 11 – Joachim Lafosse’s The Restless
For the final film in competition we get a piece of Belgium with Joachim Lafosse’s very first competition film offering. He has been on...
2021 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 11 – Justin Kurzel’s Nitram
His only other comp offering was 2015's Macbeth, but his debut film (we were there) was Snowtown (later known as The Snowtown Murders). There...
2021 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 10 – Nabil Ayouch’s Casablanca Beats
Among the surprise selections for the Cannes Competition line-up, Nabil Ayouch's Casablanca Beats (known in French as Haut et fort), and before that it...
2021 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 10 – Bruno Dumont’s France
A Cannes Film Festival staple, Bruno Dumont returns to the competition for a fourth time with a media satire that was clearly for acquired...
2021 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 10 – Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria
Offering the Croisette not one but two films this year -- The Year of the Everlasting Storm is a rare anthology film that is...
2021 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 9 – Jacques Audiard’s Les Olympiades
Audiard established himself in Cannes with Regarde Les Hommes Tomber in the Critics’ Week, and then he saw 1996’s Un héros très discret land...
2021 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 9 – Ildiko Enyedi’s The Story of My Wife
A first time in comp birth for the Hungarian filmmaker, this is Ildikó Enyedi's first visit back to Cannes since the landed a spot...
2021 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 9 – Sean Baker’s Red Rocket
Entering the competition for the very first time (this is Sean Baker's second official visit on the Croisette with The Florida Project premiering in...
2021 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 8 – Julia Ducournau’s Titane
Julia Ducournau landed in the 2016 edition of Critic's Week section with her debut film Raw (she previously had shown her short Junior as...
2021 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 8 – Asghar Farhadi’s A Hero
After opening the competition in 2018 with Everybody Knows, Asghar Farhadi truly is in a return to form mode with the set in Iran...
A Hero | 2021 Cannes Film Festival Review
Purse First: Farhadi Brings Agony and Ecstasy in Latest Social Drama
Robert Burns’ eternal passage, cribbed by Steinbeck, “the best laid schemes o’ mice and...
2021 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 7 – Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch
He opened the 2012 edition of the Cannes Film Festival with Moonrise Kingdom and he returns for a second year in a row (The...
2021 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 7 – Kirill Serebrennikov’s Petrov’s Flu
Following Un Certain Regard preemed The Student and Leto in 2018, Kirill Serebrennikov returns to the competition with the dense Petrov's Flu. Unfortunately he...
2021 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 6 – Mia Hansen-Løve’s Bergman Island
With Father of My Children (2009) as her only shoring up in Cannes, Mia Hansen-Løve who is seven features in lands in the Main...
2021 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 6 – Nanni Moretti’s Three Floors
Enlisting a huge ensemble cast, Tre Piani was already identified as a Cannes entry last year. Following in the footsteps of the agreeable 2015...
2021 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 6 – Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car
What an extraordinary year for Ryûsuke Hamaguchi. Earlier in 2021, he was at the Berlinale with Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (read our Nicholas Bell's...
La Fracture | 2021 Cannes Film Festival Review
Conqueror Worms: Corsini Juggles Metaphors in Strangely Asymmetrical Social Issue Film
Director Catherine Corsini metastasizes an ensemble exercise for her eleventh feature, La Fracture, a...
2021 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 5 – Sean Penn’s Flag Day
He was added "last minute" during the press conference for the 2021 Palme d'Or line-up and clearly there is something that Thierry appreciates in...
2021 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 5 – Juho Kuosmanen’s Compartment No. 6
His first feature film, The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Maki competed in the Un Certain Regard section in 2016 and in...
Returning to Reims (Fragments) | 2021 Cannes Film Festival Review
Blue is the Warmest Collar: Periot’s Projects a Sublime Visualization of Potent Memoir
For his third feature length documentary, Jean-Gabriel Périot tackles the celebrated 2009...
2021 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 4 – Catherine Corsini’s La Fracture
Her second entry into the comp section (exactly two decades ago with La Repetition) and three film in all with Three Worlds having premiered...
2021 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 4 – Paul Verhoeven’s Benedetta
Paul Verhoeven's third entry into the comp after 1992’s Basic Instinct and 2016's Elle was the long awaited Benedetta (hip surgery followed by the...
The Employer and the Employee | 2021 Cannes Film Festival Review
Bargaining Basement: Zas Presents a Touch of Caste in Free Market Melodrama
The working class do not go to heaven in Manuel Nieto Zas’ third...
Softie (Petite nature) | 2021 Cannes Film Festival Review
Sharp Shock to Your Soft Side: Theis Mines the Uncomfortable Realities of Sexuality
In the one-hundred-and-twenty-five years since the detrimental trials of Oscar Wilde and...
2021 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 3 – Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person In The World
His second film in the Palme d'Or comp, Joachim Trier's The Worst Person In The World (aka Verdens verste menneske or in French as...
2021 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 3 – Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s Lingui
If he doesn't go to Venice (he preemed Bye-bye Africa and Daratt, Dry Season there), he'd certainly be headed to the Croisette with this...
Tom Medina | 2021 Cannes Film Festival Review
The Man Without a Country: Gatlif Explores the Tribulations of Redemption in Oblique Character Study
French-Algerian director Tony Gatlif remains something of a European anomaly...
The Hill Where the Lionesses Roar | 2021 Cannes Film Festival Review
Hear Them Roar: Bajrami Shouts an Outcry on Female Subjugation
Luàna Bajrami, who appeared as the maid in Celina Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on...
