Cannes review: The Meyerowitz Stories (new and selected) (2017)
★★★★☆
Noah Baumbach’s verbose comedy-drama The Meyerowitz Stories for Netflix is solid mainstream entertainment with a wry taste.
Cannes
Cannes review: 120 BPM (120 beats per minute) (2017)
★★★★★☆
In BPM director Robin Campillo turns his naturalistic documentary-style technique from The Class on a group of AIDS activists in the epidemic of the 1990s in a sober, moving, tender and compassionate film.
Cannes review: Okja (2017)
★★★★☆
Netflix’s Okja is Bong Joon-ho’s and Jon Ronson’s satire-cum-expose of the genetically modified food industry through the adventures of a delightful Korean girl and an outsize giant pig.
Cannes review: Jupiter’s Moon (2017)
★★★★☆
In Jupiter’s Moon Kornél Mundruczó takes an intriguing and timely magical realist premise but leaves its resolution in mid air.
Cannes review: Wonderstruck (2017)
★★★★☆
In Wonderstruck Todd Haynes opens a cabinet of cinematic wonders as two deaf children’s stories interlink 50 years apart in the magic of New York.
Cannes review: Ismaël’s Ghosts (2017)
★★★★☆
Arnaud Desplechin’s Ismaël’s Ghosts is an abstract, at times melodramatic interweaving of nightmare, filmmaking, fiction and reality.
Frantz (2016)
★★★★☆
François Ozon’s Frantz takes you on a haunting journey into the unexpected ramifications of grief, forgiveness and identity in the European aftermath of World War I.
Harmonium (2016)
★★★★★☆
In Koji Fukada’s Harmonium, the fragile harmony of a Japanese family is shattered by the arrival of a mysterious stranger.
The Cannes Film Festival 2017
★★★★☆
The world’s biggest film event, the Cannes Film Festival, takes place this year from 17-28 May 2017, its 70th anniversary. The Official Selection contains over 80 films (and some TV programmes), of which 12 are directed by women. Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar is the President of the Jury.
Clash (2016)
★★★☆☆
In Clash director Mohamed Diab creates an intensely moving microcosm of Egyptian society in the confined space of a police van as riots erupt outside.
The Handmaiden (2016)
★★★★☆
A sumptuous new adaptation of Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith, Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden is a dazzling tale of duplicity and deception.
Neruda (2016)
★★★★☆
Aquarius (2016)
★★★★☆
Aquarius is Kleber Mendonça Filho’s unhurried portrait of a fascinatingly complicated woman, meticulously characterised in a career-best performance by Sonia Braga.
Personal Shopper (2016)
★★★★☆
A charismatic, nuanced turn by Kristen Stewart holds together an improbable yet strangely compelling mixture of fashion and supernatural horror in Oliver Assayas’s Personal Shopper.