Entries Tagged 'Cannes 08' | Indie Eye

Entries tagged “Cannes 08”

Cannes 08: "Wendy and Lucy."

By Alison Willmore on 05/24/2008

Filed under: Festivals, Reviews

I've seen films about genocide at this year's festival, I've seen films about corruption, about terrible crimes, about war and about murder, but nothing cut me to the quick like "Wendy and Lucy," which is about a girl who loses her dog. The second third film from Kelly Reichardt, whose superb "Old Joy" was one of the few bright lights on the American indie landscape of the past years, is, like that last feature, deceptively simple and brief. Over the course of 80 minutes, Wendy (a very good Michelle Williams) drives into a shabby Oregon town with her dog, Lucy.... MORE »

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Cannes 08: "Che."

By Alison Willmore on 05/23/2008

Filed under: Festivals, Reviews

The noxious thing to say would be that when Steven Soderbergh's "Che" is whittled down and divided up into two solid-sized features for realistic theatrical consumption, it's not going to be nearly as good as it is in the Brobdingnagian, barely finished form that screened here at Cannes — 268 minutes, with no credits but with an intermission, during which the festival staff proffered brown bags stamped with "CHE" containing a bottle of water and half a sandwich, and smokers and non-smokers alike crowded onto the balcony to feverishly light up. And to be sure, there are resonances between part... MORE »

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Cannes 08: "Changeling."

By Alison Willmore on 05/21/2008

Filed under: Festivals, Reviews

A cloche-wearing madonna, Angelina Jolie is the porcelain personification of trembling courage and devoted motherhood in "Changeling." As Christine Collins, entire scenes exist solely for the world's most famous collector of international orphans to allow her eyes to well up as, clutching her hands over her mouth, she gives in to despair of ever finding Walter, her kidnapped son. Other times, the facade shatters and she shrieks "He's not my son! He's not my son!" Or "Did you kill my son?! Did you kill my son?!" Or "No! No! No!" Someone actually refers to her as having "moxie," which is... MORE »

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Cannes 08: "The Chaser."

By Alison Willmore on 05/19/2008

Filed under: Festivals, Reviews

A few ways to cut in line at Cannes: Get there late and drift in with the crowd at the front, looking lost or bewildered. Pretend to only be walking over to get a magazine off the table conveniently by the theater entrance, then glide in through the doors. Shove. Most often, though, someone will just wriggle into a line near the front, and then stoically pretend not to understand the people standing nearby telling him or her to fuck off in various languages. There's a lot of press at the festival, divided into the strata of white, pink with... MORE »

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Cannes 08: "Tokyo!"

By Alison Willmore on 05/17/2008

Filed under: Festivals, Reviews

"Tokyo!" is made up of three unrelated shorts directed by Michel Gondry, Leos Carax and Bong Joon-ho, all set, yes, in Tokyo. Stop, you're shrieking, how much hipness can one little omnibus film contain? It turns out, as is often the case with these things, a swoopingly uneven amount. I liked the Gondry portion, found Carax's a promising joke stretched too thin (though it attracted the most applause at the screening) and Bong's pretty damn disappointing. None of these filmmakers is actually from the city in which the film is set, and their methods of approach to encapsulating it in... MORE »

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Cannes 08: "Waltz with Bashir."

By Alison Willmore on 05/15/2008

Filed under: Festivals, Reviews

Following up Fernando Meirelles' dystopic "Blindness" with the animated Israeli documentary "Waltz with Bashir" made for an exceedingly dour day here at Cannes. "Bashir," the better film, orbits a black hole in director Ari Folman's memory that's consumed his time in the army in the early '80s, the point of singularity being the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre, in which Israeli soldiers allowed Lebanese Christian Phalangist militiamen to go into two Palestinian refugee camps, where they then slaughtered hundreds of men, women and children. Folman was there, but all he remembers is looking at the flare-illuminated ruined city while floating... MORE »

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Cannes Cam, class of 08.

By Alison Willmore on 05/14/2008

Filed under: Festivals

The third annual IFC Cannes Cam, streaming live, 24/7, for the duration of the festival, is going live in a minute or two. You can find it here; at 6:40pm local, Matt Singer and I will be on to discuss tonight's opening film, "Blindness," during the red carpet. + Cannes Cam (IFC) MORE »