Review

By Robert Kenneth Dator. Bury The Hatchet? Where is the conflict? The title of this beautifully shot documentary would constitute something of a double entendre if one could find the combatants. There is poetic strife of a sort; factionalism of a sort; mild hostility; competition, but no long-standing feud; no […]

By Jacob Mertens.  Cinema can be seen as an act of illusion. Scenes that filmed separately become a cohesive whole, real footage blends seamlessly with CG, and a story moves at the behest of a surreptitious screenwriter. Naturally, Louis Leterrier’s Now You See Me finds an appropriate medium for its […]

By Cleaver Patterson. Director Brian De Palma’s classic 1981 conspiracy thriller Blow Out is not just a marvellously realised exercise in rising paranoia, but also a stylishly twisted example of one of Hollywood’s masters of suspense at the height of his powers. John Travolta stars as Jack Terry, a technician […]

By Moira Sullivan.  In an unprecedented decision, the jury for the official competition of the 66th Festival de Cannes, led by President Steven Spielberg, awarded the French-Tunisian director Abdellatif Kechiche and French actresses Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos the Palme d’Or for La Vie d’Adèle – Chapitre 1 & 2 (Blue is the […]

By Moira Sullivan. Michael Kohlhaas Arnaud Des Pallière’s Michael Kohlhaas failed to engage spectators because of the slow pace and tough to chew narrative construction. The dramaturgy forced viewers to wait out the step-by-step construction of the film. For relief, most of Kohlhass is shot in the Cévennes mountains and […]

By Jacob Mertens. The modern blockbuster has become a strange, new beast before our eyes. In the nascent days of the Star Trek series, the fantasy of galactic travel could only prove as tangible as limited special effects technology allowed. Now, the aesthetics of the science fiction film take on […]

By Moira Sullivan. Cannes Luncheon Toward the end of the festival, when the press was anxious to leave for home and needed an injection of new sites and hospitality, the mayor of Cannes, Bernard Brochand, took the opportunity to invite over 100 journalists to a luncheon in the old quarters […]

By Moira Sullivan. The remaining three days of the festival continued an ongoing feast of cinematic treasures. Salle Bunuel screened a double feature on May 24th to honor Jean Cocteau. Fifty years have gone by since his death in 1963 and the festival paid him tribute. Cocteau was a previous […]

By Cleaver Patterson. There was a time before the advent of CGI, when horror movies had to rely on subtlety to induce fear in the viewer. Indeed older films from the horror genre still work today because they used elements, such as fear of the unknown or being alone, which […]

By Moira Sullivan. This is truly the year of important gay themes at the festival with L’Inconnu du Lac (Stranger by the Lake)¹ by Alain Guiraudie in Un Certain Regard, destined for a top award, and now Abdellatif Kechiche’s La Vie d’Adèle (Blue Is the Warmest Color) headed for the […]