Mandarin & Compagnie - Kallouche Cinema - Frakas Productions - France 3 Cinema
I wasn’t a fan of “Titane,” and much of my aversion could probably be attributed to its undeserved Palme d’or win. To my pleasant surprise, Julia Ducournau’s Cannes Film Festival competition follow-up, “Alpha,” is nothing like it. The film is far more artful and mature, which just goes to show that the New French Extremity filmmaker was merely lauded prematurely. Though elements of body horror seen in “Titane” and “Raw” are still very much present, the new film better qualifies as a ghost story and a coming-of-age tale set in the Twilight Zone.
Continue reading "Ghost of the Past " »
Festival de Cannes
The Phoenician Scheme (2025)
“The Phoenician Scheme” is, for better or worse, an archetypal Wes Anderson movie. The Cannes Film Festival competition entry is, once again, a timeless motion storybook about affluent eccentrics that’s symmetrical, pastel and droll. While Mr. Anderson’s rigorous mise en scène is always to be admired, telling a tale like this in the techbro oligarchy era is a choice – sort of like the cinematic equivalent of let them eat cake.
Continue reading "Beyond the Dreams of Avarice" »
Jean-Louis Fernandez/ARP Sélection
Film critics should be wary of superlatives. I’ve been on both the giving and receiving ends of this advice. Indeed, fashioning reviews after pull quotes in ad slicks is a common rookie mistake. Effusive plaudits should be used sparingly, so once deployed the readers will know you truly mean what you say. Richard Linklater’s “Nouvelle vague” is one such case. But instead of hailing it as the next best somesuch, I’ll say it truly embodies the spirit of this website’s mission at launch in 2008.
See, the OG Critic’s Notebook crew met at the Cinema Studies department at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in the mid-aughts. We were intimately familiar with the French New Wave and the legends associated with the movement – the storied Cahiers du Cinéma gang that determined the best way to practice film criticism was through filmmaking. As far as I know, none of our writers or indeed our classmates have gone on to follow in the footsteps of these giants. Filmmaking has never been easier with the advent of the iPhone, yet capitalism has crushed any revolutionary spirit.
“Nouvelle vague” is specifically about the making of 1960’s “Breathless.” After watching everyone else in his ciné-club cohort successfully pivot to filmmaking, Jean-Luc Godard (Guillaume Marbeck) is anxious to leave his own mark. He declines an offer to do literary adaptation and is dead set on making something true to his philosophies and moral positions no matter how miniscule the budget.
Continue reading "Catching the Wave" »
Schramm Film
Christian Petzold continues the exploration of his favorite theme – doubles – with “Mirrors No. 3.” Named after a Maurice Ravel composition, the film is apparently a modern Brothers Grimm fairytale per the German auteur during a post-screening Q&A at the film’s Cannes Directors’ Fortnight world premiere. He’s surprisingly frazzled in person, polar opposite of the clinical precision his work projects. This is a story about doppelgängers, but with a twist.
Continue reading "Second Family" »
A24
I often catch myself saying “during the pandemic” in reference to the Covid-19 lockdown, knowing full well that the virus is far from eradicated. Though people hardly mask up anymore, there are still deaths from it in 2025. The lockdown apparently remains very much on the minds of some of the world’s top filmmakers, as we find out from a few of the Cannes Film Festival selections that seem to have been inspired by it either directly or indirectly. Ari Aster’s “Eddington,” which takes place in late May of 2020 in the eponymous town in New Mexico, is a case in point.
Continue reading "Long Covid" »
Courtesy photo
Perhaps best known as Sean Baker’s codirector and cowriter on 2004’s “Take Out” and producer on his five other projects, Tsou Shih-ching marks her first solo directorial outing two decades later with “Left-Handed Girl,” premiering during Critics’ Week at Cannes. Her new film shares a vibe with Mr. Baker’s oeuvre – which is not terribly surprising given that he serves as its cowriter, coproducer and editor. But Mr. Baker’s handprints seem more visible on the stylistic choices. The plot itself is a culturally specific critique on the latent sexism in families of a certain demographic in Taiwan.
Continue reading "Unfavorite Daughters" »
Paramount Pictures
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (2025)
This is going to date me, but Tom Cruise’s first stab at “Mission: Impossible” in 1996 was also my first review assignment for my college campus newspaper. Even though my editor went at it with a heavy hand, the result was still fairly amateurish. Thankfully, my most embarrassing writings were at the infancy of the internet and left no digital trace. In 2011, I critiqued the fourth entry in the series, “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol,” on this very site when it was still somewhat thriving. And here I am again, checking out the eighth installment at its Cannes Film Festival premiere and sashaying down the same red carpet as the cast and crew. But enough about me.
I am bringing all this up because Late Cruise has been mostly trafficking in nostalgia. Hollywood’s last movie star reminds us all of the good ol’ days when marquee names could make or break the box office, the days before Netflix and venture capitalists spoiled everything. “Top Gun: Maverick” was the template. Sure, it had “it” boys like Glen Powell, but the most memorable moment for boomers and Gen-X had to be Mr. Cruise’s reunion with an ailing Val Kilmer. “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” sort of does the same thing. It gathers the likes of Henry Czerny and Rolf Saxon from way, way back. There are even montages of earlier films peppered throughout.
Continue reading "Last Action Hero" »
Topshot Films – Les Films du Worso – Pathé Films – France 3 Cinéma
Opening the 78th Cannes Film Festival, Amélie Bonnin’s out-of-competition debut feature “Leave One Day,” based on her 2021 César-winning short, is a whimsical musical about a chef at the crossroads of her career and personal life.
Continue reading "Pack Your Knives and Go" »
Courtesy photo
“Broke” is worth seeing just to watch Wyatt Russell slump against a wall, or stand next to someone, or hold out his hands to show he’s not a threat. He works with his hands, risks his life for a living and finds his joy in tiny moments of physical perfection. You see a lot of these men in the military or doing the kind of risky heavy work found on a farm. “Broke” reflects this way of moving through a focus on how its people express their feelings through doing instead of talking. It’s a fine story very well shown, not told.
Continue reading "Last Rodeo" »
IFC Films
The Luckiest Man in America (2025)
“The Luckiest Man in America,” about a long-forgotten American gameshow scandal from the mid-’80s, has landed in an exhausting moment of American history. Audiences seeking escapism from the problems of the now might enjoy a few hours’ refuge in the much lighter problems of the past. Other than that, the main appeal of “The Luckiest Man in America” is wondering why it has been made at all. Is it about how the systems are rigged against the little guy? Is it about how, when the systems are rigged, cheating becomes an honorable thing?
Continue reading "Beating the Game" »