Cannes

Of all the films on this list The Sapphires sticks out like a sore thumb. An unashamed and genuine crowd-pleaser, the film has already been picked up for UK distribution by Harvey Weinstein who has proclaimed it ‘this year’s The Artist’. Talk is that it’s planned for a January release, much like The Artist, and I wouldn’t bet against it making a similar splash at the box office.

The story is based on true events surrounding an aboriginal girl group who, facing prejudice in their home country, find themselves touring Vietnam during the war entertaining the American troops. The story may rely heavily on cliché but the performances are uniformly winning and the laughs come regularly. The main source of the humour is Irish comedian Chris O’Dowd, who puts in a sensational performance as the band’s put upon manager.

Read More

In 1999, Danish director Thomas Vinterberg announced himself as a major talent with the devastating family drama Festen. Adhering to the strict code of Dogme 95, the film eschewed the use of such unnecessary tools as lighting and special effects in favour or story and raw, emotional storytelling. The film was a tour-de-force and many predicted a long and much vaunted career lay ahead for Vinterberg, much like his compatriot Lars Von Trier. It’s taken him thirteen years to produce a film of comparable quality but The Hunt is comfortably Vinterberg’s best film since Festen.

Mads Mikkelsen plays Lucas, a kind, good natured primary school teacher who is extremely popular amongst his students and contemporaries. This all changes when an accusation is made against by one of his young students. We, the audience, know the accusation to be false but it doesn’t take long before Mikkelsen’s life is slowly unravelling and he’s being assaulted in the local supermarket.

Read More

Ben Wheatley’s Kill List was one of the most striking British films of 2011. A dark, lean hitman film which takes a wild turn two thirds of the way in, it deserved all the plaudits that came its way and heralded the arrival of a notable new talent in Wheatley. Less than a year after that film’s release the follow up is upon us and features a not dissimilar brand of pitch black comedy and violence. Although with leading comedy production house Big Talk behind this one, it’s no surprise that the comic elements are much stronger in Sightseers.

Alice Owen and Steve Oram play Tina and Chris, a relatively new couple, who decide to take their first holiday together. What starts out as a peaceful and promising sojourn around some of the delights of the UK countryside, including Keswick Pencil Museum and Ribblehead Viaduct, quickly turns into a violent killing spree as Chris’ homicidal tendencies are teased out by the behaviour of his fellow tourists.

Read More

On the final Sunday of the festival, Michael Haneke’s film was the winner of the coveted main prize – The Palme d’Or and it’s not difficult to see why it was the choice of the jury. It is also Haneke’s second golden palm in three years (after 2009’s The White Ribbon), a spectacular achievement for one of Europe’s most singular film-makers.

So what of the film itself? It’s predominantly a two hander between an elderly married couple, who have to confront the wife’s deteriorating health and facing her inevitable death. It’s no spoiler to say she dies, it’s made clear in the very opening scene. The next two hours detail how the situation affects them both in very different ways.

Read More

If I were awarding my own top prize for best film at Cannes 2012, it would go to Jacques Audiard’s Rust And Bone. A romance between a killer whale trainer and a bare knuckle boxer may not sound like a recipe for cinematic brilliance but I found Rust And Bone’s rough edges and raw emotion a good deal more affecting than clinical precision of the Palme d’Or winning Amour.

Marion Cotillard plays Stéphanie, a trainer of Orcas at Marineworld on the Cote d’Azur. After a tragic accident at work(which I won’t reveal here), Stéphanie strikes up a friendship with the brutish but charming boxer, Alain (Matthias Schoenaerts). His charismatic insouciance is a good fit for Stephanie’s predicament and as they spend more and more time together, their relationship develops into something more serious.

Read More

It’s quite possible to argue that a person’s response to the film adaptation of On The Road will depend entirely on their reaction to the revered book upon which it’s based. Not being a fan of Kerouac’s autobiographical opus, the film had to do a lot to win me over and whilst it doesn’t eradicate many of the issues I had with the book, I was pleasantly surprised with much of the adaptation.

It helps that the casting is very strong, with Garrett Hedlund as Dean Moriarty replicating the highs of Friday Night Lights as opposed to the lows of Tron: Legacy. Sam Riley is perfectly fine as Sal Paradise and Kristen Stewart manages the right balance between naivety and vulnerability. The strong supporting cast is rounded out by Kirsten Dunst, Amy Adams and a scene-stealing Viggo Mortensen.

Read More

Brad Pitt is becoming something of a Cannes veteran with Inglourious Basterds in competition in 2009 and The Tree Of Life picking up the Palme d’Or last year. He was back again this year, once again teaming up with Kiwi director Andrew Dominik (The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford). Killing Them Softly is a dark, gritty crime drama with a strong political undercurrent.

Pitt plays Jackie Cogan, a mob enforcer, who is called in when a poker game is held up and cleaned out by a couple of deadbeat criminals. Pitt’s job is to find the perpertrators and bring them to justice mob style. It’s brutal, violent and being very dialogue heavy, requires concentration from the viewer. As seemed to be often the case at this Cannes, the performances were first rate from the whole cast with Scoot McNairy and Ben Mendelsohn particular stand-outs as the weaselly robbers.

Read More

The Cannes film festival is over for another year and as many attendees reflect on what was yet again a stellar year for the festival, it’s easy to identify a number of films which will be making different sized waves at the UK box office and awards ceremonies over the coming months.

It may seem obvious but for any film fan Cannes is a wonderful place to watch films. The cinemas are comfortable, with huge screens the width of the room. The audience are respectful, almost to the point of reverence and the films are more often than not of an extremely high quality, and even when they’re not you can witness a spectacular failure. Here’s a selection of some of the highlights which we can expect to see in UK cinemas over the next year.

Read More

With both The Proposition and The Road, John Hillcoat has made quite a name for himself making brutal, bleak and masculine dramas. Based on the novel ‘The Wettest County In The World’, Lawless once again very much fits this description and features a stellar cast, including Tom Hardy, Guy Pearce, Gary Oldman, Jessica Chastain and Shia LaBeouf.

The film tells the tale of the notorious bootlegging Bondurant family, who during prohibition era America make their living producing Moonshine for the residents of Franklin County, Virginia. Their comfortable existence is threatened when a corrupt county attorney mayor decides he wants a slice of the pie. Naturally this doesn’t go down too well and before long a vicious, sadistic FBI agent Charlie Rakes (Pearce) is sent in to get the brothers to play along. Tensions rise further when the ambitious younger Bondurant (LaBeouf) ramps up the moonshine production and run-ins with Rakes get more fractious and violent.

Read More