Friday in Cannes was all about The Past, the new film by Oscar winner Asghar Farhadi (A Separation, 2011).
After a four-year separation, Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa, The Last Step, 2012) returns to Paris from Iran to complete divorce proceedings at the request of his French wife Marie (Bérénice Bejo, The Artist, 2011). During his brief stay, Ahmad reconnects with Marie’s two daughters, from a previous relationship, with whom he bonded during the marriage. He learns that Marie has a contentious relationship with her teen daughter Lucie (Pauline Burlet, La vie en rose, 2007). Ahmad also learns Marie is in a serious relationship with Samir (Tahar Rahim, A Prophet, 2009). Ahmad’s visit unearths scars and secrets that leave each character stuck between holding onto the past and looking toward the future.
This year, Oscar-winning filmmaker Sofia Coppola (Lost in Translation, 2003) returns to Cannes with her out-of-competition entry The Bling Ring. In the fame-obsessed world of Los Angeles, a group of teenagers goes on a crime spree in the Hollywood Hills. The teens track their celebrity targets online and steal more than $3 million in cash and luxury items from their homes. The film is based on actual events, and real-life victims included Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Orlando Bloom, and Rachel Bilson.
The film stars newcomer Katie Chan as Rebecca, the ringleader of the group who ropes in the new boy in school Marc (Israel Broussard, Flipped, 2010) and rich wild child Chloe (Taissa Farmiga, TV’s American Horror Story). The cast is rounded out by Emma Watson, who plays Nicki, a girl who seeks “status by association” in her tailor-made spirituality taught by her mother, played by Leslie Mann (This Is 40, 2012). The cast members were in Cannes for the red carpet opening, turning heads with their very own (or borrowed) bling.
Baz Luhrmann applies his inventive style to the F. Scott Fitzgerald adaptation The Great Gatsby, with Leonardo DiCaprio starring as the title character. The film opened the 66th annual Cannes Film Festival Wednesday. It was preceded by an opening ceremony hosted by actress Audrey Tautou (Amélie, 2001) and presided over by jury president Steven Spielberg. DiCaprio spoke the official words to open the festival, and then the film began.
Tobey Maguire plays Nick Carraway, a wannabe writer working as a stock broker who lives next to the mythic Gatsby in Long Island. The film begins years in the future where Carraway is being treated in an asylum for alcoholism and drug abuse. His doctor entreats him to write about his past to tease out the depression that haunts him. Carraway narrates (and writes) the story of the brief friendship that spiraled into a web of deceit, sex, and death. Through the writing process, Carraway comes to terms with his part in the story and serves as its moral compass.
Tickets: $8 – 16 (SOLD OUT, possible Rush Line availability)
Series: Spotlight
Eighteen years ago, director Neil Jordan enhanced the horror and fantasy genres with his hit film Interview with the Vampire. After setting the bar high, contemporary audiences were left with the fan-favorite yet aesthetically lacking Twilight series. Well, Jordan has now returned to the genre with Byzantium, a beautifully crafted, emotionally involving, and surprisingly feminist film starring Saoirse Ronan (Hanna, 2008) and Gemma Arterton (Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, 2013).
Teenager Eleanor (Ronan) is an introverted, talented writer and pianist who is constantly sheltered by her extra-protective “sister” Clara (Arterton), an extrovert who uses her wild sexuality to provide for the family. Despite their opposing natures they share one thing: a dark secret that they have both been hiding from the world for 200 years. This secret puts them constantly on the move from one English town to another until it lands them in a small, mysterious seaside town where Clara uses her carnal skills to secure a roof over their heads—the run-down but classically built Byzantium Hotel. But this town holds sway over Eleanor as she begins to realize it is the place of their birth, and flashes of history provide Eleanor with a desperate need to share her real story even though it may destroy her and Clara’s lives. As Eleanor develops a strange kinship with a local boy (Caleb Landry Jones, Antiviral, 2012), she confides in him. Clara does her best to clean up her sister’s public revelations, but a secret order of vampires chasing the pair no longer allows any secrets to be contained.
Ronan continues to be a powerhouse actor, imbuing Eleanor with empathy and a strongly focused teenage rebelliousness. Arterton is at her all-time best in Byzantium, perfectly playing the duality of cold-blooded prostitute and caring “sister.” Jordan has once-again proven that he’s an auteur, creating a distinctive look and feel for the film, including tight spaces surrounding Ronan and a darkness engulfing Arterton that provides the viewer with forebodingness. But no worries, there are still enough displays of blood to make this a true vampire film. Coupled with a fantastically original perspective on vampire origins and “feeding” from screenwriter Moira Buffini (Jane Eyre, 2011), Byzantium should pleasure horror and casual fans alike.
Limité Rating: 4/5
Director: Neil Jordan
Genre: Narrative, Drama, Fantasy
Country: USA
Runtime: 118 min.
The 2013 Tribeca Film Festival runs from April 17 – 28 in New York City.
Tickets: $16 (SOLD OUT, possible Rush Line availability)
Series: Tribeca Talks
Matthew Cooke’s documentary How to Make Money Selling Drugs is so bold and original that at first glance one may mistake it for fiction, but it is very real. Its inventiveness lays mostly in the title, not meant simply to capture audience’s attention but as a straight-up visual handbook for how one can get into the drug game. Featuring interviews with retired drug dealers, police officers, and attorneys, the film exposes the path to becoming a drug lord, drug trafficker, and the like in a slick and entertaining fashion. Cooke does this deliberately in order to “speak to a youth audience, to a cynical audience, and to the politically apathetic.” Selling Drugs also takes its story seriously by highlighting the dangers of being part of the drug trade, as well as by exposing the hypocrisy of the “war on drugs,” showing that it is more a war on people in particular minorities and the poor. The film also lifts the veil on how much money the government makes off the “war,” using the prison system and forfeitures and declaring how 2008 profits for the Department of Justice, alone, was $1 billion.
Yet, the interviews with a colorful array of drug dealers are the most memorable parts of the film. In particular is interview subject Bobby Carlton, who found a love of math and numbers in school by having to constantly calculate grams and ounces; Carlton became a successful drug dealer at the age of 14, and by 18 was making $50,000 daily dealing cocaine internationally. There are also appearances by hip-hop moguls and freedom rights advocates like 50 Cent, Russell Simmons, Susan Sarandon, and Woody Harrelson. Drug trade luminaries like “Freeway” Rick Ross, who admittedly invented crack cocaine and made $1 million a day by the time he was 30, are also featured. Selling Drugs is co-produced by actor Adrian Grenier, best known for playing Vincent Chase on the hit HBO show Entourage, who will be at the Tribeca Talks screening on April 25, along with Cooke and others from the film.
Limité Rating: 4/5
Director: Matthew Cooke
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
Runtime: 100 min.
The 2013 Tribeca Film Festival runs from April 17 – 28 in New York City.
Tickets: $16 (SOLD OUT, possible Rush Line availability)
Series: Spotlight
“Expand or Die.” This is the mantra of farmers all across the United States to grow bigger and better farms and agriculture-related businesses (like selling genetically modified seed), or suffer the defeat of a failed business that will leave their families poor. This mantra is also the theme of At Any Price, the latest effort from award-winning filmmaker Ramin Bahrani (Goodbye Solo, 2008). Dennis Quaid stars as Henry Whipple, a small-town Iowa farmer relentlessly working to expand his family’s empire. Eagerly awaiting his oldest son Grant’s return from college so that he may take over the family business, Henry and his dutiful wife Irene (Kim Dickens, HBO’s Treme) are disappointed when Grant instead decides to climb a mountain in Argentina. Their other son Dean wants no part of the family business, disgusted with his father’s obsessions. Instead, Dean spends his time away from the farm competing to become a professional racecar driver, his very own obsession that’s completely unknown to his father.
Dean is played with determination and youthful rage by Zac Efron, doing his best to shed the nice-guy, Disney-movie image he cemented with the High School Musical films. In At Any Price, he does an effective job at becoming a more well-rounded actor. Under Bahrani’s direction, Efron and Quaid give each other enough room as actors for both their resentment—and, at times, genuine love for each other—to produce memorable scenes. Both Henry and Dean spend the length of the film not realizing that their competitive spirits make them more alike than not—that contrast shown best whenever Henry’s curmudgeon father Cliff (Red West, reunited with Bahrani from Goodbye Solo) pushes his son to ensure the future success of the generations-old farm and family. So, is Henry working hard for his own family, for his ego, or to prove himself to his father? And will Dean also do whatever it takes to succeed? These questions are not easily answered, but as in many of Bahrani’s films, life is mired in the middle-ground of morals. Also, look out for a rising star performance from Maika Monroe, who plays Dean’s girlfriend Cadence and holds her own in many scenes with Quaid, in one of his best performances in years.
Limité Rating: 4/5
Director: Ramin Bahrani
Genre: Narrative, Drama
Country: USA
Runtime: 105 min.
The 2013 Tribeca Film Festival runs from April 17 – 28 in New York City.
Sunday, April 21, 3:30pm (Clearview Chelsea Cinemas)
Thursday, April 25, 3:30pm (Clearview Chelsea Cinemas)
Saturday, April 27, 4pm (AMC Loews Village 7)
Tickets: $8 – 16
Series: World Documentary Competition
There is no doubt that Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke is an auteur, thanks to his body of challenging and uncompromising cinema that includes Caché (2005) and Funny Games (1997, Austria; 2007, US), as well as multiple wins and nominations at the Cannes Film Festival. Though Haneke is not as well known in the United States, he recently received his most stateside attention with multiple 2013 Academy Award nominations (including a win for Best Foreign Language Film) for his touching film Amour (2012), allowing the perfect opportunity for filmmaker Yves Montmayeur to release his documentary about Haneke. Michael H. Profession: Director traces the spry 71-year-old Haneke’s work backwards, beginning with Amour and ending with his first feature film, Der siebente Kontinent (The Seventh Continent, 1989). The documentary itself is an intimate portrait that includes interviews with various stars of Haneke’s films, including Emmanuelle Riva, Isabelle Huppert, and Juliette Binoche; behind-the-scenes footage from Haneke’s works; and interviews with the subject himself. The latter is the most fascinating aspect of the film, as it peers into his hitherto unseen personal views and highly quotable insight, which have a surprising moralist stance in contrast to the violence most often portrayed in his films.
There is a salient trust that Haneke shares with Montmayeur throughout the 10-year examination, even when they disagree on questions and answers provided, one that shows that the documentary director is a true peer and friend. Their camaraderie developed over the past 20 years while Montmayeur was also directing several making-of docs for Haneke. Montmayeur has been creating film documentaries since 1999 with a penchant for contemporary Asian cinema, covering directors like Takashi Miike, Johnnie To, and Hayao Miyazaki. However, he also creates portraits of eccentric filmmakers and unusual personalities, such as Italian actress and director Asia Argento, and has now added the great Michael Haneke to that esteemed list.
Limité Rating: 5/5
Director: Yves Montmayeur
Genre: Documentary
Country: France/Germany
Runtime: 92 min.
The 2013 Tribeca Film Festival runs from April 17 – 28 in New York City.
If you ever played the popular video game Doom, you know it was first-person perspective, mind-numbing fun. Well, imagine if that video game came to life, but instead of big, ugly monsters on Mars you are in Europe, it is 1945, and you are fighting one of the worst combinations imaginable: zombie Nazi robots—zombots, if you will. Richard Raaphorst’s Frankenstein’s Army represents a different take on the found footage horror movie: shot 99% in first-person perspective with action-packed scenes and unforgettable monsters. Raaphorst’s creatures include ones with sickle blade arms, crab tentacles, diving helmet heads, and my favorite of all—a propeller face.
The entire story takes place when a cameraman is sent along with a small Russian platoon to record its exploits for a propaganda film. The various soldiers, including archetypal movie ones like the grizzled sergeant and the rookie, intercept a radio message from fellow Russian soldiers crying out for backup. Upon investigation the troop finds atrocities outside of a church. As it searches further, the group of soldiers discover a weird factory with odd monsters sporting symbols of the Third Reich. Mayhem reaps upon the soldiers when creatures that were stitched together from the body parts of their fallen comrades and machines emerge. The secret of their true mission soon unfolds as the troop finds itself face-to-face with the grandson of the original re-animator, Dr. Viktor Frankenstein (Karel Roden, RocknRolla, 2008), who Raaphorst describes as “a madman, but a smart madman.” Aside from the creatures, which are as original as they are campy, and the extra-gross experiments of Dr. Frankenstein, the cinema verité style of Frankenstein’s Army—used for the first time in a period piece—is the star of the film. Some may find the movie gross, and in many respects it is, but if viewers go into it not taking it too seriously, they are due to have a good time.
Limité Rating: 3/5
Director: Richard Raaphorst
Genre: Narrative, Horror
Country: USA
Runtime: 84 min.
The 2013 Tribeca Film Festival runs from April 17 – 28 in New York City.
Wednesday, April 24, 6:45pm (Clearview Chelsea Cinemas)
Tickets: $16 (SOLD OUT, possible Rush Line availability)
Series: Spotlight
When audiences were first introduced to 20-somethings Jesse and Celine (Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy) in director Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise (1995), it’s doubtful they could have known that 18 years later they would be watching a third film with the same characters. No longer the unimaginable would-be lovers that met on a train, the pair is now in a committed, long-term relationship (yet, not married) with twin daughters. Now a bit wrinkled and well into their 40s, Jesse and Celine are on vacation in Greece, trying to figure out how to take care of themselves and be their best selves to each other. In numerous ways, Jesse is still a teenager at heart and Celine is still grasping for the attention and affection she feels she deserves. And they both remain as stubborn as they were 18 years ago. However, now they have more responsibilities to distract them from remembering who they really are until they are alone together.
Before Midnight makes great use of timing, with Linklater once again employing his signature use of extremely long takes with vibrant dialogue written by the director and Delpy herself—scenes that feel half-scripted and partially ad-libbed. The colorful characters at Jesse’s and Celine’s Greek villa provide great contrast to the protagonists, including a couple in its early 20s that is full of vigor and tenderness and the older host and his best friend’s widow who provide advice that’s unforced but conversational. Though the film tries to get a bit too cute in the end, once again we are aware that Jesse’s and Celine’s relationship, like most, is imperfect and full of contradictions—a dichotomy that makes audiences feel it could be they and their own longtime partners on the screen.
Limité Rating: 4/5
Director: Richard Linklater
Genre: Narrative, Drama
Country: USA
Runtime: 108 min.
The 2013 Tribeca Film Festival runs from April 17 – 28 in New York City.
It’s not often that I watch a movie and feel compelled to write about it (unless I have to)—that is, write beyond the 140 characters allowed by Twitter. But I recently watched Derek Cianfrance’s The Place Beyond the Pinesand instantly knew that I had to get the word out. Without knowing much about the film, I knew I wanted to see it (despite a trailer that did not interest me) for two reasons: 1. It’s Derek Cianfrance, and I LOVE Blue Valentine (which topped my annual Top 20 list in 2011), and 2. It stars Ryan Gosling, who, in my opinion, is one of the most talented actors alive today. Now, I watch a lot of movies. A LOT. And it’s hard to come by a truly great film nowadays that can compete with the purity and heart of those from the Golden Age of cinema. So rest assured that I am not half-heartedly slinging around superlatives when I say that The Place Beyond the Pines is one of my all-time favorite movies.
