Ruben Östlund's "The Square" raised the level of this still-young Cannes Festival last night. Definitely my favorite film so far. Will Yorgos Lanthimos’s film "The Killing of a Sacred Deer,” which later in the festival, knock “The Square” off its pole position? Perhaps. But for now let us bask in the euphoric weirdness of "The Square,” Östlund’s comeback film to Cannes after his “Force Majeure from a couple years ago, equally as strange

"Lerd" is a portrait of a man whose sense of self-worth and integrity gets trampled.

Reza (Reza Akhlaghirad) is a goldfish farmer living outside a village in northern Iran with his wife and young son. The land on which they live is very valuable to a local company. That company launches a campaign of intimidation against Reza, with the town council backing them, to try and wrest

Bong Joon Ho’s “Okja” makes me wish I was ten years-old again, and I don’t say this with irony. This movie is good entertaining fun, sure, but it would likely be thoroughly enjoyed by someone who’s very young, in spite of several adult-size questions the film raises, in passing. In preparing to offer him the role of Johnny Wilcox (a white, flamboyant version of Brian Fellow from SNL’s “Safari Planet") Bong Joon Ho

When actress Robin Wright arrived on the set of Kering’s Women in Motion on Thursday, the shadow of Claire Underwood, the wife of the U.S. president in "House of Cards," floated in, too. One has become hardly dissociable from the other, and so it was this role of the powerful woman she invented with David Fincher that drove her for the first time behind a camera. Elegantly dressed in a black suit, she came to the 70th

In “Nelyubov” (“Loveless” in the original Russian) a twelve year-old boy recedes slowly into oblivion as his parents go through a separation, more or less forgetting about his existence. His mother meets a successful company executive and his father’s new girlfriend is already well into her pregnancy, the two preparing to start a new family. After their child disappears, the future divorcés call the police, triggering an inquiry

Young Ben is in want of a father he’s never known, and Rose (young Millicent Simmonds), a deaf child who lives a hundred years earlier than him, is fascinated by a mysterious New York actress (played by Julianne Moore). After Ben discovers something in his mother’s (Michelle Williams) things he takes off for New York City to try and find his father. Rose comes into a hint, found in a newspaper clipping, and takes a boat ride to Manhattan in search of the actress.

Disappointment, “Ismael’s Ghosts” is not the near-perfect film that “My Golden Days,” which screened at Cannes last year, was. Desplechin’s new film, which launched this year's Cannes Film Festival this morning (Cannes is celebrating seventy this year) is sketchy and brutal and impertinent and camp. It has some grand, theatrical dialogue (and it works well), like its predecessor from last year, memorable lines, like, "I will rip your mask off and make a prince out of you.”

Is social media a waste of time, as David Remnick said? Maybe so. But Twitter, Instagram and the rest make keeping up with other people's lives easy and free. Where the Cannes festivalgoer is concerned, a spur-of-the-moment video on Instagram by a filmmaker can potentially add insight into what they're experiencing. At the same time, it's important not to lose touch of the fact that social media is often as vapid as it is useless

In "Joy joy nails" unusual close-ups and adept cinematography combine the claustrophobic feelings of a confined workplace with the eerie lighting from the city's streets, its buses and subways. “Joy Joy Nails,” directed by New Yorker Joey Ally, gives us a behind-the-scenes look at a Queens nail salon from the viewpoint of its employees, most of whom are Korean. Subtitles (in the foreign film tradition) help convey what they’re

One of the best things about Tribeca (this film premiered at the 2017 Tribeca Festival recently) are the more character-driven independent films that get screened there. One example of this is “My Art,” written, directed and starring Laurie Simmons. Simmons of course falls into that underrated category of “Female Director” that thankfully Tribeca recognizes more and more each year. The story of the film revolves around “Ellie"