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.”

June 1996 - “Independence Day” slain the monster, bringing in more than $ 300 million in sales. Its director, Roland Emmerich, has planned a sequel, called "ID2," and pre-production is to begin in the next few weeks. But that’s not really all that exciting anymore. What’s interesting, and rather weird, is the fact that French actress Charlotte Gainsbourg will have a leading role in “ID2.” Yes, Gainsbourg

[jwplayer config=”Festival-Playlist-Player” mediaid=”20844″]

[jwplayer config=”Default-Post-Player” mediaid=”18426″]

Lars Von Trier is quite good at getting himself noticed […]

It was just announced that Charlotte Gainsbourg was attached to […]

One can’t help wondering about the name of the monstrous sphere, Melancholia. We are used to our planets bearing the names of, say, mythological gods—Pluto, Saturn, Neptune, Juno—not those of human moods or conditions. Could it be that Melancholia, blue in color as it happens, is in fact an illusion, a nightmare depiction of what deep depression is like? Could the deep, steady, rumbling sound be that of our shattered subconscious

The news is that I saw Melancholia here in Paris where it came out on Wednesday (since France’s Wednesday is our Friday). I understand that Melancholia will come out in the U.S. at the end of September and hope to land an interview with someone from the film. My review will appear in these columns on the day of the release.

Has Lars von Trier ever made an accomplished film? To […]

This is everything we want a film to be: imaginative, […]