CANNES, France – Talking heads, live performances, the requisite cautionary tale factor, rock biopics often check the boxes, it’s a genre and it functions well but it can be a bit by the book.

“All people, no matter who they are, all wish they’d appreciated life more. It’s what you do in life that’s important, not how much time you have. Or what you wish you’d done.

In this harrowing and timely film from France, Mouna Soualem is Hasma, a Muslim Parisian woman from a broken home trying to make her way in the world. She tries to bury her pain in drugs, nightclubs and disconnected sex, but then her eyes are drawn in by online videos calling on French Muslims to eschew Western values entirely—and to rise up violently. Loosely based on the story of a real person who became entangled with the terror plot that

CANNES, France -- “Triangle of Sadness” is a comedy about fashion, trends, social media influencers, how to set yourself apart but not too much, the enduring power of social hierarchies, the #metoo and virtue-signaling maelstroms.

The pitch for “Triangle of Sadness” goes like this: the film starts in the fashion world, then the action moves to a cruise ship to finally end on a deserted island, with a male and

Lately, it seems there’s been a change in attitude among some directors in the new generation of Persian filmmakers: through their films they’re more willing to show more, more of the dark underbelly of the beast. In films like “Tehran Taboo,” “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night,” “Just 6.5,” themes and motifs, two shades darker than before, are explored: Iranian society has problems, much like any Western society, and the new generation

CANNES, France -- There were problems with booking seats to the screening of James Gray's latest film, "Armageddon Time," this caused frustration. Finally, I managed to snag a ticket to join my group. Gray doesn't come to the Cannes Festival often.

Fascinated by marginal characters left to fend for themselves, like Joaquin Phoenix's Leonard Kraditor of "Two Lovers," James Gray

Chris Sivertson’s “Monstrous” is driven by some interesting, if familiar, themes. Unfortunately, the director is not able to pull them off.

Written by Carol Chrest, Christina Ricci stars as Laura, a single mother who takes her young son Cody (Santino Barnard) to a remote new home, apparently trying escape her past and ex-husband. On the run from something dark, her new house certainly holds

CANNES, France -- Adam (Tawfeek Barhom) is accepted to Al-Azhar University, one of the leading centers of study of Sunni Islam, located in Cairo. He leaves his native fishing village where where he helps his father on the boat.  

The school year begins and shortly thereafter the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar suddenly dies; Adam, finding himself involved in a shadowy negotiation around his replacement

CANNES, France -- Making a movie about a donkey,or to be more specific, from a donkey's point of view is an audacious project. But that's just what Jerzy (pronounced "Ya-shee") Skolimosky did and his film, a slow and oppressive rumination on humans and their relationship to the animal world was screened here on Thursday. A circus troupe. A grey donkey and his handler Kassandra. The animal seems happy, even though

Actor Owen Teague spent the early months of the pandemic not only getting rather too familiar with his four walls but reading a script by Scott McGehee, David Siegel and Mike Spreter about two estranged siblings who return to their Montana home as their father convalesces. If nothing else, the gig would provide Teague a way to see something outside his own home.

Soon enough, he was on his way

CANNES, France — The euphoric “Leto,” shown in Cannes a few years ago (and a film everyone in the press room could agree on), “Petrov’s Flu,” in 2021, a hard-to-follow angsty dream of a movie which you might better enjoy on LSD and if you don’t do LSD then it’s OK because watching it will make you feel like you’re on it and this year in Cannes, “Tchaikovsky’s wife” (“Zhena Chaikovskogo” in the original Russian) a period piece shown from