It’s that time of year again! The Cannes Film Festival is in full swing, and a few of your favorite Crassholes are here to give you the scoop on what’s hot and what’s not. Spirit Fingers, Capt_Badass and I will be reporting live from the red carpet outside the Palais des Festivals. Just kidding! It’s a bunch of fuchsia bathmats I lined up next to my television here in Queens. So! On to the big news that everyone’s talking about.
Chester the Molester opened the festival with his new pic, Midnight in Paris. The film stars Owen Wilson as Gil, a hack screenwriter who falls under the spell of the City of Light as he travels through time. Rachel McAdams costars as his fiancee, Inez. Press has been generally positive: THR says “Woody’s in good form,” and Movieline’s Stephanie Zacharek agrees, calling the film a “[return] to form.” EW’s Dave Karger goes so far as to speculate that Midnight in Paris may be Woody’s ticket back to the Oscars. You can read EW critic Lisa Schwarzbaum’s reaction to the film here.
Gus Van Sant’s Restless opened the Un Certain Regard program today. The film stars Mia Wasikowska and Henry Hopper (yes, son of Dennis). A downer romance, Restless didn’t fare so well with critics. Todd McCarthy is skeptical about the film’s appeal. Indie Wire’s Eric Kohn called the film “little more than a whimsical exercise.” Still, Kohn praises the two young leads’ performances and the chemistry they share on-screen. Movieline’s Stephanie Zacharek concurs.
Tilda Swinton seems to be garnering universal praise for her performance in Lynne Ramsay’s new film (her first in almost a decade), We Need to Talk about Kevin. Kevin jumps back and forth in time as it explores the relationship between a mother (Swinton) and her son, who takes his own life after perpetrating mass murder at his school. The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw says Swinton “brings her A-game” to this “skin-peelingly intimate character study.” Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir calls Swinton’s performance “haunting, magnetic and tremendously vulnerable.” Check out Variety’s review here.
That’s all for now, kids! Stay tuned for more Cannes dish. The biggest films are still ahead of us, including: Tree of Life; Lars von Trier’s latest misogynistic opus, Melancholia; Pedro Almodovar’s The Skin I Live In; and of course Sean Penn, as Robert Smith’s doppelgänger, in This Must Be the Place.
