There’s just something about Cannes. No film festival can rival it for delivering old-school Hollywood glamour. And the 76th edition hasn’t suffered from a lack of star power during its first half, with Leonardo DiCaprio, Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman all shining on the red carpet. But Cannes isn’t just…
Todd Haynes
Jessica Hausner, the director of the supremely audacious and disturbing eating-disorder thriller “Club Zero” (yes, I used the words “eating disorder” and “thriller” in the same sentence — that’s the kind of boundary-smashing movie this is), has the potential to be an important filmmaker. Her last movie, “Little Joe” (2019),…
A scandalous age-gap relationship plays out at the center of “May December,” a romantic drama directed by Todd Haynes and starring Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman. Moore plays the “December” to Charles Melton’s much-younger “May,” whose character was just 13 when the two fell in love. Moore is quick to…
In the experimental montage that opens “Persona,” a bare-chested teenage boy caresses a screen upon which the faces of two women slowly morph back and forth. It’s easy to imagine Todd Haynes being tempted to start his deep-as-you-want-to-go rabbit-hole drama “May December” the same way, seeing as how this endlessly…
Cate Blanchett kicked off her stilettos on Friday night as she took the stage a Cannes Film Festival party hosted by Variety and the Golden Globes. Because this is Cannes, where women are mandated to wear heels on the red carpet, shoes have become a political symbol on the French…
“Black Flies,” the Sean Penn and Tye Sheridan film about emergency medical first responders, smacked the Cannes Film Festival in the face with a brutal world premiere on Thursday. Splattered brains, dead dogs, an addict giving birth with a needle dangling from her arm — these and a litany of…
Few films at Cannes this year have indie pedigree and star power behind them like “May December,” Todd Haynes’ examination of a cross-generational couple who caused a tabloid scandal and the actress studying their family to portray the woman in a forthcoming movie about their lives. Julianne Moore and Natalie…
“I hate dolls,” writer-director Lagueria Davis states early in her debut documentary “Black Barbie.” By turns a celebration and an interrogation (sometime both simultaneously), the film delves into the history of the titular Black doll Mattel released in 1980. That was 31 years after the first Barbie began her rise…
Venice Film Festival artistic director Alberto Barbera was celebrated last night in New York with the Gotham Awards Impact Salute in recognition for the unwavering support provided by the Lido to indie U.S. cinema. One of the longest-serving artistic directors of Venice, Barbera has helped turn the festival into a…
Up-and-coming Moroccan filmmaker Saïd Hamich Benlarbi is developing a brace of projects as a producer and director, notably “La mer au loin” which won one of the two top prizes at the Marrakech Film Festival’s Atlas Workshops. Produced by Hamich Benlarbi’s Paris-based banner Barney Production and Manuel Chiche’s company The…