You may know Kōji Yakusho as the oyster-slurping mystery man from the noodle-Western extraordinaire Tampopo (1985). Perhaps you remember him as the depressed suburbanite who ballroom dances his blues away in the international feel-good hit Shall We Dance? (1996). He’s the reformed felon in the Cannes-winning character study The Eel …
Read More »Greta Gerwig to Become First U.S. Woman Director to Lead Cannes Film Festival Jury
Greta Gerwig will make history at the next Cannes Film Festival. On Thursday, the festival announced that the Barbie director will lead the jury next year, making her the first American woman to become the jury president. “As a cinephile, Cannes has always been the pinnacle of what the universal …
Read More »Wes Anderson's 'Asteroid City' Has Sharply Divided Cannes
Imagine you’re a filmmaker, and you’ve assembled a dream cast of A-list stars, crack character actors, and your usual stock company of famous faces. Your production-design team has gifted you with a set that’s evocative of a 1950s Southwestern desert landscape, complete with Monument Valley vistas and Route 66 iconography. …
Read More »'The Idol' Is More Toxic and Way Worse Than You've Heard
Memo to showrunners: When in doubt about your lead character, just cut to her masturbating while choking herself. It’s a little past the halfway mark of the first episode of The Idol — the HBO series about the pressure chamber of pop stardom from the minds of Abel “The Weeknd” …
Read More »'Killers of the Flower Moon' Is Martin Scorsese's Great American Tragedy
The Osage called it the “Reign of Terror.” Once upon a time, long after they’d been forcibly displaced and sold land in the Oklahoma territories deemed barren and unfruitful, the Indigenous tribe had discovered oil under the ground. And more oil. And still more oil after that. They became rich. …
Read More »'Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny' Does Harrison Ford's Indy Dirty
Indiana Jones has fought a lot of screen villains: Nazis, assassins, evil high priests, corrupt rich douchebags, Cate Blanchett, Cate Blanchett’s hair. Yet Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny — the fifth movie to feature Harrison Ford’s globetrotting, snake-hating, whip-cracking, fedora-rocking archeology professor — pits our man Indy against …
Read More »So About That Gay Cowboy Movie Starring Pedro Pascal and Ethan Hawke…
Pedro Pascal is going to see a man about a horse. Actually, you can scratch the “about a horse” part. Riding the range in the Wild, Wild West, his cowboy rides into town, hitches his stallion, and walks right into the sheriff’s office. The lawman — he’s named Jake, and …
Read More »Cannes Gave Johnny Depp a Comeback Shot. Then Came the Press Conference
The guy with the slick, black ponytail worked the crowd, signing autographs and pressing the flesh, and posing for selfies, like it was still 2011 and nothing had changed at all. In France, maybe nothing had really changed. Here, on this red carpet, Johnny Depp remained the biggest movie star …
Read More »Kevin Spacey, James Franco, and More Are Trying to Make Comebacks at Cannes
From a cramped hotel suite in a luxury Cannes hotel, a pair of film executives are trying to pull off an unlikely feat: Sell distribution rights to Kevin Spacey’s comeback film. On May 17, Vantage Media International, or VMI, a Hollywood-based company that sells movies primarily to foreign markets, screened …
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