Cannes: Rocketman, Les Miserables, Bacarau, and Red Carpet Men.

Richard, Taron, and Elton at the premiere.

Women get all 98% of the attention on the red carpet but we'll get to the gowns a bit later. For whatever reason, order of programming or specific films, or what not, in the first weekend of the festival the male-centric stuff is what's popping from the French film Les Miserables (not an adaptation of the Victor Hugo novel or Broadway musical) to the polarizing Brazilian film Bacurau (from the director of Aquarius - yay!) to the Elton John bio Rocketman.

Rocketman had the glitziest premiere - give or take Jim Jarmusch's opening night screening for Dead Don't Die, so today we're gazing at the men in their finery from the first few days of the festival and at the reviews for a few of the early films screened, too. It's all after the jump...

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Same, Supes, same. 

Xavier Dolan

by Samantha Craggs

It's been 10 years since Xavier Dolan, age 20, burst out of the gate at the Cannes Film Festival with his first ever movie, I Killed My Mother. It was a raw, imperfect effort. The deeply autobiographical narrative rambled at times. A plethora of shots framed the subject in the middle lower third of the screen, leaving space for blank white walls and reams of extraneous information. But it was a first-hand look at being a queer teenager fighting with his parents in the new millennium. For taste-makers at Cannes, it was more than enough. His movie showed in the Director's Fortnight, and Dolan, a former Québecois child actor who'd never even directed a short film, became the arthouse's youngest rock star. 

We've watched him learn the craft in two-hour intervals ever since. He works at a frantic clip, so he's made eight movies in 10 years. The now 30 year old filmmaker will premiere that eighth feature Matthias et Maxime at Cannes on May 22nd. Love or hate his offerings so far, one thing is guaranteed – this one will look nothing like I Killed My Mother. Let's do a ranking of his movies so far, after the jump... 

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25th Anniversary: Danny Boyle's "Shallow Grave"

by Anna

Twenty-five years, a new British filmmaker made a dark splash at Cannes. Danny Boyle’s directorial debut Shallow Grave, which would become a significant sleeper success in 1995, opens with flatmates David (Christopher Eccleston), Juliet (Kerry Fox) and Alex (Ewan McGregor) looking for a new boarder (and subsequently trolling the prospective candidates). They settle on Hugo (Keith Allen) but he dies from a drug overdose within hours of moving in. Then the trio  find a suitcase full of money under Hugo’s bed, and that’s where the plot (and the meaning behind the film’s title) really kicks off.

Roughly a decade of award-winning films from the likes of Stephen Frears and David Attenborough, Boyle came and turned British cinema as a whole on its ear...

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Posterized: Keanu Reeves

by Nathaniel R

Whoa. Keanu Reeves turns 55 later this year and he's made roughly that many movies, too. Time sure does fly since he's still implanted in our consciousness as that stoner-like raven-haired looker of convenience store, surfing, and bus adventures. Figuring him out has always been an impossible trip. Keanu means "cool breeze over the mountains" in Hawaiian but, that geographically specific well-known trivia aside, he's always been hard to visually or sonically place anywhere on the map OR within the pantheon of contemporary stars; Born in Lebanon and raised in Canada, though he's of Hawaiian/British/Chinese/Portuguese descent, and with a voice that conjures the early 80s and California. Who/what/where is he even other than on his own planet and his own unique star? 

Though it seems hard to imagine now, when he first came to fame he was a very unlikely candidate for longevity...

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