Review: "Watcher"

by Matt St Clair

With her feature debut Watcher, director Chloe Okuno offers up a simple but discomfitting concept. What if you felt a stranger was watching your every move? The concept alone feels paralyzing thanks to its proximity to every day fears. If you’re so much as going on a simple park stroll, the sense that the person walking behind you is following your footsteps, whether or not they actually are, is terrifying.

For protagonist Julia (Maika Monroe), those kinds of anxieties are only amplified by her physical and mental solitude...

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Cannes Diary #8: Reshaping the world through voices or silence

by Elisa Giudici

TORI & LOKITA

Speak up for yourself and change the world. The problem is that sometimes that the most vulnerable people have no voice, enduring violence and betrayal in silence. Sometimes a forgotten language is found again. At other times silence is a radical choice made. Today, an immigrant story from the Dardennes, and a vivid true story from Agnieszka Smoczyńska, the director of The Lure...

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Cannes Diary #7: Park and Cronenberg are back with incredible movies

by Elisa Giudici

The masters are back with masterful movies! Seeing Park Chan-wook’s Decision to Leave followed by David Cronenberg’s Crimes of future with only a 20 minutes break between them seemed almost a waste. These two are among the most (rightfully) hyped movies of the entire year and of this Cannes edition. I really wanted some time after the first especially to think fully on what I had just seen, savoring the first impression instead of deep diving into an equally immersive but radically different film experience. Especially considering that one of the two is a perfect movie, a rare five out of five stars, 10 out of 10, or whatever other token of appreciation you can imagine.

Those two films and a new French movie after the jump...

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Cannes Diary #6: Something weird this way comes

by Elisa Giudici

This (unconscious?) cosplay of Jesse Buckley doing Paul Verhoeven’s The 4th Man during the Q&A session for Men made my day!  After the jump some surreal comedy, a horror oddity, a terrifying thriller that might contend for awards, and a directorial debut... 

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Cannes Diary #4: Narcissism at its finest and worst

by Elisa Giudici

Today is the day in which we explore collateral selections, not that willingly. As mentioned in Cannes Diary #1, this year the Festival organization changed the ticketing system. This ended the long lines (a win) but the downside is that the more hyped movies are harder to get into. Nevertheless, I'm happy to report my experimentation went very well! Truth be told, the Un Certain Regard section can be barely considered a “collateral” section, since it famously offers high-quality selections from soon-to-be major auteurs. The major letdown of the day, was ironically, the only title from the Main Competition I was able to get a ticket to on day four...

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