NYFF: Aquarius team wows again with "Bacurau"

by Jason Adams

You think you know somebody. You think you've got it all figured out. You think you sit down to a movie at the New York Film Festival you're gonna see something respectable -- something serious and challenging. But hyper-violent revenge westerns? Those are for Toronto. 

Well Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles' film Bacurau already played Toronto, and now it is playing NYFF, and it somehow splits the difference -- it's somehow an ass-blistering revenge fable with exploding heads, while also being a deadly serious story of an indigenous community terrorized by big business interests. It is, quite simply, the sort of movie we'll look back on from the future -- assuming there is a future -- and say, "Yup, that got it just right..."

Click to read more ...

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...

Click to read more ...