Middleburg 2023: Cannes holdovers and Sofia Coppola's "Priscilla"

by Lynn Lee

Hello TFE readers!  I’m back after some time away, having completed an intense one-year work assignment that left me barely enough time to keep up with the movies, let alone write about them.  To celebrate my return to normalcy, my husband and I spent a long weekend in Middleburg, VA, partly for relaxation (Middleburg’s a pretty little town in horse and wine country, ideal for a fall getaway) but mostly so I could get my fill of movies at the annual Middleburg Film Festival.  As Nathaniel’s reported in the past, for a relatively young, non-centrally located festival, Middleburg punches far above its weight.  It regularly manages to land many of the hot tickets out of Toronto, Telluride, Venice, and Cannes and has been a fairly reliable harbinger of what the Academy will like.  Like the other festivals, it was a bit less star-studded than usual this year due to the SAG-AFTRA strike, yet still generated plenty of excitement due to the sheer quality of the films.

Day One
The festival opened on a high note with this year’s Palme d’Or winner, Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall... 

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TIFF '23: Take a trip down to hell with "The Zone of Interest"

by Cláudio Alves

Jonathan Glazer's "The Zone of Interest"

For my first day at TIFF, I planned on starting things off with a Sandra Hüller double feature, the Palme d'Or-winning Anatomy of a Fall followed by The Zone of Interest. The first half of that plan went kaput soon enough, so instead I caught Warwick Thornton's The New Boy. Expect more thoughts on that title next week – for now, it's Glazer time. In any case, what started as a morning predicated on Croisette honors and a German superstar morphed into an extended exercise in how cinema confronts historical atrocities, how parallel realities can coexist within the same landscape, and how sound can force you to see what your eyes do not… 

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Cannes: Two strong contenders for the Palme d'Or

Elisa Giudici reporting from Cannes

THE ZONE OF INTEREST

If the Palme d'Or goes to a movie that pushes the boundaries of cinema as artistic expression, director Jonathan Glazer will have virtually zero competition. It is quite a rare moment in which, as a spectator, you realize that you are witnessing a true cinematic original. Making a movie about the Holocaust that feels groundbreaking is especially challenging given the plethora of films that have addressed and educated the world on the harrowing topic. 

In Glazer's adaptation of Martin Amid’s The Zone of Interest, not a single actor's face is shown in close-up for more than a couple of seconds...

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Cannes at Home: Day 4 – Once Upon a Time In...

by Cláudio Alves

The competition continues to heat up at the 76th Cannes Film Festival, with various contenders staking their claim on the Palme. It may be time for Nuri Bilge Ceylan to win his second. About Dry Grass is his seventh competition feature, including 2014's grand champion Winter Sleep. Then again, the critics have reached a consensus so far, with the favorite film being Jonathan Glazer's return to feature filmmaking after a decade-long pause, The Zone of Interest. Kaouther Ben Hania's follow-up to the Oscar-nominated The Man Who Sold His Skin is less acclaimed but might yet prove an awards contender. Four Daughters is one of two documentaries in competition.

For this 'Cannes at Home' adventure, let's look at some of these directors' past successes, their best films according to yours. There's Ceylan's Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, Glazer's Under the Skin, and Ben Hania's Beauty and the Dogs…

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The New Classics - Sexy Beast

Michael Cusumano here to revisit one of the most indelible performances of 2001 for our new series "The New Classics"...

Scene: Don Logan converses with his reflection

How many viewings of Jonathan Glazer’s Sexy Beast does it take before you realize Don Logan is the most sympathetic character in the movie?  

Don shows up in Spain with two missions: to reconnect with his old friend Gal, and to see if he has a shot with his lost love, Jackie. And what does he find? Not only does his friend attempt to blow him off, but the object of his affection is married to some spineless twit and can’t stand so much as to look at him. My heart goes out to the guy...

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