Top Ten: Sexiest Things in "A Bigger Splash"

In lieu of a full review for Luca Guadagnino's I Am Love follow up A Bigger Splash -- who can type with one hand -- a hot and bothered top ten list.

THE SEXIEST THINGS IN "A BIGGER SPLASH" 

10. Reflective Sunglasses.
The great cinematographer Yorick Le Saux (look up his filmography. Seriously) makes full use of the reflections in everyone's glasses. We're staring at them, but what are they staring at in this voyeuristic vacation?

09. Tilda Whispering to Matthias
As the movie begins world famous rockstar Marianne Lane (Tilda Swinton) is on vocal rest, doctor's orders. Her visiting friend/ex lover Harry (Ralph Fiennes) and a daughter he didn't know he had until recently (Dakota Johnson) arrive in town unexpectedly and they're told she can't speak. It's not strictly true. Marianne reserves her whispering, which she's allowed, for her younger filmmaker boyfriend Paul (Matthias Schoenaerts). Secretive conspiratorial intimacy is a panty-dropper.

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Doc Corner: 60 Years Since The Silent World's Historic Palme d'Or

Glenn here. Each Tuesday we bring you reviews and features on documentaries from theatres, festivals, and on demand. In celebration of not just the Cannes Film Festival, which launches this week, but also the release of my book Cannes Film Festival: 70 Years out now through Wilkinson Publishing, we're looking at the first documentary to win the Palme d'Or. The book is a glossy trip through history, looking at the festival's beginnings, the films, the moviestars, the fashions and the controversies. You better believe I convinced my editors on a double-page Nicole Kidman spread!

Despite the belief that documentaries are as rare among the Cannes line-up as rain in the desert, the Cannes selectors of old were particularly fond of them. Especially so through the 1950s and 1960s. That just happens to be where we find the first documentary winner of the Palme d’or, The Silent World, or Le monde du Silence.

The documentary is a collaboration between explorer Jacques Cousteau and a pre-fame Louis Malle, who was just 23 years old at the time and was only two years away from delivering the noir masterpiece (so says me) Elevator to the Gallows. In The Silent World, Cousteau and Malle are able to capture images of natural wonder that 60 years later continue to thrill and take the breath away and sing with poignancy while putting our place among nature into perspective. More after the jump...

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Review: Avengers 3 aka "Captain America: Civil War"

This review was originally published in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad. It is reprinted here in a slightly expanded version.

Captain America and his man, the Winter Soldier

Poor Captain America. You know how it is. You’re frozen in a block of ice and when you wake up several decades later the world has gotten so complicated! Everyone you loved is dead except your 96 year old girlfriend with Alzheimers (Agent Peggy Carter) and your brainwashed homicidal boyfriend (Bucky/The Winter Soldier) who is totally ghosting you.

New friends are plentiful but also trouble. Either they have two faces (Black Widow/Agent 13) or they’re constantly vanishing for personal reasons (Thor/Hulk/Hawkeye) so you totally can’t rely on them.

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The Family Fang

Eric here, covering actor Jason Bateman’s second directorial feature, The Family Fang.  Or, as we lovers of actresses like to better position it, the new Nicole Kidman! Nathaniel covered it in brief from Toronto but now it's in limited release.

The Family Fang is a bit of a reunion picture for Kidman:  it’s written by her Rabbit Hole writer David Lindsay-Abaire and brought together by that film’s same producers.  While Rabbit Hole ranks among the finest in the astonishingly large canon of Great Kidman Performances, she doesn’t get to scale the same heights here, mostly due to the limitations of the story and script.

Kidman plays Annie, a flailing Hollywood actress who returns home to take care of her injured brother Baxter (Bateman), who is recouping with their estranged parents (Christopher Walken and Maryann Plunkett) after a freak accident.  We learn at the start of the picture that Annie and Baxter were used, from birth, as participants in their parents’ live, staged performance art pieces (Annie was Child A; Baxter, Child B).  The parents caught on in art circles as avant-garde pioneers in the 70s, and the film traces their reunion all these years later...

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Review: A Hologram for the King

Eric here, with a review of the new Tom Tykwer film in theaters, A Hologram for the King, an adaptation of the best seller by Dave Eggers. It's the tale of a desperate American businessman near the end of his professional rope, who travels to Saudi Arabia to sell a holographic teleconference system to the king. 

While Tom Hanks isn’t at the peak of his popularity these days, he remains one of the biggest movie stars alive.  So it may feel surprising that this film is being released with very little publicity, dumped rather unceremoniously in “arthouse” cinemas...

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