Cannes 2015

Icelandic director Grímur Hákonarson has been making films since 2002, but his filmography  comprises only two features.  After being nominated for an Edda Award for Best Screenplay for his 2010 debut Summerland, his second film has won Un…

In 2013, Blue Ruin burst onto the scene, a grim whirlwind of stripped down revenge and graphic violence. Keeping to the colour-coded theme, American writer/director Jeremy Saulnier has returned with an even more violent blow-out of a film.…

It’s hardboiled romance South Korean writer/director Oh Seung-uk promises, and it’s hardboiled romance he delivers. With Kim Nam-gil, a leading man better known for his romantic roles, Oh manages to blend genres in an absorbing thriller…

With a small, eclectic collection of Jury members, Cannes is prone to throw up surprises. The 68th edition has proven no different. Jury joint presidents Joel and Ethan Coen closed a dizzying week and a half of film by handing the Palme…

The red carpet is rolled up, market stalls have been dismantled and luxury yachts head off to the next party scene. Another Cannes Film Festival has come to an end, yielding one final surprise in the Jury’s choice of Palme d’Or winner. But…

There’s a strong dose of physician heal thyself in Chronic, Michel Franco’s third feature. Tim Roth’s nurse may be supremely efficient when dealing with terminally ill patients, but he fails utterly to exist outside his work. Unwilling to…

Justin Kurzel certainly knows how to capture a sense of time and place. Snowtown, his grim suburban serial killer debut in 2011 brought to life the dilapidated restrictiveness of small town Australia. Now taking on the Bard, he really puts…

No matter how international they purport to be, all film festivals have to be based somewhere. The impulse to give a little boost to local talent becomes a hard one to fight. Valley of Love, perfectly serviceable as it is, feels like one…

Adapting The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s incredibly popular story first published in 1943, does not come without risk. Deciding to then launch it at the Cannes Film Festival in France, the home country of the beloved novella,…

I’ve experienced a lot of different things in the cinema, but the onset of agoraphobia is a new one. So deliciously rich are the interiors in Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s long-awaited foray into wuxia, the moment The Assassin ventured outside I was…