#8
Inside Llewyn Davis
DIR.Joel & Ethan Coen
SCREENING: Saturday, May 18 at 7:30 PM / 1 hour 45 minutes / In Competition
It took awhile, but Joel and Ethan Coen‘s Inside Llewyn Davis finally found distribution with CBS Films and a prime spot In Competition at the Cannes. Loaded with talent, this story following a week in the life of a young folk singer as he navigates the Greenwich Village folk scene of 1961 is led by Oscar Isaac (Drive), and you can already hear critics ready to praise this one to the heavens.
The character Isaac plays is loosely based on folk singer Dave Van Ronk and the film will find him navigating a cold New York winter, struggling to make it as a musician. Considering the Coens’ track record, expectations are high. After all, the last time they had a film in Cannes it was No Country for Old Men… Remember that one?
Isaac is joined by Carey Mulligan, John Goodman, Garrett Hedlund, Alex Karpovsky, Adam Driver, Justin Timberlake and F. Murray Abraham. Here’s the recently released red band trailer.
#7
Blood Ties
DIR.Guillaume Canet
SCREENING: Sunday, May 19 at 4:30 PM / 2 hours 24 minutes / Out of Competition
I’ve only seen one of Guillaume Canet‘s previous directorial outings, that being the entertaining Tell No One, but Blood Ties serves as his first English language feature and he’s assembled an impressive cast to help him along the way.
Ironically enough, Blood Ties is a remake of a French film, Jacques Maillot’s 2008 feature Rivals (Les liens du sang), and follows two brothers (Billy Crudup and Clive Owen) on both sides of the law, who must face off over organized crime in Brooklyn during the 1970s in New York. Crudup plays a cop while Owen’s character is an auto repair shop owner and ex-convict who’s asked to go back into the criminal underworld to help out the family.
Along with Owen and Crudup the film co-stars Marion Cotillard, Mila Kunis, Zoe Saldana, James Caan, Noah Emmerich, Matthias Schoenaerts, Lili Taylor, Charlie Tahan, Griffin Dunne and Yul Vazquez.
I’ve got a much longer synopsis here if you’d like more story details.
#6
The Bling Ring
DIR.Sofia Coppola
SCREENING: Thursday, May 16 at 11:00 AM / 1 hour 30 minutes / Un Certain Regard
Among some powerful dramas and international features there are a couple of films that look like fun diversions from the more weightier films and I have eternal hope Sofia Coppola has delivered the kind of diversion we saw with Marie Antoinette, a film you seem to either love or hate, I fall in the former category.
With The Bling Ring, Coppola has put her own spin on the true story of a group of teenagers obsessed with fashion and celebrity that burglarized celebrity homes in Los Angeles and she’s got Harry Potter star Emma Watson leading the way.
Watson is joined by Israel Broussard, Katie Chang, Claire Julien, Taissa Farmiga, Leslie Mann, Gavin Rossdale, and real-life Bling Ring victim, Paris Hilton. An early review of the film from Film Comment, that was later pulled, was high on the film as Awards Daily managing to swipe some of the review before it disappeared saying:
Like Somewhere, The Bling Ring sneaks up on you. Somewhere during the first visit to Paris Hilton’s house (if it isn’t the real thing, it could just as well be), you might find yourself, as I did, alternately charmed, mesmerized, and horrified by the lives of the characters and the homes they enter. Halfway through the film, Marc and Rebecca wander through what is supposedly Orlando Bloom’s open-plan house at night, viewed from an exquisite remove several tiers above in the Hollywood hills, the sounds of howling coyotes and wailing police sirens quietly echoing in the distance—a suspended spell of uncanny beauty, and one of the most beautifully lyrical stretches I’ve seen in a movie in ages.
I’m not sure if Coppola’s film ends as satisfactorily as it might have—resolving a narrative about characters who lead unmotivated lives does present its dramatic problems—but I don’t think it matters all that much. Unlike Spring Breakers, with which the film will inevitably be compared (alongside Schrader’s The Canyons), The Bling Ring goes about its business quietly but with a tremendous purity of focus. The film casts such a lovely spell that its full force may hit only after the lights come up.
Here’s a look at the trailer if you haven’t yet seen it.
