Saturday, May 26, 2012

Cannes roundup: Cosmopolis, The Paperboy, Killing Them Softly, On the Road

Cosmopolis

David Cronenberg, at his best, is a critic-divider. He's recently made some crowd-pleasers that have been critically acclaimed, starting with "A History of Violence." But "Cosmopolis" is him sorta going back to his old, more divisive style. And it stars Robert Pattinson. And it's dividing critics. On the positive side, they're calling it among one of his best works. The negative side, they're saying it lacks substance. Check it out:

positive-
Toronto Star
Time Out
HitFix
Empire
The Playlist

negative-
The Guardian UK 
ScreenDaily
Film School Rejects
Entertainment Weekly
Hollywood Reporter
Time

The Paperboy
If you were to judge this film based solely on The Playlist's James Rocchi's review, you would think this is the worst POS ever. But this Lee Daniels film (last film, Precious) actually has its fair share of defenders. Starring Zac Efron, John Cusack, Matthew McConaughey, Nicole Kidman. The negative reviews are pretty damn negative.

negative-
Film School Rejects
AV Club
Time Out
Emanuel Levy
The Playlist
Guardian UK
Daily Telegraph

positive-
Time
The Hollywood Reporter
The List
ScreenDaily
The Guardian UK

Note: The Guardian UK reviews are from different critics.

Killing Them Softly
Killing Them Softly seems to be getting great reviews pretty much across the board. Andrew Dominik's third film starring Brad Pitt may be another difficult film for a potential American audience to swallow, but it looks like he's hit another home run. His last film was Assassination of Jesse James, which was in my top 20 of my 100 films of the 2000s list. Some of the reviews for Killing Them Softly are more positive than others:

Entertainment Weekly
Hollywood Reporter
The List
The Independent
Digital Spy
HitFix
The Guardian UK

On the Road
It's kinda sad, but Walter Salles's adaptation of On the Road doesn't seem to be getting the type of positive reviews that I expected. Seems like the critics wished for more of a cinematic experience, other critics just seem perplexed by the idea of this being made into a movie, praising Jack Kerouac's prose and lamenting that they couldn't feel that presence in this film. So yeah, while there's a couple of positive reviews here and there, they're mostly negative.

positive-
Hollywood Reporter
The List
This is London
The Playlist

negative-
Variety
NY Times
Entertainment Weekly
Emanuel Levy
Movies
ScreenDaily
Time Out Chicago
Film School Rejects
The Guardian UK

Well, Cannes is almost over. I've been having tons of fun covering the festival... from my apartment in Brooklyn. Yeah, not as fun when you're not actually there but it's still interesting to see some what the critics think about some of the year's most anticipated films. The winners of Cannes should be announced soon. I didn't get to all of the Cannes films, "Mud" was screened today and the reviews haven't come in just yet. There's a few, but not enough to make a post about. I can get to that later.  I also know that Leos Carax's Holy Motors was getting some rave reviews, I'll get to that later as well.

Either way, consider the Cannes chapter of awards season to have officially come to a close once the Palme D'or is announced. Cannes and Sundance are more like preseason when it comes to awards season. There might be some positive buzz, but it means nothing awards-wise unless critics single those films out at the end of the year. We'll see if any of these Cannes films have staying power.

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