Variety‘s Sicko review, written by Alissa Simon. She’s calling it “an entertaining and affecting dissection of the American health care industry that documents how it benefits the few at the expense of the many. Pic’s tone alternates between comedy and outrage, as it compares the U.S system of care to other countries. Given Moore’s celebrity and fan base, plus heightened awareness of pic resulting from the heated battle between left and right already ongoing in cyberspace, returns look to be extremely healthy.”

Myself and maybe nine or ten other journalists were driven out to the Hotel du Cap at 11:45 this morning for some brief cabana sit-downs with Leonardo DiCaprio,the producer, co-writer and narrator of a down-to-it doc about global poisoning and not just global warming (which the film only focuses on for only 7 minutes) called 11th Hour (Warner Independent, October), as well as co-directors Nadia Conners and Leila Conners Petersen.

11th Hour producer-narrator Leonardo DiCaprio at the conclusion of today’s Hotel du Cap round-table interview, which took place in an airy bungalow a stone’s throw from the rocky coast of the beautiful Mediterranean — Saturday, 5.19.07, 1:45 pm

Two 11th Hour talking heads also participated — David W. Orr, an envirornmental issues authority and a professor of environmental studies and politics at Oberlin College, and Kenny Asubel, founder and co-executive director of Bioneers, a nonprofit outfit that focuses on solutions for restoring imperiled ecosystems.
Here‘s a recording of our group’s chat with DiCaprio and Orr.
The general consensus among the journos is that Michael Moore‘s Sicko is a more engaging and persuasive piece of agitprop than 11th Hour, which offers a very dense and thorough assessment of how we’re fucking the planet every which way, but at the same time is a little too crammed with information.
There’s no argument at all from this corner about the alarming things it says (and shows) about what amounts to a kind of mass global suicide, but it’s a movie, and the fact is that it doesn’t breathe and engage the way a piece like this should. After 20 minutes or so it makes you feel like you’re being hammered. It needs to pull back and relax and…I don’t know, throw in some jokes or something. A little more heart and soul and meditation.
11th Hour has exactly one laugh moment — a quote from Winston Churchill that says Americans “always do the right thing…unfortunately they only do the right thing after exhausting every last wrong possibility.” Or words to that effect.

DiCaprio, David Orr at the Hotel du Cap — Saturday, 5.19.07, 6:25 pm; under the umbrella trees; the Du Cap cabanas where the interviews took place; MPRM’s Jessica Kimiabakhsh leading journalists (including Variety‘s Anne Thompson) to their respective cabanas; Kenny Asubel (l.) and 11th Hour co-directors Nadia Conners and Leila Conners Petersen.

I hate saying this about a film I respect and that I want people to absorb for the content alone, but you can’t expect well-honed information and slam-bang visuals alone to do the trick. A movie needs to generate human warmth and aroma…some kind of emotional connection that really sinks in. As it is now, 11th Hour is too dry and didactic, and it doesn’t even try to generate the amiable personality that An Inconvenient Truth had by way of the reborn Al Gore.
But it won’t open until the fall so there’s obviously time for some re-shoots and touch-ups. Leo, Nadia and Leila should consider what I’m saying here. I’m not the only one, trust me.

Here’s a recording of the first half-hour of Michael Moore‘s Sicko press conference, with moderator Andre Behar asking the first question. It started just after 11 a.m. I had to bolt at 11:30 in order to get on a press shuttle for the Hotel du Cap and a sitdown with Leonardo DiCaprio and the 11th Hour principals. I still don’t have my sound editing software up and running, so it’s a little raggedy. Behar’s introduction of Moore to the press throng comes about ten seconds in.

Sicko director Michael Moore (r.) and press conference moderator Henri Behar at this morning’s press conference — Saturday, 5.19.07, 11:12 am

The big Cannes buzz right now is around the untitled (and apparently still uncompleted) Larry Charles/Bill Maher documentary about religion, which is being repped by CAA and IM Global. Charles himself attended a market screening yesterday to unveil footage, I’m told. I wasn’t there but a trusted friend was, and he says that “what the buyers saw had everyone laughing hard” and that once out and about, the doc will definitely register as “controversial.”

Mr. Friendly is predicting “a bidding war and an announcement within a couple of days.”
Variety‘s Adam Dawtrey reported about the doc last February during the Berlin Film Festival. “In the aftermath ofBorat,” he wrote, “one of the most intriguing projects to surface at Berlin’s EFM is the untitled Larry Charles doc being touted by First Look Int’l. It features Maher in a satirical investigation of the major global religions and sounds calculated to invite letter bombs from fanatics of every creed.
“Charles and Maher have already been shooting for some time below-the-radar in the Mideast and London,” Dawtrey went on, “but footage is being kept tightly under wraps. Pic is being hyped as Borat meets Fahrenheit 9/11, but the only materials that buyers are allowed to see is a single sheet written by Charles, which isn’t permitted to leave the First Look office.
“‘Is religion an obsessive-compulsive disorder?’ asks Charles, who bills his movie as ‘Bill Maher vs. the Anti-Christ (or is Bill Maher the Anti-Christ?)”

Everyone has just come out of the 8:30 a.m. screening of Michael Moore‘s Sicko — I’m typing this from the Salle du Presse where Moore will be answering questions ten minutes from now — and I have to say that I went into it with limited expectations, but I came out teary-eyed. Surprisingly, I found this documentary about the evils and shortcomings of the U.S. health-care system just as moving as Fahrenheit 9/11 — and I never would have predicted this.
Honestly…I found myself melting during the last 20 minutes or so, particularly during the scenes shot in Havana, Cuba, where Moore takes a small group of 9/11 workers to receive affordable — i.e., extremely cheap — health care for their 9/11-related ailments that they either couldn’t afford in the U.S., or weren’t getting sufficient treatment for in this great country of ours.
The press conference is about to begin so I can’t write any more about this until later in the afternoon, but I can at least say this: Sicko didn’t tell me anything radically new about what an absurd health-care system we have, but it spelled out very clearly and, it seemed to me, honestly how much better the health-care systems are in Canada, England and France.
Plus it made me feel the hurt and the sadness that the U.S. system causes aver- age citizens, and I can honestly say that it made me feel this emotion more acute- ly than at any other time in my life. It’s not just an eye-opener, in short, but a movie that opens your emotional pores.

Taken about 20 minutes before the start of yesterday’s 7:15 pm screening of No Country for Old Men in front of the Salle Debussy.

Variety‘s Todd McCarthy wrote his rave review of No Country for Old Men last night, and here’s how it leads off: “A scorching blast of tense genre filmmaking shot through with rich veins of melancholy, down-home philosophy and dark, dark humor, No Country for Old Men reps a superior match of source material and filmmaking talent. Cormac McCarthy‘s bracing and brilliant novel is gold for the Coen brothers, who have handled it respectfully but not slavishly, using its built-in cinematic values while cutting for brevity and infusing it with their own touch is one of the their very best films, a bloody classic of its type destined for acclaim and potentially robust B.O. returns upon release later in the year.” Right on, couldn’t agree more.

It’s 9:55 pm and all of Cannes is doing the Friday night mess-around. I’ve been invited to a Soho House party at a medieval castle west of town on the coast called Chateau de la Napoule, but I can take it or leave it. That’s because for the last half-hour I’ve been tripping on dozens of musings and fond recollections of Joel and Ethan Coen‘s No Country for Old Men, all comprising a general awareness that this is a major, major film.

I’m speaking of an obviously brilliant action thriller that’s been made with such exactitude and smart-guy expertise, and is so full of meditative sadnesses and poetic brush strokes, and which exists on a plane so far above your typical violent crime film — the poisoned karma of drug money, a demonic hired gun on the prowl, etc. — that calling it a crime film almost feels like a kind of injustice. The damn thing is just staggering.
Based on the Cormac McCarthy novel, Old Men is all about silences and suspense and delivering the story in visual terms on the level of…I was going to say Alfred Hitchcock but Old Men‘s technique even surpasses some of his best stuff. The plot unfolds with such assured visual panache that it shares many of the virtues of the great silent films of the ’20s.
No Country for Old Men is the Coen’s best dark-places film — fuller and more refined than the classic Blood Simple, more solemn and straight-on emotional than Miller’s Crossing, and at least on par with their exquisite, much-loved Fargo. I have to scoot off to that castle party but I’ll get into this tomorrow morning. But tonight’s screening (it began around 7:25 pm) was my first occasion for true elevation. I still feel like I’m ten or fifteen pounds lighter. Seeing amazingly well-done films makes you forget about a lot of stuff. They put you in another realm.

L.A. Times columnist Patrick Goldstein has seen James Gray‘s We Own The Night, which will debut in Cannes towards the end of next week, and he says that for Gray “it’s a big breakthrough. It’s a searing family drama as well as a cops-versus-criminals thriller with the same sticky web of loyalty and rivalry seen in Martin Scorsese‘s best work.

“Joaquin Phoenix is the family black sheep, running a mob-owned nightclub, while Mark Wahlberg has become a cop like their father, played by Robert Duvall. Although Gray still goes for quiet, underplayed emotion, he also ratchets up the suspense, providing many of the elements of a commercial thriller, most notably a bravura car-chase shootout filmed in the midst of a driving rainstorm.”

Risky Biz Blog’s Stuart Kemp (apparently sharing duties with Gregg Kilday) is reporting that a gang of French thieves is working the Croisette, ” turning over apartments and stealing whatever they can get their hands on. Every year as Cannes kicks off, there are always tales of thievery. It’s a known fact that criminals steal in, take what they can from unsuspecting visitors, before melting away as the first weekend approaches. This year, a movie marketing team awoke one morning to find thieves had been in their room while they slept, spiriting away televisions, computers and cash.”

“Pitch perfect and brilliantly acted, 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days is a stunning achievement, helmed with a purity and honesty that captures not just the illegal abortion story at its core but the constant, unremarked negotiations necessary for survival in the final days of the Soviet bloc.
“Showcasing all the elements of new Romanian cinema — long takes, controlled camera and an astonishing ear for natural dialogue — Cristian Mungiu‘s masterly film plays only one false note in an otherwise beautifully textured story. Further proof of Romania’s new prominence in the film world, pic will attract discerning auds in Stateside and Euro arthouses.” — from Jay Weissberg‘s Variety review, posted earlier today.