The official lineup of the Cannes Film Festival dropped early this morning in Paris, and my straight-from-the-heart first reaction? Honestly? The selections seem enticing but they’re not quite enough. The festival needed but didn’t deliver one or two of those “who expected that?” selections. Almost everything chosen had been predicted or spitballed by guys like Screen Int’l‘s Mike Goodridge, etc.
Why couldn’t the festival have snagged Steve McQueen‘s Shame? Or Steven Soderbergh‘s Haywire? Or Jonathan Levine‘s 50/50 (a.k.a. Live With It and/or I’m With Cancer)? Or Tom Hanks‘ Larry Crowne? Or Tomas Alfedson‘s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy? Or something along those lines. Oh, well…maybe something exciting will debut in the market section.
HE’s most anticipated Cannes selection: Nicolas Winding Refn‘s Drive, described here and there as a “minimalist” crime thriller about a Hollywood stunt driver who moonlights as a getaway driver, costarring Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Albert Brooks, Ron Perlman and Christina Hendricks.
HE’s remaining highly anticipated Cannes selections (in this order): (a) Pedro Almodovar‘s The Skin That I Inhabit, (b) Nuri Bilge Ceylan‘s Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, (c) Paolo Sorrentino‘s This Must Be The Place, (d) Terrence Malick‘s somewhat devalued The Tree of Life, (e) Takashi Miike‘s Harakiri, (f) Lars von Trier‘s Melancholia, (g) Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennes‘ The Kid With The Bike, (h) Gus Van Sant‘s Restless (in Un Certain Regard), (i) Woody Allen‘s Midnight in Paris and (j) Lynn Ramsay‘s We Need To Talk About Kevin.
Eyesores: Kung Fu Panda 2 and especially Rob Marshall‘s Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.
Floating/Come Again?/Need Some Help: Julia Leigh‘s Sleeping Beauty, Radu Mihaileanu‘s La source des femmes, Nanni Moretti’s We Have A Pope, Bertrand Bonello‘s L’Apollonide, Joseph Cedar‘s Footnote, Naomi Kawase‘s Hazenu no Tsuki, Markus Schleinzer‘s Michael, Alan Cavalier‘s Parterre, Maiwenn‘s Polisse.
Other Un Certain Regard Selections: Ariang (dir: Kim Ki-Duk), Bonsai (dir: Christian Jiminez), The Day He Arrives (dir: Hong Sang-soo), Et maintenant, on va ou? (dir: Nadine Labaki), Halt auf freier Strecke (dir: Andreas Dresen), Hors Satan (dir: Bruno Dumont), Skoonheid (dir: Oliver Hermanus), The Hunter (dir: Bakur Bakuradze), L’exercise de l’Etat (dir: Pierre Schoeller), Loverboy (dir: Catalin Mitulescu), Martha Marcy May Marlene (dir: Sean Durkin), Miss Bala (dir: Gerardo Naranjo), Les neiges du Kilimandjaro (dir: Robert Guediguian), Oslo, August 31 (dir: Joachim Trier), Tatsumi (dir: Eric Khoo), Toomelah (dir: Ivan Sen), Travailler fatigue (dir: Juliana Rojas, Marco Dutra), Yellow Sea (dir: Na Hong-jin).
Out-of-Competition, Special Screenings: The Artist (dir: Michel Hazanavicius); The Beaver (dir: Jodie Foster); La conquete (dir: Xavier Durringer), Labrador (dir: Frederikke Aspock), Le maitre des forges de l’enfer (dir: Rithy Panh), Un documentarie sur Michel Petrucciani (dir: Michael Radford), Tous au Larzac (dir: Christian Rouaud).
