Kidnapping thrillers don’t — can’t — get much dumber or cheaply teasing in a foggy smoke-and-mirrors sense than Atom Egoyan‘s Captives (aka The Captive), which screened this morning at the Cannes Film Festival. Intentionally confusing by way of coy misdirection, this is one of those “can you guess what’s really happening here?” melodramas that use time-shift games to throw you off the scent. I only know that Captives, a wildly ineffective stinker with some of the worst over-acting in a film of this type that I’ve ever seen, was making me groan less than five minutes in. Then I began to flinch, throw up my hands, pitch forward in my seat, cover my face with my hands, etc. Then I settled into a state of numb resignation. “Go on, pour it on, poison me,” I told the movie. “Inject your awfulness into my veins.”

It’s only the third day of the Cannes Film Festival, but I’m willing to say at this point that Captives is the winner of the Only God Forgives Cote d’Azur Wipeout Award of 2014. Stab me in the chest with a pencil…please!

Ryan Reynolds and Mireille Enos (the not-hot-enough wife of Brad Pitt in World War Z) are Canadian working-class parents of ginger-haired Cass (Peyton Kennedy as a child, Alexia Fast as an eight-years-older version), who abruptly disappears from the back seat of Reynolds’ truck as he’s picking up food in a diner. For help the couple turns to Rosario Dawson and Scott Speedman, independent investigators (or possibly legit cops — I wasn’t sure) who specialize in child predators and kidnappers. Most of the action happens eight years after the kidnapping but the movie shifts back and forth in order to keep things fuzzy and inconclusive.

Today Criterion announced an upcoming Bluray of Bob Fosse‘s All That Jazz (’79) on 8.26. It impressed me the first time (the Manhattan press screening was at Cinema 1) but irritated me the second time. Parts are hammy or ham-fisted and not very hip, but it was quite the film of its day. Roy Scheider gave a career-peak performance as Broadway musical director Joe Gideon, whose story was modelled on Fosse’s own in the early ’70s. “Almost every scene is excruciating (and a few are appalling), yet the film stirs an obscene fascination with its rapid, speed-freak cutting and passionate psychological striptease,” wrote critic Dave Kehr. “This is the feverish, painful expression of a man who lives in mortal fear of his own mediocrity.” Time‘s then-critic Frank Rich wrote that “as a showman, [Fosse] has no equal. Music, performers, movement, lighting, costumes and sets all blend together in Fosse productions to create brilliant flashes of exhilarating razzle-dazzle. Yet the man just does not know when to leave well enough alone.”

I’m slated to see four films today (i.e., Friday, 5.16), which will allow for very little time for postings. Atom Egoyan‘s 113-minute The Captive begins the day at 8:30 am inside the Grand Lumiere. I’ll have two and a half hours to file before the 1 pm press screening of Gabe Polsky‘s Red Army (80-something minutes) at the Salle Bazin. (This means skipping the Mr. Turner lunch from 12:45 to 2:30 pm.) At 3 pm comes the mother of long-runnning-time Cannes competition films — Nuri Bilge Ceylan‘s Winter Sleep at 196 minutes. Then I stay to the end or blow off the last hour to attend a Weinstein Co. preview event at the Majestic starting at 5:30 pm. Then comes the 8pm screening of Hilla Medalia‘s The Go-Go Boys, a doc about Cannon Films’ Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. After which there’s a Red Army premiere after-party starting around 10:30 pm.

All this stuff jammed in today, and they couldn’t program one of these films or events to happen yesterday or particularly the day before, which was all but dead?

Keren Yedaya‘s That Lovely Girl (a.k.a., Loin De Mon Pere or Far From My Father) is a dull, dreary, self-indulgent film about a longterm father-daughter incestuous relationship. The film proves how the mere presentation of shocking or uncomfortable situational subject matter is not enough. You need to deliver a story of some kind, and a resolution that offers some sense of completion and/or just desserts. The monster is Moshe (Tzahi Grad), a 60 year-old father, and the victim is Tami (Maayan Turgeman), his 22 year-old daughter. It’s an acrimonious, highly sexual relationship that’s probably been going on for a decade. Cruel, horrific. All the more so given Tami’s compliance and emotional neediness and self-abuse (over-eating, cutting herself). In basic payoff terms Girl delivers far too little. No tension, no intrigue, no gathering of forces. The film is flat and odious. Sasha Stone hated it so that makes two of us. You can also add the five or six people who walked out of my corner of the Salle Debussy within the first 25 or 30 minutes.

Maayan Turgeman, Tzahi Grad in Keren Yedaya’s That Lovely Girl.

Sasha says That Lovely Girl is as icky and debilitating as Markus Schleinzer‘s Michael, an Austrian film about a child molester that played at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. Wrong. Michael “isn’t pleasant to watch,” I wrote, “but it’s brilliant — emotionally suppressed in a correct way that blends with the protagonist, and aesthetically disciplined and close to spellbinding.”

Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn is reporting that “a number of whispers [are suggesting] that the Argentinean ensemble drama Wild Tales — from director Damian Szifron, whose other features have rarely screened outside of South America — would blow people away with its premiere this weekend, making it an early contender for the Palme D’Or.” A Guy Lodge Hitfix summary says that Wild Tales “is apparently bringing the comedy — and in quite a dark, unconventional fashion. Festival director Thierry Fremaux [has] said the film was chosen to ‘wake up’ festivalgoers and provoke strong reactions, which could mean any number of things. [Pic is] a compilation of six independent stories apparently hinging on the quest for success in the modern world and the heated emotions it inspires. “Many people get stressed out or depressed,” reads the synopsis. “Some burst. This is a film about them.”

Mike Leigh‘s Mr. Turner (Sony Pictures Classics, 12.19) is a masterfully captured, atmospherically captivating period biopic of J.M.W. Turner (Timothy Spall), the 19th Century genius painter of impressionistic landscapes. Like his 1999 Gilbert and Sullivan film Topsy Turvy, this is another of Leigh’s “portrait of an artist, warts, whims, peculiarities, obsessions and all” films. I was alert and attuned start to finish, but I can’t honestly say I was riveted. Leigh’s basic observation about Turner being a bit of a compulsive, anti-social creep is not exactly novel or startling — I think we all know that gifted types tend to be difficult in various ways. A journalist friend found the film beautiful but flat, “like watching paint dry.” And I frankly couldn’t hear half the dialogue. (Thank God for the French subtitles.) When Spall began speaking at the press conference I said to myself, “Wow, I can understand him so clearly!”

But the performances (particularly Spall’s) are uniformly delicious and Dick Pope‘s cinematography reflects the colors and framings of Turner’s paintings, and the historical details (production design, costumes, etc.) are mesmerizing. You feel you’re really there. Leigh’s orchestration of time-trip authority is immaculate.

Sony Pictures Classics is opening Mr. Turner stateside on December 19th. Cultivated 35-and-olders will come out in strength for the first couple of weekends, but Mr. Turner is more of an exacting study than a compelling drama. It’s essential to see as there’s no such thing as a bad or under-nourishing Mike Leigh film, but it’s much more cerebral than emotional. It impresses but doesn’t really get you deep down.

On my way to an 8:30 am screening of Mike Leigh‘s Mr. Turner. Then a little filing time (10:30 to 11:30) followed by a Mr. Turner press conference. Followed by “I haven’t decided just yet but I guess I’ll figure it out before long.” You have to be organized but semi-loose at the same time. “Everything’s everything, baby.” — stoolie to Gene Hackman‘s Popeye Doyle in The French Connection.

Groundhog Day in a sci-fi, high-tech action mode in which Tom Cruise dies, like, 200 times. Groundhog Day in a sci-fi, high-tech action mode in which Tom Cruise squeals and dies, like, 200 times. Groundhog Day in a sci-fi, high-tech action mode in which Tom Cruise squeals and dies, like, 200 times. Groundhog Day in a sci-fi, high-tech action mode in which Tom Cruise squeals and dies, like, 200 times. I get it, I get it… I get it.

I asked myself an hour ago why I’ve never really sat down and re-watched Paul Thomas Anderson‘s There Will Be Blood since I bought the Bluray six years ago. I’ve never, ever popped it into the player, even after I got my beautiful Oppo and particularly the 60″ Samsung plasma. The honest answer is that among the great films of the 21st Century, Blood is perhaps the most disturbing and self-conflicted in that it constantly fascinates while pouring one of the most vile and reptilian characters in film history into the beaker of our souls — Daniel Day Lewis‘s Daniel Plainview. I’ll never forget this monster for the rest of my life, but I don’t want his poison in my system.

Here are excerpts from my 11.6.07 review, which was actually written after my second viewing of the film in San Francisco. Mostly excerpts about Plainview, I mean.

“Within its own heavily male, oil-soaked, organized religion-hating, misanthropic realm, There Will Be Blood is brilliant. It passes along a kind of insanity, but it does so with absolute greatness.

“But (and I’m talking about the first viewing, not the second) it’s about as hateful as a quality film can be — hateful in that there’s no one to care about except for the young son (and his adult incarnation at the end), and not that much to think about. Most women viewers will probably despise it, and yet it’s easily one of the year’s best made films.

Jack Nicholson‘s version was more charismatic than the Real McCoy (naturally). Suffice that his bravura performance in The Departed is the reason I’m into seeing Joe Berlinger‘s Whitey: The United States of America vs. James J. Bulger (Magnolia, theatres and iTunes, 6.27.14). “A sweeping and revelatory documentary film that follows the trial of the infamous gangster James ‘Whitey’ Bulger, using the courtroom action as a springboard to examine accusations of multi-faceted corruption within our nation’s law enforcement and legal systems,” etc.

For me, the standout quote of the press conference for the Cannes Film Festival jurors (held at 2:30 pm) came when a Scandanavian journalist asked for comments about the reported suicide death of Searching For Sugar Man director Malik Bendjelloul, and Nicholas Winding Refn said it was very sad and tragic news, adding that “life is a beautiful gift.” (I vaguely recall his saying “very beautiful” but I wasn’t taking notes.) That immediately struck me as an unexpected thought coming from the director of Only God Forgives, but once I got past this I suddenly reconsidered who Refn might really be deep down. Because I was more than half-convinced after seeing God that he was the proverbial chubby kid who likes to pull the wings off flies.

Reminder: Last November I got an email from Refn‘s assistant, informing that Refn’s wife, Liv Corfixen, “is making a documentary about what life is like married to an artist like Nicolas surrounding the making of Only God Forgives. She has footage of Nicolas reading aloud a portion of your review of OGF that was published on Hollywood-Elsewhere.com and would love to include it in the film. Copied on this email is Nicolas’ producing partner Lene Borglum. She would like to have your permission to use the quote from your review and can answer any questions you have.” My reply: “Funny. Sure, use away.”

The juror chairperson/honcho is director Jane Campion (i.e., white hair). The others are Carole Bouquet, Iranian actress Leila Hatami (A Separation), Willem Dafoe, Gael Garcia Bernal, Nicholas Winding-Refn, director Sofia Coppola, South Korean actress Jeon Do-yeon and Chinese director Jia Zhangke.

There is nothing in Olivier Dahan‘s Grace of Monaco, a precious, rarified tale of French political maneuver and regal appearances, that persuades or reaches out in a dramatic sense or which resembles “life” as most of us know it. It may as well be taking place on the ice planet of Hoth. It’s basically about a socially isolated prisoner, the former Grace Kelly (Nicole Kidman) who became Princess Grace of Monaco when she married Prince Rainer (Tim Roth) in April 1956, chafing against the restrictions of her marriage and title and mulling a return to the screen as the star of Alfred Hitchcock‘s Marnie. (Fate spared her that embarassment.) Right away I was muttering to myself “who cares?” I was chafing against the restrictions that came with watching this film, I can tell you. The word that best applies is “mediocre.” Grace of Monaco is essentially a TNT movie aimed at older women who remember Grace’s car-crash death in ’82 (as traumatic in its time to Princess Di‘s passing in ’97) and who revere the notion of marrying into royalty and all that. I couldn’t have felt less involved. This is one of those movies that you do your best to sit through.

The most arresting sequence, for me, is one in which Kidman/Kelly is shown racing her sports car around winding hairpin turns in the hills above Monte Carlo. On one level it foreshadows the circumstances of Grace’s actual demise in the same area, but it’s shot and cut to closely resemble a similar scene in To Catch a Thief with Kelly driving and Cary Grant riding shotgun. Not a profound moment but nicely done all the same.