According to Indiewire‘s Jay A. Fernandez, early Cannes reactions to Lee Daniels‘ The Paperboy “suggest the film has more in common with Daniels’ Shadowboxer, an arty action film that left critics’ jaws agape, rather than the crowd-pleasing Precious.

“While there was praise for Nicole Kidman‘s performance as the trashy would-be lover of John Cusack‘s death-row inmate, one buyer described The Paperboy as a ‘trainwreck.’ Another gave the film a backhanded compliment: ‘It’s a movie you have to see. You want to talk about it.’

Adapted by Daniels from Pete Dexter’s novel and set in 1969 Florida, The Paperboy is about a reporter (Matthew McConaughey) and his younger brother (Zac Efron) investigating events surrounding a murder to free a man on death row (John Cusack). It also stars David Oyelowo and Scott Glenn.

If that “trainwreck” remark is even half on the money, McConaughey will be looking to his other Cannes film, Jeff Nichols‘ Mud (which I’ve frankly heard is just okay), to save the day.

I had a pretty bad time with Shadowboxer at the Santa Barbara Film Festival four or five years ago, and I wasn’t that much of a fan of Precious, largely due to the agony of having to spend time with M’onique‘s godawful mom-from-hell.

Last night I finally saw an English-subtitled version of Pablo Lorrain‘s No, as opposed to the French-subtitled version I tried to roll with two or three days ago. Although not quite on the level of Costa-Gavras‘s Z, it’s nonetheless one of the smartest, well-layered and riveting real-life political dramas I’ve seen in ages. Now I understand the buzz (which was first passed along to me by MSN’s James Rocchi), and congrats to Sony Classics for picking up U.S. rights. A Best Foreign Language Pic Oscar nom seems highly likely.

For reasons too mundane to recount I haven’t time to bang out a review, but I will later. Tonight or tomorrow morning, one of those.

“He’s just such a disappointment, an embarrassment. Chin up, hair up. He’s just one of those guys, one of those guys who says he’s going to change everything. And he’ll get in there, and they’ll smile at him and introduce themselves: ‘We’re Congress, we make sure nothing changes.’ He won’t do it. He can’t.” — Former George W. Bush supporter Bruce Willis on Mitt Romney, quoted in an Esquire interview.

It takes friggin’ forever to load these clips. It took so long to load these three that I had to leave my computer on when I went to the 2 pm screening of Bernardo Bertolucci‘s You and Me (very handsomely photographed but otherwise very small and slight, not to mention claustrophobic). I found a wall plug and laid it down on the left-side aisle at the Salle Bunuel, and then along came a busybody girl usher. “But monsieur….” Please! C’mon! I’ll sit right next to it…don’t make me turn it off. I beg you!

Surprisingly, Andrew Dominik‘s Killing Them Softly isn’t your father’s tough-talkin’ George V. Higgins gritty crime pic. Well, it is but it persistently and rather curiously pushes concurrent political commentary about the ’08 financial collapse, Obama, hope, cynicism, ruthlessness and American greed.

Indiewire’s Eric Kohn wrote that Softly, like Dominik’s five-year-old The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford, is a “tone poem that uses narrative to prop up various attitudes and moods,” but this time with a greater emphasis on the polemic. Well put.

The plot is basically about Brad Pitt‘s Jackie Cogan, a hard-as-nails hitman, being hired to rub out a few guys involved in the robbing of a Boston poker game, as well as an unlucky rackets guy (Ray Liotta) who didn’t really do anything but tough shit — he’s on the list regardless. And yet the first 25% to 30% of the film is Pitt-less, focusing on the perps and their grubby, slip-shod realm.

Cogan, a down-to-business, cut-the-shit assassin, is about doing the job, period. Rationality, efficiency, no personal issues or baggage — an exemplar, in a sense, of “clean living,” which is what Dominik, during the just-finished press conference and somewhat flippantly, said the film is partly espousing.

Above all Cogan is no believer in community and equality and Barack Obama’s high-falutin’ talk about sharing and “we’re all in this together.” Eff that.

Killing Them Softly, then, is a fairly novel thing — an “Obama’s rhetoric is full of shit” crime movie. Okay, not Obama’s per se, but his inspirational come-together theme of the ’08 campaign (a clip from his acceptance speech in Chicago is used at the beginning and end) or the generic uplift rhetoric of “America the beautiful.” Pull the wool off, take the needle out, wake up to what America is.

So this isn’t The Friends of Eddie Coyle, mon ami, but a Metaphor Movie. The political newscast and Obama-speech clips are interwoven a bit more persistently than is necessary. But the ending of Killing Me Softly, no question, hits it right slam on the head. I chuckled. I left the theatre with a grin.

Most of Softly, like any good crime pic, is about character, dialogue, minutae, this and that manner of slimeball scumbag, rain, sweat, snack, bottles of beer, guns and old cars (i.e., ratty old buckets, classic muscle cars, ’80s gas guzzlers). Nobody in Killing Me Softly ever heard of a Prius.

Pitt delivers a solid, snarly performance as the bearded, leather-jacketed Cogan. But running a close second is Scoot McNairy as a scuzzy thief who’s out of his depth. He does more than just scuzz around and suck in cigarette smoke. He exudes fear and anguish along the usual cocky irreverence required of any bottom-tier criminal. He should and will be seen again, and often.

Other stands performances come from Richard Jenkins, Vincent Curatola and the Australian Ben Mendelsohn, acting with his native accent, as the sweatiest and gunkiest no-account junkie west of the Pecos.

Given a choice between an unfettered, down-to-basics George V. Higgins crime drama and what Softly double-track variation is, I’m mostly pleased with the latter. We all know the about the lure of rugged, tangy, straight-punch crime films, which much of Softly is. We’ve been there many, many times. So why not a crime film that goes for something else on top of the usual-usual? Ladies and gents, it’s okay with me.

KIlling Them Softly costars Scott McNarity, Ben Mendehlson during this morning’s press conference.

In reporting Tom Cruise‘s intention to star in an MGM remake of John Sturges‘ The Magnificent Seven (which was a remake of Akira Kuroswawa‘s The Seven Samurai), Variety‘s Jeff Snieder didn’t indicate whom Cruise would pay, but it would almost certainly be the Yul Brynner role — i.e., Chris. Or, you know, the Toshiro Mifune…whatever.

“No director onboard yet,” “the project is still a long ways off and is not in Cruise’s immediate plans,” “MGM has quietly started its search for a writer,” etc.

About 100 minutes ago roughly 40 Cannes journos were shown longish reels from three late ’12 Weinstein hot tamales — Paul Thomas Anderson‘s The Master (10.12), David O. Russell‘s The Silver Linings Playbook (11.21) and Quentin Tarantino‘s Django Unchained (12.25). A screening of No starts in 30 minutes so this has to be quick. Can’t-think, can’t-breathe quick. Okay, here goes…the clock is ticking.

The Master reel was exciting but it’s clearly going to be a complex, somewhat-out-there drama that doesn’t play the game. An “audience film” if the audience is filled with people like myself, Drew McWeeny, James Rocchi, Sasha Stone, Ira Parks, Anne Thompson and Pete Howell, but I don’t know about Joe Popcorn…but who knows? The sound was too loud. I couldn’t hear half the things that Phillip Seymour Hoffman was saying. The footage was longer and more varied than the currently-up teaser. Hoffman is clearly going to be the charismatic megalomaniac — confidence, swagger, drill-bit eyes. Joaquin Phoenix and Amy Adams , it appears, are going to fully alive and beating with the heart pump.

The Silver Linings Playbook looks fast and sharp — a raggedy-jazz comedy about caustic humor, family, sex, anxiety, therapy, hurt, healing…all of that. Directed and written by Russell, and adapted from the serio-comic novel by Matthew Quick. Agitated and lacking-in-people-skills Bradley Cooper falls in love with Jennifer Lawrence. It feels edgy and crackling and push-pushy and what-the-fucky. Robert De Niro, Julia Stiles, Jacki Weaver and Chris Tucker costar. Looks good for guys like me and Joe Popcorn, but we’ll see.

Django Unchained played the hottest of the three — big laughs, applause, whoops. Popcorn-plus entertainment in an old-Southern setting. Audacious attitude, swagger dialogue, fast gunplay and best of all, a former slave (Jamie Foxx) coming back to the plantation and whoopin’ on the overweight slave master who made his slave life hell. An audience film in spades. Can’t miss. Big money in all markets, thumbs-up reviews, the whole shot. That’s it, no more time.

It was hinted to me earlier that Roman Polanski, here for tonight’s Cannes Classics screening of Tess, might appear at this afternoon’s Studio Babelsberg party adjacent to the Grand Hotel. Didn’t happen. But he’s expected to take a bow and say a few words before tonight’s 7:30 screening of his 1979 film. He never grants interviews, but I went down to the Carlton anyway to leave a note and ask for a minute or two. Yeah, I know — my handwriting is dreadful.

Electric muscle car parked in front of the Carlton — Monday, 5.11, 5:20 pm.

A half hour ago Weinstein Co. publicists sent out two pro-quality video clips of the cast of The Sapphires singing two Motown tunes at last night’s party for the film. Much better quality than the thing I posted last night. But they got a song title wrong and so did Guy Lodge in his Variety review, so let’s clear this up.

The name of the 1965 Four Tops hit sung here is “Can’t Help Myself” and not “Sugar Pie Honey Bunch.” SPHB is a secondary parenthetical title, which Motown producers stuck in to remind people of the lead-off lyric. You can call it “Sugar Pie Honey Bunch” (knock yourself out) but the songwriters, Holland-Dozier-Holland, or the rights holders will beg to differ.

Here‘s the other tune performed last night, “I Heard It Through The Grapevine.”

Sasha Stone and I discussed a few Cannes films over lunch a few hours ago. You’ll need to read the reviews and then listen. We meandered, Tom Luddy said hello, the waiter brought the food, lots of ambient clitter-clatter. We should’ve tried harder but what’s done is done. Here’s a stand-alone mp3 link.