★★★ First, the good news. Just Philippot’s Acide (2023) has arguably the strongest horror concept since David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows (2014) and Jordan Peele’s Get Out (2017). All feature such a palpably nightmarish sense of the inescapable. And the bad news? Phillipot doesn’t have the budget at hand to ...
★★★★★ A bucolic idyll. A summer's day spent by the river with family. A walk home through verdant woodland serenely lit by golden sunlight filtering through the canopy. Nature's cathedral. The sound of a woodpecker drumming a tree trunk somewhere in the distance. Or it machinegun fire? Jonathan Glazer’s The ...
★★★★ After unexpectedly venturing into sci-fi monster territory with 2016’s The Untamed, Mexican director Amat Escalante is back on more familiar ground with his latest, Lost in the Night (2023), showing in the Cannes Premiere strand of the festival. Emiliano’s mother has gone missing. A local activist fighting off a ...
★★ Johnny Depp makes a return to the big screen in Maïwenn’s 76th Festival de Cannes-opener Jeanne du Barry (2023), performing in the French language and delivering a low-key performance a million miles away from the drunken shtick of Jack Sparrow and eccentric characters for Tim Burton. It is a ...