May 17, 2015 CANNES — 2015 is the year that art-house directors loaded their competition chances in Cannes by utilizing Hollywood A-listers to beef up their movies.
Matteo Garrone (“Tale of Tales”), Justin Kurzel (“Macbeth”), Michael Franco (“Chronic”), Paolo Sorrentino (“Youth”), Denis Villeneuve (“Sicario”), Yorgos Lanthimos (“The Lobster”), Gus Van Sant (“The Sea of Trees”), and Danish auteur Joachim Trier (“Louder Than Bombs”) all feature big name American stars in films that are about as far from typical Hollywood productions as you can get.
Still, not even Matthew McConaughey’s presence can do much for Van Sant’s latest snooze fest. Speaking of sleepy movies, Natalie Portman's directorial debut "A Tale of Love and Darkness" caused more than a few audience members to go into snore-mode.
With three features under his belt, Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos keeps improving in baby steps. Each film gets a little bit better than the last. “The Lobster” is his best film to date, behind such time-wasters as “Dogtooth” and “Alpes” but decent performances by Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz can’t elevate “The Lobster’s” flawed source material. The movie is mediocre at best. Perhaps, in another five movies, Lanthimos will make a good one.
“Sicario” is Denis Villeneuve’s drama about a lawless no-man’s-land between America and Mexico where Emily Blunt’s FBI agent Kate Mercer is brought in to battle America’s wrongheaded war on drugs. Benicio Del Toro also stars in what promises to be a gritty political thriller.
It remains to be seen whether the ever-annoying Jesse Eisenberg can pull off a naturalistic performance in Joachim Trier’s “Louder Than Bombs,” which also stars Amy Ryan, David Strathairn, Gabriel Byrne, and the ubiquitous Isabelle Huppert.
More promise lies in Paolo Sorrentino’s “Youth,” which features Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel as a couple of old friends facing the last days of their lives on vacation in a plush hotel in the foothills of the Alps. If I were placing odds on which of the 18 films competing for this year’s Palme d’Or has the best chance of winning, I’d put my money on “Youth.”
