185 posts categorized "Cannes Film Festival"

January 06, 2025

THE SUBSTANCE — CANNES 2024

Jo JoWelcome!

Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does.

Punk heart still beating.

This ad-free website is dedicated to Agnès Varda and to Luis Buñuel.

Get cool rewards when you click on the button to pledge your support through Patreon.

Thanks a lot acorns!

Your kind generosity keeps the reviews coming!

Cheers!

ColeSmithey.com

 

ColeSmithey.com

 

ColeSmithey.comIf you've seen Alain Robak's hilarious 1990 horror blitz "Baby Blood," then you'll have some inkling for the wonderful gnarly extremes that "The Substance" delivers to its well deserving audience.

Writer/director Coralie Fargeat creates the most satisfying horror satire to come along maybe ever.

David Cronenberg must be falling over himself with jealousy.

Fargeat deftly quotes from films by such directors as Alfred Hitchcock, David Lynch, Stanley Kubrick, Darren Aronofsky, David Cronenberg, and Brian DePalma.

ColeSmithey.com

The Easter eggs just keep on coming. The special effects are amazing.

ColeSmithey.com

Taking a cue from Oscar Wilde's "The Picture Of Dorian Gray," Coralie Fargeat crafts a diamond-sharp satire that cuts in all directions at once.

ColeSmithey.com

Elisabeth (Demi Moore) is a wealthy L.A. television personality being pushed out of her job by corporate misogynist in-charge (Dennis Quaid).

ColeSmithey.com

Science comes calling after Elisabeth miraculously survives a car crash that puts her in the dubious medical hands of a shadow pharma company peddling a black market drug kit. The works give the user the ability to create a younger version of themself that they then trade off living between for seven day increments.

ColeSmithey.com

Margaret Qualley blows up the screen as Sue, Elisabeth's cunning younger, more beautiful, incarnation. Force of nature.

ColeSmithey.com

Vanity, jealousy, money, and fame make for a toxic Molotov cocktail of bad decisions.

ColeSmithey.com

Here is a whole lot of movie with some very poignant ideas about culture.

ColeSmithey.com

"The Substance" explodes with wit, heart, soul, and a whole lot of blood and guts.

ColeSmithey.com

What fun!

Rated R. 141 mins. 5 Stars

Cozy Cole

ColeSmithey.com

October 14, 2024

ANORA — CANNES 2024

Jo JoWelcome!

Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does.

Punk heart still beating.

This ad-free website is dedicated to Agnès Varda and to Luis Buñuel.

Get cool rewards when you click on the button to pledge your support through Patreon.

Thanks a lot acorns!

Your kind generosity keeps the reviews coming!

Cheers!

ColeSmithey.com

 

LOVE FOR SALE:

SEAN BAKER'S CINEMA OF SATISFACTION

ColeSmithey.comSean Baker has stepped firmly into the role of America's most sophisticated, articulate, and socially meaningful filmmaker.

Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Richard Linklater, Ken Loach, and Mike Leigh should be falling over themselves, praising Sean Baker for his filmmaking gifts.

Not the least of which is Mr. Baker's seamless ability to slip intimately between American regions (Florida, Texas, New York City) to create thoroughly researched, locality specific, stories that ring like a bell with authenticity and humor.

ColeSmithey.com

Sex-work in America is the topic that Sean Baker continues to mine in all of his films.

ColeSmithey.com

Mikey Madison takes no prisoners in her fearless performance as Anora. Russian/American "Ani" works at a Brighton Beach strip club where she meets Vanya (Mark Eidelshtein), the over-privileged son to Russian oligarch, Nikolai Zakharov (Aleksey Serebryakov). 

ColeSmithey.com

Shit hits the fan when Vanya's filthy rich folks find out that their son and a stripper are a thing.

Darya Ekamasova is hilarious as Galina Zakharov, a woman with way too much money and power. 

ColeSmithey.com

The film's remarkable ensemble cast feeds on the material to achieve incredible set-piece action sequences that explode like indoor fireworks.

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"Anora," is yet another film (behind "Starlet," "Tangerine," "The Florida Project," and "Red Rocket") that Mr. Baker wrote, cast, directed, and edited, is yet another quantum leap in modernday cinematic storytelling.

This is a movie that gets into your bones.

Anora

It is inspiring that Sean Baker is able to write screenplays with such precise novelistic detail about people interacting in overlooked aspects of day-to-day life in America.

Mr. Baker's dialogue is modernday Shakespearean.

Just stunning.

ColeSmithey.com

You want Neo-Modern-Realist Cinema, well here it is. Serious adult filmmaking doesn't get any better than this. All NYU film students should be studying Mr. Baker's films.

ColeSmithey.com

You can easily tell in its first 15 minutes why "Anora" won the coveted Palme d'Or at Cannes.

"Anora" is a winner, and an instant classic of American Independent Cinema.

Rated R. 140 mins.

5 Stars

Cozy Cole

ColeSmithey.com

September 29, 2024

CALIGULA: THE ULTIMATE CUT

Welcome! ColeSmithey.com

Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does. This ad-free website is dedicated to Agnès Varda and to Luis Buñuel.

Punk heart still beating.

Get cool rewards when you click on the button to pledge your support through Patreon.

Thanks a lot acorns!

Your kind generosity keeps the reviews coming!

ColeSmithey.com

 

ColeSmithey.com"Caligula: The Ultimate Cut" is an apt title for this cinematic abomination. If you have already seen "Caligula" then you are well aware of just how twisted and exciting that film is for its sheer audacity.

"43 years after the 1980 release of historical epic CALIGULA, producer and reconstructionist Thomas Negovan has realized the creators' original vision."

What a load of bullshit.

ColeSmithey.com

Thomas Negovan has effectively drained all of the lifeblood from the Tinto Brass-directed film that Bob Guccione was clever enough to spice up with outrageous sex scenes. What remains is barely even watchable.

ColeSmithey.com

The outre sex spectacles of the original film are the very thing that make this 1979 movie the masterpiece that it is.

Thomas Neogovan makes a punk move by attempting to usurp the original version for his own stupid ego. Foolio.

ColeSmithey.com

Here is sexploitation in reverse. It's 22 minutes longer than the original, and boy does it feel like it.

Don't waste your time on this wrongheaded exercise in entropy.

Not Rated. 178 mins.

Zero StarsZERO STARS

Cozy Cole

ColeSmithey.com

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