It seems rather fitting that in the week when the European Space Agency completed it’s staggering, ridiculous, visionary, 20 year project to land a probe on a comet flying at 135,000 km/h that Christopher Nolan would release his own staggering, ridiculous, visionary film. Interstellar is a film about human endeavor, but it's a film about cinematic endeavor too, and in a year when big money movie-making became increasingly ironic, and tediously self aware, the emotional plunge pool of seeing a work of this stature, with its heart located so prominently on-sleeve, is about as close as you can hope to get to a cathartic cinematic experience in such cynical times as these.

It simply says; Yes, we can do better. 

Deep breath and... Defiant, plucky, Matthew McConaughey plays the defiant, plucky, Cooper; a salt of the earth, blue collar, farming, engineering, ex-test pilot (and so on) in the not so distant future. We learn that food is running out; that the world's armies have been disbanded; and that over population peaked and was cruelly dealt with. Cascading dust clouds suggest that the worst is yet to come. 

A gravitational anomaly sends our blue jeans/white-T/ Carhartt wearing hero to a hidden NASA base where efforts are being made to find humanity a new home. We learn that the team has discovered a loophole at the arse-end of Saturn and that an expedition, named Lazarus, was sent through to find inhabitable worlds. We find the team back on earth collectively blowing on one last roll of the dice; a plan to form a new colony while they attempt to solve an equation which holds the key to getting the rest of us up there too. They soon ask Cooper to take the wheel. 

Supernovas of shit collide with orbiting fans.

Much like the worn out, battered, retro futurist, mid 21^st century technology which sends Cooper and his mates to space, the kinks in Interstellar’s design are there for all to see. Plot holes and potholes arrive in equal measure, the pacing tied up in loopholes and knots. You can feel the narrative trip up on itself time and time again and yet, through wholehearted balls-out sincerity, the film still triumphs. 

This is, after all, what it's all about. How often do we hear directors waxing on about capturing what it really felt like to “go to the movies”? Well. Here. It. Fucking. Is. Christopher Nolan truly believes in cinema, and space exploration, and the human experience. It's up there in every heartfelt 70mm frame (he even still shoots on those dusty old things). So hunt down the biggest IMAX theatre you can; sit precariously close to the screen. Feel your neck creak back; feel the faux leather squeak as you grip the armrest of your seat. Feel the great sweeps and blows of Hans Zimmer's chords; the crisp, stillness of Saturn's rings; the overwhelming vastness and silence of space; and the delicate wonder of our unique place within it.

And remember how it felt. Life’s terribly short after all... 

Relatively speaking of course.

 

After one of the most bizarre career slumps in recent memory, David Gordon Green is back doing what we all knew he did best. This isn't the one-stop return to earlier glories which we hoped it might have been but it does represent another finely taken stride.

Manglehorn stars a resurgent 74 year old Al Pacino as a lonesome locksmith in love with a cat. He lives a solitary life in his rundown home; writing endless letters to an unresponsive old flame, while his wealthy son stays distant. He passes the time playing slots and eating dinner in fluorescent lit bars and sterile restaurants until a friendly bank clerk finds a way to squeeze into his life.

It's an enjoyable watch thanks to Pacino's old pro performance, and it does bare Gordon Green's quiet Texan stamp, but a vague, nagging unresolved feeling remains that we never really knew this man. When used well, ambiguity can be one of cinema's most powerful weapons, but Green's super stylized rhythyms here work more to distract then enhance and a pretentious grand reveal late on does little to excite.

Green displays some of his more recent, less palatable tastes here- heavy dreamlike editing; an overuse of monologue-but he has returned to sort of scrap yard film making which once saw him hailed as American independent cinema's next big star. With Manglehorn, alongside Joe and Prince Avalanche (prize winners over the last two years in Venice and Berlin respectfully), however, the Texan is certainly back on track.  

Manglehorn is not the George Washington successor we still find ourselves pining for today, but it does suggest that we might not have to hold our breath much longer.

Tahir Rahim stars as an Armenian man who is stricken from his family home in Mardin, Turkey at the beginning of the Armenian genocide. We follow his brutal odyssey around the globe as he attempts to re unite with his two twin daughters. It doesn't have the class of Fatih Akin's earlier efforts by any means but this is still an ambitious, wide reaching, old school, sweeping epic which keeps the director's humanist passions burning at its core. 

The story charts a classic hero's quest. We meet Nazaret Manoogian as he is lifted from his home and separated from his loving wife and daughters. Nazaret must first survive gruelling labour and death squads in the Mesopotanian dessert before tragedy, and luck, intervene. Our hero finds work in a soap factory nearby as the situation gradually begins to settle down but when news of his daughters finally does arrive, he sets on a rather epic search to find them.



Heroes on such quests often harbor an ability which separates him from the rest, but Nazaret's, at first glance, doesn't seem like much of an ability at all. At one point early on, in the Mesopotamian dessert, he and a group of Armenian men are captured by a Turkish death squad and most of the group are slaughtered. Nazaret gets off with just a bad neck wound but it is enough to rob him of his voice. In other circumstances this would be a hindrance and, of course, it often holds him back, but Akin twists it the other way, turning our hero into a sort of silent witness to this tragically untold story. We watch an empire crumble into a thousand warring voices, but it is the man who cannot speak who guides us.

Many critics, it would seem, have been disappointed by the film's obvious efforts for wider appeal. Nazaret and the other Armenians speak English despite the fact that in the film, as far as I can tell, three other languages are spoken. The violence is shocking but it is painted in broad bloody strokes and, it must be said, this is not the only instance of an uncharacteristic heavy hand.

Simon Arkabian- one of the films leads, of Armenian descent- stated that this is not just the first film which  tackles the subject to have a potential for wide appeal; it is the first film to tackle the genocide full stop. It's difficult to say whether we are given a true sense of what went on but it is still an old-school gripping watch. We can only hope The Cut will not be the defining film on this atrocity, but if it can pry open that floodgate, even the tiniest bit, then it is surely worthwhile. We assume better is still to come from Fatih Akin, but his latest still demands a watch.

Three days into this year's Venice film festival and things are finally starting to clear. The San Polo alleyways seem that bit less narrow; the fruit and veg guys that bit easier to find. Over in the Salle Darsena, however, we found Documentary film maker Joshua Oppenheimer clearing up some smoke of a much darker kind.

Oppenheimer pillaged film festivals and newspaper copy the world over last year with The Act of Killing, his horrifying expose of Indonesia's U.S. supported slaughter of roughly one million supposed communists. Using his status as an American film maker, he convinced the aging death squad killers to get in front of the camera and re-enact the atrocities. The results were harrowing; unique; sensational. His follow up was shot a few years before that film's release, and it serves as the correct accompaniment to it.

The Look of Silence follows a local spectacles salesman called Adi. We learn that Adi lost his brother to the old regime but, having been born after the slaughter, he has been somewhat blinded to the horrors. Adi's brother's murder, we learn, was infamous amongst the militia men for the sheer scale of its brutality and so it was only a matter of time before it came on Oppenheimer's radar. When he eventually learned of this horrendous event, the director decided to track Adi down, reveal it to him, and then document the brave man's efforts to confront the men involved. 

Headstrong, dignified Adi only seeks some modicum of emotional resolution, so he calls upon those responsible armed with just his optical prescription test. The murderers themselves wish to see things clearer, not knowing that this unassuming optician seeks the same thing too; a central metaphor so neat it's almost difficult to believe.

Praise for this film will not be difficult to find so I will finish on a far less fashionable point. It can be difficult to get a real idea of the level of exploitation a documentary film has reached. How those involved put themselves in such positions of risk when the film maker, it would seem, has so little to lose? Adi was present in the press conference, looking shell-shocked but dignified, fielding questions on his family and loss in the most decadent room imaginable. The man has had to uproot his family and leave his country as Oppenheimer sits next to him, practically beaming, happily referencing his recent brush with the academy awards. 

His films, of course, will do an enormous amount of good, but there was just something there which did not sit right. The final question came when a reporter asked what his next project would be. The director stayed silent until the moderator repeated it: Oppenheimer then grinned from ear to ear "I heard, I bowed". Very few films will ever achieve what these remarkable documentaries have done, but perhaps we should look a little closer, that glistening transparency might just be murkier than we think.

Lets take a moment and think back to Venice 2003 and we find a young director from Mexico with his first feature in the English language. It's a gloomy examination of human suffering titled 21 Grams. Skip forward to today and we're back on the Lido. In the time which passed, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu has become one of the most respected directors in world cinema and, up until this week, his films have followed 21 Grams' same gloomy line. However, if the director’s career to this point has played to the bleak tones of a sinking Titanic quintet, his latest outing walks to the brash beat of free flowing jazz.

Birdman stars Michael Keaton as Rikkan Thomson; a goofy and deranged version of Keaton himself. Rikkan is a franchise actor of a certain age who hopes to reclaim artistic clout by writing, starring and directing in a Broadway play. We find him pouring his heart, soul and wallet into the production but of course, it’s driving him mad. The trope might sound a touch cliche, but what separates Birdman’s story arc from others which have come before is that our hero is haunted by the superhero role he's trying to leave behind. Voices are heard; powers envisioned; and everyone around him helps to twist the psychological knife.

Ed Norton lays waste to all sorts of scenery as one of those talented thesp-with-integrity types. Emma Stone does the rehab daughter; Zach Galifianakis does the long suffering agent; Andrea Riseborough does the want-away lover; each playing their respective parts in Keaton’s mental demise. 

An wild marvel of raw technical achievement; the film plays out entirely within the confines of the play’s production and, roughly, within the confines of the theatre itself. The setting is uncomfortably tight and claustrophobic, and it’s in these confines that master cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki plays his greatest trick card. 

There are some flashy Saul Bass looking credits at the beginning and a brief dream sequence late on but, apart from that, this 119m film is presented as one single flowing take. There’s a bit of scene stitching afoot- some good, some bad- but for a full-on jarring single-shot experience, Birdman emphatically pulls it off. Cameras float through windows in an otherworldly fashion, the story arc loosely jumping and skipping through time.

Add to all that the surrealist lighting; the flawless choreography; and the rattle of Antonio Sanchez' jazz drum score and you have a film not just of visual sophistication, but a remarkably singular experience too. 

In 2003 this fine director gave us a film with its eyes pointed down. 

He has returned this week with a boot through the saloon door. Big swingin' dick and all.

Alice Rohrwacher's second feature film is a semi biographical account of growing up in rural Tuscany told mainly through the eyes of a family's eldest child. It's simple in its set up; dreamlike in delivery; and transcendental in its beauty.

We meet Gelsomina. A 12 year old girl just getting to grips with life as she helps around on the family farm. The film focuses on, although not exclusively, her relationship with her father, her mother and her eldest sister. She has no brothers and so her hermetic father Wolfgang is determined to see her take over the family's lot. He's a bit of a brute but seems decent deep down. They take in a young German lad called Martin with some sort of juvenile record. Martin and Gelsomina can't speak a word to each other but there's no doubting young love's on the cards. One day out swimming the girls happen upon a Felliniesque looking TV shoot with Monica Bellucci as its Dolce Vita. The station are shooting an advert for an upcoming competition of local wonders and since Gelsomina has a particular knack for keeping bees, she decides to throw in. 

Director Alice Rohrwacher grew up in rural Tuscany to a beekeeping father so we can presume the film to be biographical, to some extent at least. Whatever the case though that familiarity shows. She paints such a perfect portrait of rural Europe in the early 90's that you genuinely believe you are looking at a family which is vividly real. Rohrwacher draws marvelous performances from both of her young leads, who bring shyness, natural humour and charm in spades. Their pastel leggings and baggy jumpers feel heavy with authenticity too and Hélène Louvart's 16mm photography is near flawless in its execution. Indeed, as anyone who grew up in the 90's can attest, not a single frame would look out of place in any scrapbook of that time. 

As the minutes float by, you get a real sense that the director has put her heart and soul up there on screen. The picture seems to ache with the pains of being that age. Gelsomina feels ready to shift more into adulthood but her father struggles to accept that she's no longer a child. The imagery flourishes with innocence and youth- the magic of a beam of light, the weight of a pile of spilled honey- but also writhes with growing pains too. Gelsomina and her closest sister often bond over their favourite song, but when it comes on the radio- with Martin in the room- she lashes out at her in shame. The young girl is devastated; a sting of rejection we all shudder to know.

The titular Wonders of this stunning film are of the competition Gelsomina enters but, of course, this is a film seeped in the wonders of growing up too. The girls look at Monica Belushi's TV presenter as if she were some rare bird of paradise, like nothing they've ever seen. A TV shoot in a cave might have been picked from one of Werner Herzog's more vibrant dreams. With all the struggles that come with film festivals- the cost, the lackluster films, the sardine tin squeeze- these occasions can be jading to even the most wide eyed and earnest of viewers. You can find yourself drained at times but then, right when you least expect it, something comes along and gets right underneath your skin; blows away the cobwebs; and, if it's really really good, gives a moment of clarity to all that overwhelming chaos of life. 

The packed out Salle Debussy relegated me to a seat on the balcony's extreme left, a tower of speakers blocking off 10% of the left of screen, but it didn't matter. I will be astonished to see a better film at this year's Cannes film festival or beyond that even for 2014. With weighted austere fare like Mr. Turner and Winter Sleep in the mix, prizes might prove hard to come by, but with Jane Campion heading the jury, Ms Rohrwacher might just be in luck. 

Whatever the case, as thing's stand we'll be routing for her this evening. Truly life affirming stuff.

As the Cannes film festival begins to wind down we happen upon- reportedly- Ken Loach's final narrative feature. Jimmy's Hall is a quaint sort of outing- and the acting at times can let it down- but as an impassioned, well researched and idealistic study, it’s up there with the director's best.

The plot follows the true life story of Jimmy Gralton, a socialist from Leitrim who moved to the States after the civil war only to return ten years later to his local town. At the bequest of his neighbours he decides to rebuild the village’s community centre; the Pearce & Connolly Hall. Jimmy reinstates painting, literature and singing classes along with nights of Jazz music (god forbid!) with the records he brought home. The hall seems to light the whole town up but, of course, falls foul of the local establishment. The priest (Jim Norton in full bishop Brennan mode) is first to denounce him as a communist before the blueshirts follow suit.

Loach hones in on a very delicate moment in Irish politics here, a crossroads of sorts between the war of Independence’s conclusion and the beginning of the troubles in the North. Similar to the post war years in Britain; a subject which has always been close to the director’s heart, his argument is of a missed opportunity for a socialist Ireland. The detail in clothing and the Offaly landscape are all presented beautifully through Robbie Ryan’s gorgeous photography but a sense of realism is hard to get a hold of and, regrettably, that's due to the surprisingly poor cast. It’s not a criticism you would normally level at Loach, the director often works wonders with nonprofessional actors, but here it really can’t be denied. The lines come out a bit too clunky, the speeches a touch too brash. This isn’t to say the film doesn’t work as such- it's still a fine, thoughtful, impassioned piece of work- but the flaws are still apparent.

A sure sense of pride was still on offer for any Irish attendees in the packed out Salle Lumiere. Dotted cheers could be heard for the Irish Film Board logo, as were belly laughs for some of the more colloquial lines, but all in all the response was warm. The film was met with a rousing applause and a good round of clapping-along could be heard as the credits' music rolled.

The director has been here a record 13 times before and if rumours are to be true this could very well be his last. He hasn't exactly ended on a classic per se but Jimmy’s Hall is still a pleasant end to the affair.

Right, lets attempt to sum up this brilliant film with as few music cliches as possible.

Damien Chazalle's exhilarating; Sundance conquering Whiplash tells the story of a music college showdown between a determined young jazz drummer and the sociopath conductor of the school's prestigious ensemble band. The film is 105 minutes long.

It feels like 10.

Miles Teller plays compulsively ambitious drummer Andrew Neyman, a first year student at a high end music university in New York. He is handpicked by the school's ruthless, perfectionist ensemble conductor Terrence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons, all guns blazing) to be the alternate drummer in his band. This is all set up incredibly fast and the film plays out from here largely as one great big staring contest of the nerves. Fletcher susses his student out immediately; an only child from an unmusical family, gifted but naive about being a great; and proceeds to lift his little finger and duly wrap the boy around it. Neyman is desperate to please this new father figure; show the folks back home that they were all wrong; and fulfill the destiny he himself has laid out. To get where he wants to be he's willing to throw his girlfriend, his relationships and his own general well being under the proverbial bus- or truck as the case may be.

All of these subplots are of little consequence though, the film plays out mainly as a battle between its two remarkable leads. J.K. Simmons looks like his life has been leading up to the moment, a magnanimous muscular presence with all the best lines too. Miles Teller isn't playing against type necessarily but he gets to do a lot more than wave his usual charming shtick (although thankfully a peripheral love interest allows him to do a bit of that too). 

The director- no surprises a jazz drummer himself- conducts their showdown scenes with great big brash strokes; all nerve racking intensity and high tempo (300 words, had to happen) rat-a-tat editing. You can just feel yourself being pummeled into the seat, teeth clenched, desperate for a release. The final twenty minutes are some of the most intense this writer has ever seen and if the finale was deafening, the applause which followed in the Theater Croisette was even more so. People jumped from their seats to a standing ovation which lasted the entirety of the credits and beyond. It was like we'd all won promotion to the Premier league, a truly rousing festival moment, one I hope never to forget.

I shook the director's hand on the way out. It was trembling more than mine.

On the fifth day of this year's Cannes film festival we find a bright young director using a clever horror concept to explore the sexual politics of a group of American teens. 

A camera pans in and we're off the blocks. We're in suburbia and the early Autumn leaves have already turned brown. A girl runs screaming from the house and makes a run for the car. We cut to the following morning and she doesn't look quite so well and for now, nothing is explained. We move on to a new group led by the nubile blond haired Jay (Maika Monroe, looking like a young domestic Chloe Sevigny). They're a normal bunch of kids, made up of Jay, her younger sister, their long friend Paul and the bookish bespectacled Yara.

Jay goes to the flicks with a boy and one thing naturally leads to the other. The pair wind down in the back seat of a car before the boy pulls a chloroform rag and proceeds to knock Jay out. She wakes up tied to a chair with her date in the room. He explains that he's given her a curse of some sort and that her only chance of salvation is to have sex as soon as she can to pass it on. The curse sets a malevolent ghostly specter loose who slowly chases its victims down in whatever form it so pleases to take. We spend the remainder of the film on edge wondering exactly who will be getting it (so to speak) next.



David Robert Mitchell broke onto the scene at SXSW back in 2010 where he picked up a special jury award for The Myth of the American Sleepover, another film with fresh views on these particular growing pains. His work immediately brings to mind luminaries like John Carpenter, Wes Craven and Dario Argento but there is a clear freshness to this voice which we expect to hear more of. 

What is the young man getting at. Is it a comment on the reckless attitude to sexually transmitted diseases? Or perhaps on the lengths some people are willing to go... 

Our interest has been piqued Mr. Mitchell. We'll be keeping an eye.

This tricky Hollywood satire from legendary Canadian director David Cronenberg is a fuming tirade, on that certain breed of L.A. living, that isn't afraid to cut to tinsel town's bone.

Ethereal Mia Wasikowska plays ethereal burn victim Agatha Weiss who we're told has just arrived on the Hollywood hills. She drives around with chauffer Robert Pattinson (money apparently of no consequence) before taking a PA job with Havana Segrand; a collagen lipped, foul mouthed actress (brilliant, rowdy Julianne Moore) on the cusp of ‘a certain age’. We learn that Segrand's mother was nominated for an Academy award before passing away at a very young age. She visits Havana as a spectre, forever beautiful through death. The studio plans a remake of the mother’s acclaimed “art film” and Havana is desperate to land the lead role.

The actress' self empowerment, sexual yoga therapist (or whatever the hell John Cusack is) has a son (a delightfully detestable Evan Bird) in the movies too. He just made it big with something called Bad Babysitter, and a sequel, of course, is tentatively in the works. Paths cross; secrets are revealed; it all gets very risqué.

We learn at one point that Wasikowska's parents are siblings and there are similar incestuous references throughout. In the junket that followed the screening Cronenberg stated that the incest on show is more emblematic of the creative incest we see in Hollywood today; the rehashing of ideas and drawn out franchise culture leaving little room for anything else to get by. 

It's important to note that the director had never shot a film in Hollywood before so kudos should be given for wanting to hold up a mirror on the place's infamous bizarro lifestyles. The film certainly seems pissed at the state of affairs, taking shots at yoga culture, youth obsession, sexual currency and all the rest of the postcode's generally depraved morals. The death of a child is celebrated for freeing up a role, a murder mourned for somewhat the same. 

Is this the comeback we were pining for? Regrettably it's not, but it is far cleaner than its predecessor Cosmopolis (which I still quite liked) and as ever with the prolific director, things are never ever dull. 

Bennett Miller's third feature film concerns the true life story of billionaire John E. Du Pont, who murdered Olympic champion wrestler Dave Schultz in 1996. A classy; bleak; and utterly gripping portrait which boasts a remarkably off type- although still quite funny- performance from Steve Carell.

Channing Tatum play's Dave's younger brother Mark, a gold medal wrestler himself who has always struggled to escape his older sibling's shadow. He's in between championships, training daily and struggling to get by. One day he receives an invitation from John Du Pont (Carell in prosthetic nose and mumbling tone)to meet him on his family's Foxcatcher farm where the athlete is offered a cozy new set of affairs if he is willing to train for the Foxcatcher team. Du Pont speaks in American hyperbole, seducing his prize with talk of heroism, patriotism and all that bag. At first the billionaire hopes to lure both brothers to the team but, when told Dave can't be bought, settles instead for Mark.

Du Pont fancies himself as some sort of sporting leader but he's a full blooded charlatan (not to mention an out of shape one too). He's no sort of couch at all in fact but still the two unloved characters form a bond. It almost boarders on Behind the Candelabra at times- confined to each other's company; Schultz slowly losing his way to drugs and booze- that is until Du Pont's mother dearest (a reliably disapproving Vanessa Redgrave) arrives on the screen and the wayward son's intentions become immediately clear. DuPont blows a fuse and, with new-found determination, lures Dave to the team too. Shit promptly connects with fan.

With Capote and Moneyball already in the bag, Foxcatcher represents an almost eye watering hat trick of debut films (not to mention snappy one-word titles) for the director. Miller picks his true life subjects with a stiletto sharp intelligence, always with great fascination, never afraid to wade into the darker recesses of the American psyche. Foxcatcher is a fine meditation on ruthless competitiveness, but more acutely of the mind of its beta male killer. As the trailers have suggested, Steve Carell is a revelation in the role. Playing against type to the Nth degree, his pitiful brat billionaire is a frightening and pitiable creation and a sure game changer for the affable star.

Perhaps most interesting is how Miller decides to use his story’s focal moment. Every synopsis leading up to this release has been quick to mention Du Pont's crime and the knowing alone is profoundly powerful, not least in the scenes between Du Pont and Mark Ruffalo's Dave. The results are bleak, incredibly tense and really quite brilliant. Will it start a conversation on audience obsession with spoilers? We doubt it, but perhaps it’s time we do. 

We feel we’ll be mulling this one over for days. It's safe to presume that awards for Carell will follow, although with Spall’s J.M.W. Turner in the race, perhaps they won't start here. Whatever the case, the Monday sky hangs fittingly bleak over the Croisette today...

Ruptured family ties and small town racist feuds come to a head in the English North West for music video director Daniel Wolff's visceral, startling feature debut.

We meet Laila and Aaron. Two young star crossed lovers in a grim rural town. They sit around smoking joints- as do pretty much everyone else in town- as there's not much better to do. They're reckless and bored but find an innocence and contentment in each others' company. The two keep to themselves in a run down caravan but as one is white and the other Pakistani, the local hoods from both sides seem to have other ideas. Taking place over the course of roughly one day, the film follows its two young leads as they are tracked on one side by a looming drug dealer and his older sidekick and on the other by Laila's father's goons. 

Wolff and cinematographer Robbie Ryan (fresh from his celebrated work on Philomena) do a tremendous job of setting up their colloquial scene, making no attempt whatsoever to articulate the local's thick drawl. Critics this week have been saying how the enjoyment of Mr. Turner, with all its Dickensian language, might be somehow lessened for those without English as their spoken tongue. Of course this is the case with any film language to some extent, but the thickness of the lilt here feels like a character all its own. As well as that, the town itself looks like something from a bad Romain Gavras camper-van holiday- all hot drinkable Bovril, flickering synthetic fireplaces and dive bars humming with slot machine glow. It's horrible, it's bitter cold, and you feel it to the bone.

Like many of the artists who seem to have a mark on this film- Glazer, Corbijn, Gavras et al- Wolff comes from the well trodden path of music video to feature director. He gave jake gyllenhaal that bizarre role in The Shoes' Time to Dance last year and with Catch me Daddy, he offers an assured first stab at the big screen. The final act veers rather drastically off course, like chasing that last buzz when you know it's time to go home, but still we left the 8:30 screening like some droogs from an early house; dazzled, wide eyed and buzzing for more.

There are times at these sorts of festivals when something comes along so great that it can fill even the most jaded of critics with vitality to go on. Then there are the times when that certain lift comes from quite the opposite, and so it is that at Cannes 2014, Ned Benson's The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby wears that crown. A pretentious, cliche heavy romance wearing the ill-fitting jacket of the high brow.

It stars Jessica Chastain and James McAvoy with supporting roles for Ciaran Hinds, Viola Davis, Bill Hader and Isabelle Huppert. The cinematographer, Christopher Blauvelt, has worked with Sophia Coppola, Kelly Reichardt, Spike Jonze and David Fincher. Not only is Benson's film not the sum of all these wonderful parts, it seems to take them out, have its way with them and leave a scrunched up tener on the bedside table.

The film is the third installment of Benson's high concept trilogy. The first two (Him and Her) focus on the same period of time but respectively, from each lover's perspective. For this third installment Benson has amalgamated the two into a 2 hour train wreck. We meet Chastain as the titular lead (a Beatles reference which is remarked on only once in the film's entirety) just as she jumps off the Manhatten bridge. She survives the fall and returns to her family as her old squeeze Conor (McAvoy) delicately attempts to re-enter her life. She joins Viola Davis' university course on finding identity (seriously) as Conor and his Chef (Hader) struggle to keep his restaurant afloat. The reasons for Eleanor's suicide filter out and the plot slowly thickens...

It's quite incredible the level which Benson attempts to mask his clunky script. The cliches alone are just bizarre. They do the dancing to 80's music in a parked car's headlights thing. They do the running from the restaurant without paying the bill thing. All of this would be somewhat ok in a usual movie romance but the film fails in the sordid belief that it is something more. 

On top of all this there's just so little to like about everyone (bar Hader) involved. The tragedy of course is terrible but, all else considered, their lives are a breeze. Oh, your restaraunt went bankrupt and closed down? No sweat, just take over your Dad's booming business. And what's that? You dropped out of your course after a class and a half? Forget it, my friend lectures in Paris, just move there, it's not like you have a job or anything to worry about. The stomach duly turns. 

We could go on- oh we really could- but if there is one culprit for this horrific wreck then it must be Benson's script. Like Cormac McCarthy's overwrought screenplay for The Councillor, you truly get the feeling that the actors don't believe a word they are saying, so as a viewer, all you are left to do is follow suit. So with that in mind, we'll leave you with a few choice quotes, so we can all just move on with our lives.

"You're from the generation with too many choices"

- Viola Davis as she orders a ridiculously niche espresso blend.

"Tragedy is like a foreign country, and I don't know the natives"

- Eleanor's father's excuse for referring her to his psychiatrist friend

McAvoy: "It feels like we're living some sort of disaster cliche..."

Chastain: "We are."

Unequivocally, there is simply nothing left to say.

Stories We Tell
Sarah Polley

She moved us with Away from Her and divided us with Take this Waltz, now actor turned director Sarah Polley brings her most remarkable film to German shores. Using documentary as her toolkit and pivoting her story on interviews with her family and the eloquent, heart wrenching narration of her nurturing dad Mike, Polley sets out to finally determine who her biological father is but instead finds something stranger. A devastating, beautiful film about fatherhood and memory, Stories We Tell picks apart the documentary rulebook before opening a window to that most endearing of bonds.

Tracks
John Curran

Mia Wasikowska gives a windswept, organic central performance in this walkabout film that stays light on its feet while sidestepping many of the pseudo spiritual pitfalls these types of self discovery adaptations tend to take.

She plays Robyn Davidson. An Australian woman who in 1977 set out with her dog Digitty- and four Camels whom she had personally trained- to walk from Alice Springs to  the west coast, a journey of roughly 1,700 miles. She tells us she’s sick of the pessimism of her class, sex and generation. We also learn that she lost her mum. To fund her trip she accepts a deal with the national geographic for a concluding article on her journey and for a photographer (played by rising star Adam Driver) to join her at certain points along the way. He seems to represent everything she’s trying to escape and yet, the two form a bond.

Expressing such raw free spirited emotion on an often populist and, let’s be honest, capitalist medium can prove awfully tricky. Pretention seems to lurk at every corner and yet director John Curran looks to have pulled it off. He keeps things grounded and natural while capturing all of the skin tones, hues and shades which his native outback has to offer. Worth the journey.

A Long Way Down
Pascal Chaumeil

Jesse, Jesse, Jesse… What happened bitch? A mere six months after the Breaking Bad curtain rapturously closed, co-star Aaron Paul finds himself in the cinematic wilderness. His latest subpar outing is a Nick Hornby adaptation (a wandering cinematic beast all its own) which finds four would-be suicides (autopilot Pierce Brosnon, misused Toni Collette, irritating Imogen Poots) on the roof of London’s fictional Toppers House on new year’s eve. The group form a pact to keep themselves intact till Valentine’s Day and worthless schmaltz ensues. Do us all a favour and jump.

A retired professor and a young female escort spend a Tokyo night and day together in this patient film from celebrated director Abbas Kiarostami. Forever obsessed with people talking in cars, that’s exactly where this film, for the most part, takes place. The high-rise Tokyo backdrop merely acts as a windshield reflection as his characters skim the surface of everyday life. The abrupt conclusion might rub some the wrong way but this remains a crisp, humanist film of near transcendental beauty. 

Upon first viewing of this wide eyed retelling of Walt Disney’s attempt to win the production rights to Mary Poppins one could be forgiven for feeling much like Emma Thompson’s P.L. Travers- eyes set to roll, cynicisms at the ready- but despite its blatant fabrications, the film’s charms, much like those of the studio it portrays, can be difficult to resist.

With flashbacks of her childhood throughout, the story’s main arc follows Travers on her first trip to Los Angeles- financial difficulties having finally forced the author to consider the advances of a determined Walt Disney to bring her beloved character to the big screen. She sees her creation as quite realist fare and so fights her corner on everything from animated penguins to the Sherman brothers’ now iconic songs. Of course we all know the outcome so the fun comes in seeing Tom Hanks’ bumbling Walt trying to woo the cold dame over.

Is the Mouse House attempting to cement Disney into our collective psyche as America’s most beloved leading man instead of the alleged chain smoking anti-Semitic chauvinist of whom we’ve heard? Presumably so. But then again, perhaps such sunshine and fantasy is profoundly fitting. A spoonful of sugar indeed.