Another Year
Director: Mike Leigh
Mike Leigh is famously tight-lipped about his films, and plot details surrounding
Another Year are hard to come by—likely because the director is famous for his improvisational style. What is clear so far: The film is a comedic drama about a middle-aged couple, and it stars Jim Broadbent, Ruth Sheen, and Oliver Maltman. Leigh has a rich history at Cannes, including a win for Best Director for
Naked in 1993 and the Palme d’Or for
Secrets and Lies in 1996. His latest film,
Happy-Go-Lucky, was an unexpected critical darling and its cheerful leading lady, Sally Hawkins, scooped up a number of awards, including a Golden Globe in 2008.
Another Year will undoubtedly make a play for this year’s Palme d’Or, a competition that no other British movie has entered.
Biutiful
Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
Javier Bardem is selective when it comes to choosing projects, but it’s hard to turn down Inarritu. The gritty director of
Amores Perros,
21 Grams, and
Babel next turned his lens to
Biutiful, a Spanish-language thriller shot in Barcelona. Bardem plays Uxbal, a man involved in a smattering of illegal happenings who has a run-in with a childhood friend turned police officer.
Biutiful was already getting Oscar buzz last year, and Inarritu has a winning history at Cannes.
Amores Perros received the Best Film award in 2000 by the Semaine del la Critique and went on to gross $20 million worldwide. Expect the critics to lap up
Biutiful—and for Bardem’s awkward appearance in
Love in the Time of Cholera to be erased from your memory.
Fair Game
Director:: Doug Liman
Naomi Watts and Sean Penn come together in Doug Liman’s story of Valerie Plame, the undercover CIA agent outed in a Robert Novak column. Penn plays Plame’s husband Joseph Wilson, the U.S. diplomat who penned a column that cast doubt on the Bush administration’s claim that Saddam Hussein was buying enriched uranium in Africa. Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth wrote the screenplay based on Plame’s memoir and Wilson’s book
The Politics of Truth. Also making appearances in the film are Ari Fleischer, Scooter Libby, and the director of CIA operations. Liman has a wide range—he’s best-known for the Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau megahit
Swingers, but also has a knack for slick diplomatic dramas, evidenced by
The Bourne Identity in 2001. Summit Entertainment already acquired the drama, so perhaps truth really is stranger—and even sells better—than fiction.
Blue Valentine
Director:: Derek Cianfrance
Derek Cianfrance’s portrait of American marriage stars Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams as a couple struggling to salvage a once-sunny relationship. The film played well at Sundance, where it was nominated for the Grand Jury prize. Cianfrance gained indie credibility with
Brother Tied,
Streets of Legend, and
Metalhead, but his high-profile stars—and their racy sex scenes—are drawing even more attention to his latest project. Gosling has had a busy year, signing on to narrate the documentary
ReGeneration and acting in
All Good Things with Kirsten Dunst and Kristen Wiig.
Blue Valentine is his most artful turn of the year, if not his most scandalous, and the film’s expected to be well-received at Cannes.
Abel
Director: Diego Luna
Diego Luna’s feature film directorial debut is the story of 9-year-old Abel, a troubled young boy who suffers a breakdown resulting in years of hospitalization. Abel returns home to his single mother, little brother, and older sister and adopts the affectations of a father figure—ordering around his siblings and interrogating a potential boyfriend of his sister. Early reviews suggest Christopher Ruiz-Esparza shines in his acting debut in the complicated titular role, and that Luna fills each scene with attention and realism.
Countdown to Zero
Director: Lucy Walker
Producer Lawrence Bender is well-versed in documentaries—he helped Al Gore and
An Inconvenient Truth make global warming a topic accessible for the masses. Now he and director Lucy Walker have set their sights on nuclear disarmament. The film features a who’s who list of those involved in nuclear negotiations for the past half-century: Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev, Tony Blair, Robert McNamara, Pervez Musharraf, and even Valerie Plame Wilson comment on the nebulous state of nuclear arms in today’s world. Bender—certainly aware of the effect
An Inconvenient Truth had on the politics of global warming—
says that he hopes the film will “not only make people aware of the scope of this threat, but will also help create the political will necessary to ensure that the Senate ratifies the New START Treaty without delay or partisan bickering.” Can they bring a light touch to a heavy topic?
Inside Job
Director: Charles Ferguson
Matt Damon narrates
Inside Job, Charles Ferguson’s continent-hopping documentary about the global financial meltdown. Ferguson was honored with an Academy Award nomination for
No End in Sight, a documentary on the Iraq War, and
Inside Job was chosen for a special screening at Cannes. It’s already been sold to Sony Pictures Classic, which is set to compete at Cannes with three films, including
Tamara Drewe and
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger.
Kaboom
Director: Gregg Araki
With characters named “The Messiah,” “Drug Fairy Nymph,” “Thor,” and “Red-headed girl,” Gregg Araki’s
Kaboom has been
called a “hyper-stylized
Twin Peaks for the Coachella generation.” Part sci-fi thriller, part tale of an 18-year-old’s sexual awakening, the film stars Thomas Dekker, a TV staple who has had roles ranging from
Heroes to
7th Heaven. Araki’s 2004
Mysterious Skin cemented Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a talented young actor to watch, and his films have placed the director at the top of the New Queer Cinema movement.
Kaboom attempts to blend sci-fi and a murder mystery with sexual exploration and hallucinogens. The result? Definitely worthy of Cannes.
Robin Hood
Director: Ridley Scott
The
Gladiator director’s Scott Free Productions is making the festival rounds this year:
Welcome to the Rileys starring Kristen Stewart debuted at Sundance, and now
Robin Hood is slated to open Cannes. Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett, and William Hurt star in the tale of the hero archer in Richard Coeur de Lion’s army. The script, originally for a project entitled
Nottingham, was rewritten at Scott’s request. Crowe reportedly trained at the bow and arrow for four months, and is now able to hit a target from 45 feet. That may be useful—Todd McCarthy (formerly of Variety and now at indieWire)
panned the film as far below
Gladiator but still better than Kevin Costner’s 1991 iteration.
Tamara Drewe
Director: Stephen Frears
From the director of
The Queen and
High Fidelity comes
Tamara Drewe, starring British actress Gemma Arterton as the title character. Drewe is a young newspaper columnist who undergoes a nose job that transforms her into a seductress and the flame of writers at a local retreat in her hometown, where she has gone to fix up her childhood home for sale. The film is culled from a comic strip that was inked by Posy Simmonds and originally ran in The Guardian.
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
Director: Oliver Stone
Critics might well greet Oliver Stone’s film with a collective “finally!” The movie was delayed multiple times but is finally set to screen at Cannes. Michael Douglas’ famed character Gordon Gekko has been just released from prison and reformed as a sort of antihero with Shia LaBeouf as his future son-in-law. Also appearing in the film are Carey Mulligan (as Gekko’s daughter Winnie), Charlie Sheen, Josh Brolin, Frank Langella, and Susan Sarandon. The movie promises to demonstrate a raw, deeply involved LaBeouf—the young actor
told GQ of on-set conditions that would make Werner Herzog blush. Stone would allegedly send the former
Even Stevens star to a bar to get roaring drunk, then recall him to the set and toy with him until LeBeouf was riled up enough to put his all into the scene. Maybe with less alcohol the film could have been made sooner, but then again, it is Oliver Stone’s world.
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger
Director: Woody Allen
After
Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Woody Allen has continued to bring together megastars, this time snagging Naomi Watts, Josh Brolin, Anthony Hopkins, Antonio Banderas, and Freida Pinto for
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger. The eccentric auteur’s movies have historically done better in Europe than stateside, and it’s no secret that Allen is not a fan of the gigantic U.S. film industry. Fitting, then, that his newest project—another low-ish budget film shot in London and whose plot is kept tightly under wraps—will premiere in the south of France.
Il Gattopardo (Restored)
Director: Luchino Visconti
Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation labors continuously to save and restore vintage films, and donations from Gucci have enabled the foundation to turn its attention and care to Luchino Visconti’s 1963 film
Il Gattopardo (
The Leopard). The restored version will premiere at Cannes 47 years after it won the coveted Palme d’Or award. The following night, Gucci and Vanity Fair will host a party at Hotel du Cap for Scorsese and the 20th anniversary of his Film Foundation.
Chatroom
Director: Hideo Nakata
Hideo Nakata is the mind behind the original
Ring (the Japanese version) and the English-language
Ring 2. He returns with another thriller,
Chatroom, starring Aaron Johnson, who burst onto the film scene this spring as the superhero in
Kick-Ass. Nakata is among the masters of Japanese horror films and early reviews say he directs this cyberthriller with a claustrophobic and atmospheric mood that incites fear and stress. Where do we sign up?
