LONG LIVE TO THE CANNES FILM FESTIVAL!

Her possible victory was almost a certitude. Her possible victory was on everybody's mouth. Her possible victory was way too possible.

Everyone believed it but perhaps the only one who didn't  was her, Emma Stone, who as soon as she heard her name spoken by Michelle Yeoh appeared tenderly incredulous and stunned.

As she reached the stage trying to hide a tear on her mint dress - all fault of Ryan Gosling's Ken show  - she trembled and cried like a novice actress, as if what she was about to hold in her hands was her first Oscar, and not the second one for Best Leading Actress.

It is also this genuineness of hers, this candor that makes Emma Stone the great actress that she is.

Bella Baxter in Poor Things by Yorgos Lanthimos was "The Role" that every actress dream of, the one that can let you express every inch of yourself, the one  that can really consacrate a career; and Stone gave such a courageous and exceptional performance that not rewarding it -honestly - would have been a crime.

35 years and two Oscars for Best Leading Actress: incredible numbers that proudly let her go sit right next to three legends such as Elizabeth Talylor, Meryl Streep and Jodie Foster.

Red hair, blue eyes as big as a movie screen, and an even more immense talent. 

Versatile, funny, intense, expressive, Emma Stone proved to be everything and more, and there is always a bit of her in every character she plays: she is hungry for life like Bella, complicated like Sam in Birdman, pleasantly rebel like Cruella, determined like Mia in La La Land (her first Oscar in 2017), passionate like Abigail in The Favourite, sweet like Eugenia in The Help and …what else?  

Which characters will be waiting for her?

Time will answer... but in the meantime: Congratulations Emma, we are crazy about you!

It's truly fascinating how, sometimes,  the spirit of the dead needs the living people to find peace...

The Wisteria Manor, based on the novel by Jay Scott Nixon, is the experimental feature film directed by Michelle Arthur who wears also  the role of narrator, giving voice to all the characters of this exciting story, where mystery and supernatural come together.

There is the ghost of a little girl named Mary who mysteriously disappeared in Wisteria in 1750, and two kids - Evelyn and Jack - who 100 years later will discover her remains in a daring way.

We are in Ohio in 1850. Evelyn lives in Wisteria Manor  with her father and a vicious  stepmother; Jack is a simple boy  with an humble and loving family behind him. They will meet by chance (perhaps...) but it will be an encounter that will give life to an unbreakable bond and an exceptional discovery.

Still and moving images follow one another and alternate as if we were leafing through an old fairytale book, while Arthur's voice accompanies us on this intriguing journey in search of ghosts and hidden treasures.

In fact, the film appears, right from the start, like a fairy tale that contains many ones. 

But what paradoxically could have appeared as the film's weak point,  is indeed its strength.

Due to Covid and to the consequent impossibility of being able to shoot with actors, Michelle Arthur courageously opted for a narrative accompanied by exhaustive drawings, artworks and footage, thus rekindling in the viewer the sweet memory of when as children we used to insert a cassette in the tape player to be transported into the magical world we had choosed to enter.

Already winner of multiple awards around the world -  Wisteria Manor,  immersed in greenery and surrounded by light purple flowers, is the real enigmatic protagonist of the film.

This magical place where secrets and mysteries inhabit the countless rooms, and antique presences hide in the underground tunnels.

Innocence versus madness. Good versus evil.  Everything works beautifully in this  feature film where the eternal struggle between opposites  gives rhythm and life to a mystery thriller that keeps you in suspense till the end.

What would happen if the most famous singers on the planet gathered in a recording studio?

“The Greatest Night in Pop” is the  documentary  directed by Bao Nguyen that answer this question by recalling the days - or rather the three nights - in which the famous hit We are the World was conceived, arranged and sung.

The underlying idea was to create a song from which the proceeds would be used to fight hunger in Africa, a work of charity therefore in the form of a collective musical work, an immense and complicated undertaking especially as regards bringing together all the artists.

The idea came from the legendary entertainer and activist Harry Belafonte who commissioned Lionel Ritchie, who was at the height of his success, and the already very famous Michael Jackson, to write a simple song that would go down in history.

The documentary tells of those fateful sleepless nights spent recording for hours, laughing and eating fried chicken; Stevie Wonder, Tina Turner, Diana Ross, the disoriented Bob Dylan, the young Bruce Springsteen - fresh from an exhausting tour - Ray Charles, Cindy Lauper, Dionne Warwick and many other artists combined their voices to give meaning to their celebrity and donate to world a message of love and peace.

Upon entering the recording studio, the musicians were greeted by a sign taped to the door that read, "Check your ego at the door." And they were also welcomed by Stevie Wonder, who proclaimed that if the recording was not completed in one take, he and Ray Charles, - both blind -  would drive everybody home.

The song is nothing more than a hymn to solidarity, to helping each other; a universal anthem that was understandable for everyone:

“We are the world

We are the children

We are the ones who make a brighter day

So let's start giving”

It is absolutely exciting to see these unattainable artists in a more human, more reachable light; yawns, mistakes, sudden laughter... one of the most iconic nights in Hollywood  to recall the most iconic song of the 80s.

An absolutely must see for all the nostalgic music lovers.

This is the story of an experiment. This is the story of Bella Baxter.

And during these 140 minutes  it's like living inside a surreal dream of Salvador Dalì. 

Poor Things by Yorg Lanthimos hits not only the heart but the brain with this fantastic and creepy comedy.

We are in the Victorian London but the atmosphere is so incredibly futuristic that from the first shot we are catapulted into this strange world that we see through a lens, or a porthole, or through a keyhole.  The fairy-tale settings are reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland, the sky and the sea appear in constant contrast as do the black and white with the bright colours.

But let's start from the beginning. Who is Bella Baxter?

A pregnant woman who decides to commit suicide and that miraculously was brought back to life by the "monstrous" Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) who chooses to insert the brain of the creature she was carrying into the woman's skull. 

Avant-garde or Horror?

The Doctor plays God  - or Frankenstein - and after having created dogs with the body of a goose or chickens with the head of a pig, he accomplish  his real masterpiece, his own majestic lovely creature: Bella! 

An adult body with a child's brain.

A little girl who sees, hears and discovers everything for the first time, who doesn't know what is right or wrong, who doesn't know social conventions, education, shame, mercy or modesty.

Bella is lovingly protected by her creator but lives as a recluse in her laboratory home. She doesn't know what it really means to live and she doesn't know what the world is, until the womanizer Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo) comes into her life and ask her to run away together.

It is the beginning of her adventure, her rebirth, her journey to discover herself.

She discovers sex - with enthusiasm!-  music, philosophy, emotions, flavours, smells, and she discovers people in all their oddities and facets. Everything is new, everything is worthy of examination and study.

Through her incredibly big eyes we see the world as she sees it, we breathe her air, we walk with her, we grow with her.

It is a fairy tale of rebirth, of resilience, of emancipation and redemption.

Bella Baxter is the heroine we needed: a controversial figure, innocent and guilty at the same time and Emma Stone is absolutely sublime and magnetic in giving her body and senses. 

The beauty of the costumes, the sagacity of the dialogues, the perfection of the photography... Poor Things It's a film that deserves attention, gratitude... and an Oscar too.

Maestro is the new big challenge of Bradley Cooper. 

And once again he puts himself in front of and behind the camera as protagonist and director of the film.

After the success of the remake of A star is Born, box office success, Cooper once again undertakes a work as ambitious as it is convincing: telling the genius of Leonard Bernstein in a film that goes from a black and white past to a colorful present… all the true colors that summarize the creativity and talent of this amazing Jewish American composer and conductor. 

Maestro is not the musical it could easily have been - despite some initial scenes winking at the genre - but rather the story of a long and complicated relationship, the one between Bernstein and his beloved lifelong companion Felicia Montealegre played by a wonderful Carey Mulligan.

The film faithfully retraces Bernstein's brilliant career - from when at just 25 years old he replaced Bruno Walter as director of the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall - highlighting not only his eccentric and affable personality but also his well-known bisexuality.

The wife, a promising theater actress, aware of her husband's extramarital affairs, sacrifices her career in the name of the love she feels for him and to which she will dedicate her entire life for better or for worse.

Passion, devotion, self-denial, frustration, misunderstandings, arguments and forgiveness... there is everything that can be in a marriage that lasted 27 years, where love and scarifice have played as counterpoint on the same musical score.

Cooper's acting is meticulous in his gestures, extremely technical and studied down to the smallest detail; Carey Mulligan, on the other hand, is the heart of the film: her every look, her every word is pure and real emotion.

Welcomed with enthusiasm and with several nominations at the Golden Globes (despite not having won even one), Maestro continues its journey... this time towards the Oscars.

Rings of the Unpromised  starts with a dreamy music that let you think about magic stardust, peaceful atmospheres and romanticism.

But it ain’t exactly a faiy tale.

It is rather the introspective journey of a woman apparently - and constanlty - looking for love who ends up finding  herself.

Michelle Arthur brilliantly direct this 69 minutes feature film and also wears perfectly the clothes and the complicated feelings of Heather Martin, the female character that embarks on this tumultuous  44 years long journey through time,  seasons and many different places.

Heather is a dreamer - with a tender touch of naivety -  but she knows very well what disappointment is. 

Unmade beds, unmade dreams, disillusions, false hopes, broken promises, broken pearls...

Her story is made of  precious tokens of love sadly thrown away, resold, or bartered just to try to fix that inner sense of emptiness that walks with her. 

In terms of relationships, she may seem a hard luck woman like many others on this planet but at every stage of her path she demonstrates her ability to keep on believing …in love of course, but in life too; the same life that made her fall  but always let her find the strenght to move on  and starting over, with  the help of a professionist too.

Years goes by, but  Heather  remains the same girl with the long blonde hair that loves to contemplate the sun and hopes that something better could be right behind the corner. 

The film, in a very simple, light, and yet intimate way, is a story of self-acceptance and of knowing how to be the main form of fulfillment and self-satisfaction: a difficult mission where many women (but men too)  could recognize themselves.

The ending is open and the possibilities are various... but i like to think that Heather Martin after many disappointments,  proudly walks that red carpet...and says "Yes" to the only person she can really trust: HERSELF.

Hayao Miyazaki comes out of retirement to write and direct his last masterpiece The Boy and the Heron.

The hand-drawn animation movie has probably reached the podium of Miyazaki’s best three films, along with Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away. The film draws into Miyazaki’s childhood, with references to his late mother — a presence in his life that inspired many of his female characters — a father working in the fighter plane business, and a family relocating to rural Japan during the Pacific War.

The coming-of-age film starts with 12-year-old Mahito, who recently lost his mother in a hospital fire, moving to the countryside to live with his father’s new (pregnant) wife, who is his late mother’s younger sister. Through a journey in a fantastic hidden tower — and a trip into the underworld — Mahito will learn about life, love, and grief.

The Boy and the Heron is one of the few of Miyazaki’s films centered around a male protagonist. Mahito is sweet and quiet, as he battles his own inside demons, trying to find his place in a world dominated by greed, malice, and cruelty.

The setting reminds a bit of another of Ghibli’s films, Grave of Fireflies, but soon turns into a fantastic journey à la Spirited Away or Howl’s Moving Castle. Next to his aunt-turned-step-mother’s house, Mahito finds an abandoned tower that will lead him to meet fantastic creatures such as a human-headed grey heron, anthropomorphic parakeets, and adorable baby blobs called Warawara. 

Among all of Miyazaki’s films that I’ve seen, The Boy and the Heron is the most articulated and visually complex one. This film has the presumption to include all the life elements in it and surely delivers its expectations. The connection between life and death, and between the four elements works so well. The air, ever-present with the heron, the parakeets, and the pelicans, the fire, the cause of Mahito’s mother’s death and Himi’s power, the water, represented by an almost Dantesque underground water body, and the earth, with the stones regulating the balance of the upstairs world.

The plot is impeccable. Everything in the film is surprising, yet everything makes sense. No visual detail is too much detail in Miyazaki’s films, and the audience’s eyes can enjoy every single quirky facial expression, every single chaotic detail of bird poop on the character’s clothes, and every single sight of the mouthwatering Ghibli food. 

On top of gorgeous drawings, evocative mysteries, and profound themes, a few added gems made the whole picture even more perfect. The most elaborate scene was without a doubt Warawara rising in the sky in the form of DNA chains, just to be eaten by pelicans, almost as an antithesis of the classic storks delivering babies.

A majestic 124-minute animation production with everything from Miyazaki’s previous films, and some.

Dicks: The Musical is a new film directed by legendary Larry Charles — famous for directing the Borat movies among others — and based on the off-Broadway musical Fucking Identical Twins by Josh Sharp and Aaron Jackson. The film stars Sharp and Jackson as two (not-so-identical) twins who re-enact a queer and musical version of Disney’s success The Parent Trap.

Two extremely straight CIS salesmen realize by working together that they are identical twins and were separated at birth. One ended up living with their dad, played by Nathan Lane, and one ended up living with their mom, played by Megan Mullally. 

The parents are an ultra-eccentric version of old New Yorkers who have seen and done it all. The mom had her vagina fall off and chased her like a spider in Greece, while the gay dad lives with two “sewer boys”, two creatures he found in the NY sewer system that he adopted decades ago and keeps in cages.

The two twins then make a plan to have their parents fall in love with each other so that they can all be a family again, but of course, things don't go their way.

Trying too hard to be edgy, weird, and outrageous, the film lacks essence, a meaningful plot, and well-developed characters. Sharp and Jackson’s characters are one-dimensional, they deliver puns one after the other but lack complete depth, personality layers, and really just basic humanity... The writers and the director try so hard to make their characters seem like a parody but fail to remember that parody needs to lie on some substance, otherwise, it’s just useless mimics. 

DICKS: THE MUSICAL seems forced, and the two main actors aren't able to pull off their performances. They are not conveying at all the distress they are parodying, which would be essential in this case. There is a special type of presence and charisma an actor needs to sing songs about balls, cum, and vaginas, and Sharp and Jackson just don’t have it.

The only good performance is Nathan Lane’s one. He is the only one in my opinion capable of keeping his character grounded amidst all the shenanigans happening around him. 

I am not exactly a fan of casting Megan Mullally as the twins’ mom. Although she has been great in many roles in her career, I feel like the writing and the direction restricted her to a wheelchair-bound-lisping grandma, and that did not serve her performance at all.

The songs though were the least memorable thing of the movie, and for a musical, the bare minimum would be to have songs that are somewhat catchy and fun to listen to. 

The end result is not as smart or as funny as it think it is. The gags fluctuate in a limbo of offensive jokes, but without two actors really *being* offensive. Sharp and Jackson indicate that they are two cis straight men, but they *are* not it, they are not truly living their characters' lives. 

Comparing this musical to another quirky comedy out in theatres now, Bottoms, the difference between the two is crystal clear. In Bottoms, the two actresses completely and fully embody the characters, they deliver performances that are real, even when everything around them is as absurd and offensive. 

Here, Sharp and Jackson’s performances are superficial, SNL-like sketches that can be tolerated for a few minutes tops, let alone for a whole hour and a half, and let alone in a musical act!

The finale with the two twins realizing they are in love with each other and getting married — in front of a gay God — is the cherry on top of a cake we didn’t want to eat in the first place.

Funny concept, but really awkward and uncertain realization. Unfortunately, this film will soon be forgotten.

The Creator is a science fiction action film produced and directed by Gareth Edwards. The film treats the complex relationship between AI — here represented as ‘human simulators’ — and the human species.

It’s 2070, Los Angeles that has been nuked by AI 15 years prior. Following that event, the Western world tried to ban AI, while a not-so-imaginary place on earth called ‘New Asia’ is still accepting and embracing simulators as part of their society.

In an attempt to protect human beings from going extinct, and to reach his lost pregnant wife, Maya, U.S. Army sergeant Joshua Taylor, played by a forgettable John David Washington, kidnaps the ultimate AI weapon, a little simulator girl played by a magnetic and intense Madeleine Yuna Voyles.

The film becomes almost two different films developing side by side: on one hand, we have the relationship between Joshua and the little AI girl — nicknamed Alfie — and on the other hand, we have the war between AI and humans.

Unfortunately, due in part to the lack of stage presence of Washington, and in part to the script, the relationship between Joshua and Alfie fails to deliver the power, the intimacy, and the urgency to the audience. The story never really reaches deep levels of humanity and ends up feeling a bit superficial.

Another jarring note is the use of ‘generic Asian people’ to represent all the AI simulators. I don’t exactly understand what is the director trying to aim at, if it’s to give a visual contrast between the Western world and the AI, or if it’s just a way to add Asian themes such as Hinduism and Buddhism to the mix. Maybe Edwards, who wrote the script with Chris Weitz, was trying to give more depth to a plot that lacked substance and biting.

The pacing of the movie seemed to be a bit off too, with the camera dwelling in some scenes, while some other moments felt rushed to the point they made the plot slightly incomprehensible.

That said, the visual effects are glorious, the cinematography is magnificent and the overall aesthetic is very well done. Surprisingly, a film that relies profoundly on visuals was shot with an entry-level full-frame mirrorless camera designed for beginners such as the Sony FX3, a bold choice for a film that comes out also on IMAX.

Unfortunately, the overall film leaves a sense of emptiness. With an 80 million dollar budget, I feel like Edwards missed a good chance to explore the future of AI — at least, a sci-fi version of it — on a deep level, with an actual consequence on the human side of relationships.

A beautiful film that doesn’t aim at the soul.

40 years after its filming, A24 is re-releasing a remastered version of The Talking Heads’ famous concert film Stop Making Sense by Jonathan Demme.

The movie’s concept is simple: Jonathan Demme saw The Talking Heads on tour promoting their new album Speaking in Tongues and decided to document a version of their concert. No part of the concert was modified or adjusted for the film — only a few songs were cut out — and the film is an actual representation of what the concert was. And for its time, that concert was kind of unusual.

This artistic film starts with David Byrne getting onstage with a boombox, placing it on the floor, playing a cassette, and starting to sing his iconic Psycho Killer. Only his voice, his boombox, and his acoustic guitar. Byrne’s sense of style is so distinctive you could easily recognize him in a huge crowd, with his giant grey blazer and oversized pants flowing and moving to the music.

The stage at this point is bare, it looks unfinished, and it will slowly build as the concert goes on.

One at a time, the band members enter the stage to add to the performance. First bassist Tina Weymouth for ‘Heaven’, then, little by little everyone else joins him on stage, culminating in a dozen of musicians moving in unison, all bringing their specific yet extremely powerful energy to the group.

At the same time, stagehands bring in furniture, decor, and platforms and slowly build a fuller and much more cohesive stage.

We understand that the concept here is very human: the musician, Byrne, starts a bit uncertain and reserved, and the more people get involved in the affair, the more Byrne gets loose and starts dancing. At the same time, the audience gets warmer and more confident as the concert progresses. The musicians and the audience are one, all enjoying and benefitting from this powerful interaction.

The filming is quite elaborate too. Multiple cameras film wide shots as well as extreme close-ups, that, along with very accurate editing, highlight all the wonderful dynamics between the members of the band. The direction is also able to capture different concepts brought by the different songs, and the concert, as well as the band, is a strong collective creation.

Experiencing this film makes you feel like it’s December 1983, you’re at Hollywood's Pantages Theatre and you’re seeing the concert live. At times, people forgot it was 2023 and they were sitting in a movie theatre, they would stand up, applaud, and cheer as if the band was standing right in front of us, receiving the love we wanted to give them.

An important piece of music history, available now in ultra-high-definition for the enjoyment of all music fans!