Great Movies
Festivals & Awards
Cannes Film Festival Preview 2022
A preview of the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, which includes new films by David Cronenberg, Claire Denis, Kelly Reichardt, Park Chan-wook, and many more.
A preview of the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, which includes new films by David Cronenberg, Claire Denis, Kelly Reichardt, Park Chan-wook, and many more.
Julia Ducournau's Titane took the Palme d'Or at Cannes. It's only the second feature directed by a woman to do so.
Chaz Ebert's second video dispatch from the 2021 Cannes Film Festival covers the jury press conference and the opening night premiere of Leos Carax's "Annette."
Ben Kenigsberg reviews Leos Carax's Annette, a musical conceived by the band Sparks that opened this year's Cannes.
A preview of the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, which starts next week.
An interview with Edgar Wright and musical duo Ron and Russell Mael about their new documentary celebrating 50 years of Sparks.
A preview of the next seven months of musicals hitting theaters and streaming services in 2021.
A review of new films by Alfonso Cuaron and Rick Alverson from the start of the Venice Film Festival.
Oral history of "The Golden Girls"; Spotlight on Bradley Bischoff; Francis Lawrence on "Mockingjay Part 2"; Louis C.K. on meanness; David W. Packard rescues classic films.
A tribute to the late, great, unbelievable artist that is David Bowie.
Did North Korea order cyberattack on Sony?; The prestige freak show; "Hunger Games" is dangerous; The strangeness of "Gone with the Wind"; Alfred Hitchcock's final days.
A film-by-film look at the Criterion Blu-ray box set for "The Essential Jacques Demy."
Patrick Z. McGavin writes about "Shoah," which was just issued on Blu-ray by Criterion in a thorough package that makes the film's unique storytelling more transparent to the layperson. "Lanzmann has said the form and construction is the key to understanding his film," McGavin writes, "and with this new version, that process has never been more intuitive."
"Only God Forgives" commits the unforgivable sin of being boring, "Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight" is about old white men arguing about race, and "Blue is the Warmest Color" takes its time to follow the transition from uncertain teenager to knowing adult.
Barbara Scharres sets the stage the 66th annual Cannes Film Festival.
But what really matters is the Muriels. You know, that time-honored annual movie award that is not named after Bette Davis's Uncle Oscar, but after co-founder Paul Clark's guinea pig. Throughout the month of February (the 6th through the 23rd), the winners have been announced, as you know because you've been regularly clicking on the Muriels link right here on Scanners. Anyway, you know what "Argo" can do; the Muriel voters, on the other hand, chose to give the year's top prize to what, for me, was obviously the most rewarding movie experience of the year: Leos Carax's "Holy Motors."
Bolstered by Akira Ifukube's trudging "Gojira" theme and the shorthand it affords, on two separate filmic occasions director Leos Carax chose to pair it with a city-scrolling vista, and in doing so reference his past work for the first time. Homage and visual motifs have always earmarked the enigmatic auteur's films, namely in the unstable romances of "Boy Meets Girl" and "Les Amants de Pont Neuf," but within his two most recent efforts -- a section of the 2008 triptych "Tokyo!" and his 2012 vexing "Holy Motors" -- he centers this rare repetition on one character that is not so much a reprisal as it is an emotional transformation.
Marie writes: The countdown to Christmas officially begins the day after Halloween, which this year lands on a Wednesday. Come Thursday morning, the shelves will be bare of witches, goblins and ghosts; with snowmen, scented candles and dollar store angel figurines taking their place. That being the case, I thought it better to start celebrating early so we can milk the joy of Halloween for a whole week as opposed to biding adieu to the Great Pumpkin so soon after meeting up again...
