Mike D'Angelo's CANNES TWEET REVIEWS
OTHER MIKE D'ANGELO CANNES THUMBNAIL ASSESSMENTS. These are in the order they came as tweets. I'll include even ones I've already cited. The following are all from https://twitter.com/#!/gemko and are the words of Mike D'Angelo.
By way of intro, he tweeted this good news:
Quote:
On the 10-year anniversary of my first Cannes, they've finally upgraded me to the rose press badge. MADE IT, MA! TOP OF THE WORLD!
(Basically this means I don't have to show up an hour-plus early for everything, which will free up my schedule enormously.)
I can well imagine how much that rose badge means. And the thing is, D'Angelo is really a free-lancer, an independent voice, even though his daily Cannes dispatches appear on AV Club. He is astute, dedicated, and agenda-free. Hence I think it's worth following him closely during this all-important festival.
Moonrise Kingdom: 75. Balance between pre-adolescent ardor and adult disappointment a bit wobbly, but mostly delightful in RUSHMORE vein. [A week later D'Angelo revisited MONNRISE and raised his rating to 78.]
Roman Polanski: A Film Memoir (Bouzereau): W/O. Utterly banal "interview" (= longtime friend urging RP to tell fave anecdotes) + film clips.
After the Battle (Nasrallah): 38. Plays like a daytime soap that happens to be set during the Arab Spring. Epochal meets insipid.
Rust and Bone (Audiard): 64. The story of a horribly disabled person, and also of a woman with no legs. Stealthy reverse schematism! I like.
Sister (Meier): 68. Surprisingly Dardennes-y, but it's not like that's a bad thing. Seydoux ideally cast. English title not ideal. [Market]
Paradise: Love (Seidl): 47. Two hours of mutual exploitation. Individual scenes crackle, but Seidl has one idea, hammers it relentlessly.
The We and the I (Gondry): 52. In which he remakes GET ON THE BUS as a high-school movie. Enjoyed rowdy energy, not so much the earnestness.
Reality (Garrone): 66. Another film w/only one idea, but at least it's a bold one. Feels like something Buñuel would make if he were alive.
Safety Not Guaranteed (Trevorrow): 56. Winning premise spins wheels, indulges weak subplots straining to reach feature length. [Market]
Mekong Hotel (Joe): 41. Strictly a doodle, and formally drab to boot. Supernatural elements feel shoehorned in. Guitar score is pleasant.
Beyond the Hills (Mungiu): 59. Another accomplished film content to just keep doing one thing from start to finish. Super intense though.
Lawless (Hillcoat): 61. Flavorful turf-war pseudo-Western with two iconic badasses (and Pearce out-intimidating Hardy, incredibly).
Laurence Anyways (Dolan): 53. Yeah, this is way too long. And stars Melvil Poupaud, who I can rarely stomach. Scattered inspired moments.
38 Witnesses (Belvaux): 55. Powerful when purely cinematic, which is about half the time. On-the-nose dialogue sometimes painful. [Market]
CHRIS KNIPP COMMENTS: I was so excited over RUST AND BONE it may seem ironic that the first film I saw in Paris, SISTER (Meier) might be better, as well as Garrone (which I have not seen). Indeed SISTER may be better than RUST AND BONE, in which Audiard may take too many shortcuts and go too soft. Meier doesn't. However RUST AND BONE is still better in D'Angelo's view than most of the others he's seen. I think his rating system is very precise.
I definitely go along with D'Angelo's high rating of MOONRISE KINGDOM.
I can't find the place where D'Angelo explains his numerical ratings, but remember that it is a very harsh system (with a correspondingly good range) in which even a 50 may not be at so bad, and 75 is really excellent, not C+ as in school grades.
I'm curious to see if I think Nasrullah's AFTER THE BATTLE is as unsuccessful as D'Angelo says..
