Word: cronenberg
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...films, leaving a half-dozen or so to fight over. By then a few strong personalities have emerged in the Jury's debates. In 1996, over the objections of the majority, two or three members, including director Atom Egoyan, pushed through a Jury Prize citing fellow Canadian David Cronenberg's Crash for "audacity." This year, a couple of those Type-A personalities are said to be clashing. A real tug-of-hair may be in progress. When the Jury comes on stage one by one, check for missing tufts...
Like a baseball manager, Cannes programmer Thierry Fremeaux likes to pack his heavy hitters in the middle of his lineup. So in the fat of the Festival, days five through seven of the 11-day film binge, the Cannes Competition slate has star-laden movies from David Cronenberg, Jim Jarmusch and Lars Von Trier...
...Cronenberg's A History of Violence, a quiet Midwestern family man (Viggo Mortsensen) is accused by some visiting gangsters of having been a hit man in Philly. In Jarmusch's Broken Flowers, a retired computer mogul (Bill Murray) learns that 20 years ago he fathered a child who is now trying to find him. In Marsh's The King, a preacher (William Hurt) who a generation earlier fathered and abandoned a child out of wedlock must pay for his age-old sin when the son (Gael Garcia Bernal) shows up. And in Von Trier's Manderlay, set in Alabama...
...mysteries in these films are revealed slowly -in one case, not at all. But there is no suspense in this Cannes Diary. I have no reluctance in revealing that the Cronenberg is the best of the lot, a fine return to form by the distinctive Canadian director and one of the very strongest films in the Competition...
...Neither failures nor successes, Broken Flowers, The King and Manderlay cemented the notion of this year's festival as one of mostly middling films from better-than-middling directors. Only the Cronenberg suggested that Cannes 2005 might be ready to forge a robust identity in which filmmakers escaped the glories of their past...