In 2012, Kier-La Janisse published House of Psychotic Women and forever changed the landscape of film analysis. Subtitled An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis, the book is an exhaustive look at films from all genres, each featuring one or more female characters with some degree of mental instability. House of Psychotic Women is split into two sections: memoir and appendix. Janisse begins by examining significant moments in her own life, confronting generational trauma, a troubled childhood, her teenage years as a juvenile delinquent, and her journey to festival programming through the lens of narrative film. Each stage of her life is paired with at least one movie in which she seeks to understand her own experiences by comparing them with a character facing a similar issue. Janisse’s vulnerable and unflinchingly honest writing invites the reader into her psyche while inspiring a deeper look into our own lives.

The memoir is...

The most tantalizing genre films not only explore the lasting damaging effects of victims being physically attacked, but also being emotionally manipulated by the people they least expect to hurt them. That’s certainly the case for actress Lee Marshall’s shy, awkward protagonist in the psychological thriller, ‘Bleed with Me,’ which explores the intersections of admiration, […]

The post Lee Marshall Fights Back Against Lauren Beatty’s Emotional Manipulation in Bleed with Me DVD Giveaway appeared first on Shockya.com.

Written and directed by Amelia Moses (Bloodthirsty), Bleed With Me stars Lee Marshall (“The Detectives”, “19-2”), Lauren Beatty (Bloodthirsty) and Aris Tyros (“In The Dark”).The DVD will be available for 27.97.

Here’s the trailer:

Now you can win the DVD of Bleed With Me.. We Are Movie Geeks has two to give away. Just leave a comment below telling us what your favorite movie with the word “Blood” (or “Bleed”) in the title is.is (I’d say Blood From The Mummy’S Tomb. It’s so easy!)

In Bleed With Me, Rowan, a vulnerable outsider, is thrilled when the seemingly perfect Emily invites her on a winter getaway to an isolated cabin in the woods. Trust soon turns to paranoia when Rowan wakes up with mysterious incisions on her arm. Haunted by dream-like visions, Rowan starts to suspect that her friend is drugging her and stealing her blood. She...

In today’s TV News Roundup, Hulu released a trailer for upcoming documentary “We Are Freestyle Love Supreme,” and Cmt added new celebrities to the line-up for its upcoming special celebrating those continuing to work amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Casting

CBS has announced the 12 challengers competing on its upcoming reality series “Tough as Nails,” which aims to celebrate Americans with tough jobs that help keep the country running. The competitors include Linnett Key, a welder from Lecanto, Fla.; Danny Moody, a drywaller from Spokane, Wash.; Melissa Burns, a farmer from Milford Center, Ohio; Lee Marshall, a roofer from St. Louis, Mo.; Kelly “Murph” Murphy, a Marine Corps veteran from Paragon, Ind.; Linda Goodridge, a deputy sheriff from Marion, N.Y.; Luis Yuli, a scaffolder from the Bronx, N.Y.; Michelle S. Kiddy, a gate agent from Alexandria, Ky.; Callie Cattell, a fisherman from Bend, Ore.; Young An, a firefighter from Alexandria,...

Monsoon Shootout cast with director Amit Kumar in Cannes

“Amit Kumar’s bold noir set amongst corrupt cops in Mumbai acts as a brash, blockbusting corrective to Cannes’s more sombre excesses”, writes Guardian’s film critic Peter Bradshaw in his first look review from Cannes.

Bradshaw calls the film “rainy noir” and concludes in his review, “It’s an entertaining popcorn-movie with a twist, for which commercial success is on the cards. There should be space for pictures like it in Cannes.”

The Hollywood Reporter’s Deborah Young has also given the film a thumbs up. She writes, “The Fortissimo release should make good headway in territories open to India and exotic genre fare and put Kumar on festival radar.”

Here is an excerpt from The Hollywood Reporter Review:

A cunningly intricate first film from India, Monsoon Shootout combines the best of two worlds – a ferocious Mumbai cops and gangsters drama,...

Anurag Kashyap’s Ugly has received extreme responses from critics after its Cannes premiere on Friday. Twitchfilm’s Brian Clark Found it better than some of competition titles while Screen International’s Lee Marshall found its characters “hastily-sketched”.

International film website Twitchfilm.com’s European Editor Brian Clark was all praises for the film in his review. Here is an excerpt from his review:

…this Fargo-meets-Mumbai-police-procedural is compulsively watchable, thrilling, darkly funny and extremely well-directed.

Kashyap also gets a lot of mileage out of the locations, which emphasize the mood of the action rather than functioning as exotic foregrounds, and the way he depicts the sheer scope of a hunt for a single girl in Mumbai is pretty stunning. The performances too are all strong, with a touch of stilted, manic-intensity that blends seamlessly with the mood of the film.”

At two hours and eight minutes, Ugly runs a bit long (though of course,...

Apart from some foreign items Lore (Music Box Films – 2/8/13) and Kiarostami’s Like Someone in Love (Sundance Selects – 2/15/13), classic re-issue of Little Fugitive (Artists Public Domain – 2/1/13), a guilty pleasure in Soderbergh’s Side Effects (Open Road Films – 2/8/13) and experimental docu A Rubberband Is an Unlikely Instrument (Factory 25 – 2/8/13), it’ll once again slim pickings in the month of February. Here our this month’s top 3 Critic’s Picks.

Caesar Must Die – Paolo and Vittorio Taviani

Lincoln Plaza Cinemas & Film Forum on Wednesday the 6th – Adopt Films

Festival Awards: Golden Berlin Bear & Prize of the Ecumenical Jury (Berlin Film Festival – 2012)

What the critic’s are saying?: Screen Daily’s Lee Marshall appears to be much impressed stating “now into their eighties, the Taviani brothers show with this remarkable, fresh and moving drama-documentary they have lost none of that mix of observational rigour and sympathy for the underdog that marked early films like Padre Padrone,...

Colombia had three films in the various sections of Cannes this year. And the Colombian producers, Diana Bustamente ♀ and Jorge Forero of Burning Blue, produced two of them along with Thierry Lenouvel’s Cine-Sud. Burning Blue was created by Diana Bustamante, producer of The Wind Journeys (Cannes 2009), and Crab Trap (Berlin 2010), with her friend and artist colleague Jorge Forero. This company is focused on new directors and particulary on the new and artistic proposals which work with the imagen in all its possibilities.

La Sirga

The first and foremost film is the first feature film from Colombian director William Vega, La Sirga, which played in this year's Cannes' Directors Fortnight and was nominated for the Camera d’Or Award, Fipresci Prize. It also won the Cinema in Construction Award & Cine + Award at the Toulouse Film Festival. "Evocative! William Vega’s first feature is the latest in an impressive string of Colombian arthouse films", says Lee Marshall of Screen Daily. It was just picked up for North America by Film Movement. It is their 4th Colombian film.

Film Movement is one of the most successful experiments in alternative modes of distribution which has successfully survived since Larry Meistrich launched it in 2003. He has moved on and it's now run by a great team headed by Adley Gartenstein. Its DVD of the month club for critically acclaimed movies -- both American indies and foreign films -- is the first of its kind. The company also provides films that are screened theatrically at locations in Chicago, Los Angeles and other cities. Recently they have also partnered with YouTube and Hulu to provide online movies, and have received extensive praise from film critics such as Roger Ebert. It will have its New York theatrical opening late 2012, with a limited national roll-out to follow, as well as a day-and-date Cable Video on Demand premiere.

Film Movement acquired it from one of my favorite international sales agents, Pierre Menahem, now of Mpm (Movie Partners in Motion, founded by Marie-Pierre Macia and Juliette Lepoutre) but formerly (when I met him) at Celluloid Dreams. Pierre Menahem says, "We are thrilled to work again with Film Movement on another beautifully directed first feature film from Latin America. After the 20-times-awarded Found Memories (aka Historias) by Julia Murat, we are very excited to team up again with one of the best arthouse films distributors in North America for such an amazing film...Director William Vega is definitely a talent to watch and we are proud to start his international career with sales in the U.S., to Zootrope for France, Ama for Greece and Cineplex in Colombia right after its Cannes launch a week ago.” There is also strong interest in the U.K., Japan, Scandinavia, Benelux and Switzerland.

La Playa

The second film is La Playa by Juan Andrés Arango, his film debut as well. This Brazil-Colombia-France coproduction premiered at Cannes Ff Un Certain Regard. It was picked up for international sales prior to Cannes by Doc & Film. France's Jour2Fete will distribute La Playa in France.

Rodri

And the third Colombian film is in the Short Film Corner, Rodri by director Franco Lolli, depicting a family dealing with unemployment, will appear in the Short Film Corner. The film was inspired by its two main actors, the director's mother and uncle. Lolli will turn toward directing his first full-length film after the festival.

Colombia also had 10 production companies participating in the Producers Network, an important adjunct to the Cannes Marche.

"I'm a Friedkin fan, but this one let me down," writes Dan Sallitt in a dispatch to the Notebook today, and he pretty well sums up the general consensus, give or take, that Killer Joe, which screened in Competition in Venice (and left empty-handed) before rolling on to Toronto, is no Exorcist (1973) — or French Connection (1971), which happens to be opening today for a 9-day run at New York's Film Forum.

"Playwright Tracey Letts and director William Friedkin seem both a natural pair and way the hell too much together," writes Scott Tobias. "Letts's work is overheated enough without Friedkin turning up the gas. As with Bug, Killer Joe pitches to the rafters, amping up a hicksploitation thriller with unnecessary jolts of savage violence and abuse." Also at the Av Club, Noel Murray: "As a fervent fan of Friedkin, I confess that I miss the director's more action-oriented side, which isn't...

In Contention's Guy Lodge was worrying a couple of days ago in Venice that the "unwritten rule of major festival programming that the closing film should be, if not shit, at least aggressively mediocre" might apply to Damsels in Distress, but "it gives me no small amount of pleasure to report that Stillman's latest is an unequivocal delight — a warmly off-kilter and wholly unique campus comedy that... has provided the purest shot of joy in the entire festival. That's not to say Stillman has gone cuddly in the lengthy hiatus that followed 1998's The Last Days of Disco: the director's many patient fans will find his skewed wit and dryly affectionate mockery of the East Coast upper classes pleasingly intact, even if the film surrounding these virtues is perhaps a shade broader and more heightened than his three previous features. Newcomers to his work might take a few scenes...

"Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Emanuele Crialese’s small but powerful new feature, set against the background of the influx of African boat people on the tiny Italian islands of Lampedusa and Linosa, is extra-textual: the fact that Timnit T, who plays an illegal immigrant woman given reluctant refuge by an island family, was one of only five survivors of a boatload of 70 immigrants that washed up on Lampedusa while the director was working on the treatment for the film." Lee Marshall in Screen: "The fact that Terraferma itself makes no mileage out of this is credit to Crialese, but it’s all of a piece with his unfussy approach, which is simply to tell a strong story in a way which, though it occasionally comes across as a little naïf in its liberal simplification of the issue, wins through thanks to a Ken-Loach-like combination of heart-on-sleeve commitment and elegantly succinct dramatic structure.

"Director Sono Sion had already written his adaptation of the 2001 manga comic Himizu, a shrill teenage wail of existential discomfort, when on March 11 an earthquake and tsunami devastated northern Japan." Deborah Young in the Hollywood Reporter: "His intuition to rewrite it in light of those tragic events brings poignant meaning to a nearly unwatchable adaptation of a genre comic targeted at Japanese teens. This bizarre overlay of styles and moods is a daring gamble that somehow heightens understanding of Japan's disaster, as though the only possible aesthetic approach was via cinema of the absurd."

Boyd van Hoeij in Variety: "Never a very disciplined filmmaker, whether in terms of running time or thematic coherence, Sono's films have a frayed quality to them that betrays both his earlier calling as a poet — for whom juxtaposition, repetition and effect can take precedence over more classical narrative logic — and the speed with which he...

"Full credit to director Andrea Arnold for taking such a bold and distinctive approach to Emily Brontë's account of sweeping passion on the Yorkshire moors," writes the Guardian's Xan Brooks. "Her line in creative vandalism rips off the layers of fluffy chiffon that have adhered to the tale through the course of numerous stage and screen adaptations. It pushes the story all the way back to its original 1847 incarnation and then beyond, up-river, into primordial sludge. What comes back is a beautiful rough beast of a movie, a costume drama like no other. This might not be warm, or even approachable, but it is never less than bullishly impressive."

"You call tell almost immediately that this Wuthering Heights is a film by Andrea Arnold, the writer-director of Red Road and Fish Tank," writes Time Out London's Dave Calhoun. "This might be the British filmmaker's first literary adaptation, but all her trademarks are there,...

"After the freshness and deceptive simplicity of their debut, the 2007 animated feature Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud's Poulet aux Prunes — or Chicken with Plums — showing in competition here, is something of a disappointment," finds Movieline's Stephanie Zacharek. "The cast isn't the problem: The movie stars Mathieu Amalric as an embittered musician living in late-1950s Tehran, and Maria de Medeiros as his beleaguered but adoring wife; Chiara Mastroianni has a tiny part, and the fine Moroccan-born actor Jamel Debbouze appears in small dual roles. But the material just doesn't resonate, as Persepolis did."

Variety's Jay Weissberg disagrees: "Largely set in 1958 Tehran, the story, adapted from Satrapi's graphic novel, is a fail-safe tale of lost love leavened with panache, incorporating past and present with sweet and sour flavorings…. What Satrapi and Paronnaud have really achieved is an evocation of a lost world, much as they did in Persepolis. They've beautifully re-created the fiercely proud,...

"Lanthimos's dazzlingly dislocated follow-up to the improbably Oscar-nominated Dogtooth [is] a return that should keep him on the fast-track to Euro-auteur royalty," predicts Guy Lodge at In Contention. "Doubling down on its predecessor's polarizing absurdist humor and chilly formal grace, Alps applies those virtues to a more diffuse, ensemble-driven structure that is in no hurry to reveal its rich thematic adhesives of doubling and substitution. It'd be rash to call it a better film than Dogtooth, but it is, in the relative scheme of these things, a bigger one, and exciting evidence of restless formal development on the part of its director."

At the Playlist, Oliver Lyttelton advises going into Alps "as cold as possible." He reprints the brief synopsis provided in the press kit and strains to reveal nothing more. He does note, though, that Alps is "probably a more accessible film than its predecessor, accessible being a very relative term here.

"A smart, confident kick start to what looks like being a notably strong Venice film festival, The Ides of March showcases George Clooney, its director, co/writer and joint lead actor, back in the politically committed mood that spawned Syriana and Good Night, and Good Luck." The Telegraph's David Gritten: "A political thriller exploring themes of loyalty, ambition and the gap between public ideals and private fallibility, it engages the brain within the context of a solid entertainment." 4 out of 5 stars.

At the Playlist, Oliver Lyttelton sets it up: "Stephen Myers (Ryan Gosling) is something of a wunderkind. Still in his 20s, he’s a senior adviser to the campaign of Democratic primary candidate Governor Mike Morris (Clooney). Morris seems to be the real deal, a once-in-a-lifetime kind of candidate, and Myers had never been more fired up, particularly with mentor Paul Zara (Philip Seymour Hoffman) at the helm, and...

Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz, Carnage Based on Yasmine Reza's play God of Carnage, Roman Polanski's Carnage is the director's first film since last year's legal fiasco engendered by the Los Angeles District Attorney's office. Carnage was screened today at the Venice Film Festival, where it was greeted by mixed-to-enthusiastic reviews. [Note: I initially had "generally mixed reviews," but that was too harsh an assessment.] Though set in New York City, Carnage was filmed — for much-publicized reasons — on a Parisian stage. Kate Winslet, Jodie Foster, Christoph Waltz, and John C. Reilly play two couples who forget the meaning of the word "civility" after spending a little over an hour arguing about a problem between their respective children. Polanski and Reza co-wrote the screenplay adaptation. The presence of Winslet, Foster, Waltz, and Reilly means that the Carnage cast boasts no less than four Oscar wins (including two for Foster), and an additional eight Oscar nominations. Not to mention Polanski's own...

By Sean O’Connell

Hollywoodnews.com: Roman Polanski’s “Carnage,” an adaptation of Yasmina Reza’s Tony-winning play, held its world premiere as part of the ongoing Venice Film Festival. What did the critics think?

Lee Marshall, writing for The Evening Standard, calls Polanski’s film “a tasty cinematic workout,” claiming that the film “also celebrates an old-fashioned, underrated cinematic pleasure: the chance to see an ensemble cast of fine actors sparring with each other, and at the top of their game.”

Meanwhile, the UK Guardian calls the film “giddily enjoyable” while adding that the film becomes “slightly less so once the characters start to analyse their descent into barbarism.”

And Variety chimed in with, “The real battle in Roman Polanski’s brisk, fitfully amusing adaptation of Yasmina Reza’s popular play is a more formal clash between stage minimalism and screen naturalism, as this acid-drenched four-hander never shakes off a mannered,...

To follow up on yesterday's roundup of Un Certain Regard remainders...

"The Tati-inspired dance trio of Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon, and Bruno Romy are at it again, crafting an awfully similar follow-up to their previous feature, Rumba." Blake Williams for Ioncinema: "The Fairy is light on magic and the supernatural, but flutters breezily along with joke-a-minute fluff…. As in their other films, the 'plot' — this one involving a wish-granting fairy — is only really a conceit by which to give the illusion of continuity to what is essentially a string of short films." Screen's Fionnuala Halligan's enjoyed it, though: "Theirs is an old-fashioned, almost silent, routine (their first feature L'Iceberg was virtually wordless) blended beautifully with an arresting dance element." In the Hollywood Reporter, Jordan Mintzer notes that "Tati's hand is evident in the exceptionally precise art direction and camerawork by regulars Nicholas Girault and Claire Childeric."

"The Silver Cliff was...

High time to round up the films at this year's Cannes Film Festival that never saw entries of their own and send them on their way. Today: Un Certain Regard.

"Bakur Bakuradze's The Hunter seems like a ficticious version of Raymond Depardon's Modern Life, a trilogy on farming that was screened in Cannes in 2008," finds Moritz Pfeifer, who also interviews the director for the East European Film Bulletin. "With no soundtrack, no professional actors, little dialogue and a minimalist plot, the film depicts the daily life of Ivan (Mikhail Barskovich) as he peacefully runs his pig farm in one of the less populous areas of northwestern Russia…. Clearly, Bakuradze wants to depict an alternative world, and the spirit of his film is more utopian than its hyper-realistic images suggest."

Grumbles the Hollywood Reporter's Kirk Honeycutt: "There is maybe 10 to 15 minutes of actual story located within this 124 minute slog,...

Updated through 5/23.

Paolo Sorrentino's This Must Be the Place "stars Sean Penn — an amalgam of Dorothy Michaels from Tootsie, the Cure's Robert Smith, and the titular mentally challenged man the actor played in I Am Sam — as Cheyenne, a fey, retired goth rock star who leaves his home in Ireland to return to the Us to track down the man who tormented his estranged father in Auschwitz. Unbearably sentimental — one colleague likened it to this year's Life Is Beautiful — and consistently ridiculous, Sorrentino's movie was inexplicably met with warm applause (and, as far as I could tell, no boos). There's no arguing taste (or cultural differences or festival exhaustion), but figuring out the appeal of a film that includes a Holocaust slide show, Penn's aggressive scenery chewing ('Not having kids has really, really screwed me over!' he weeps at one point), and every lazy American stereotype (fatties, guns,...

Updated through 5/23.

"The magnificent and dramatic presence of Nature dwarfs human protagonists wallowing in a banal ménage a trois in Naomi Kawase's visually rhapsodic but overbearingly metaphorical and emotionally wan Hanezu," writes Maggie Lee in the Hollywood Reporter. "Again evoking her favorite motifs of pregnancy, death, and heartbreak within the rural environs of Nara (Kawase's hometown and location for all her works), the Japanese director sees no need in varying or transcending her personal blend of documentary and poetic-animist style."

"Amid gorgeous images of the Asuka region of Japan, the nation's birthplace, poetic voiceovers by a man and woman begin the film by recounting the ancient myth of two mountains competing for one another's love," writes Variety's Rob Nelson. "Bringing this tale into present-day, human form is a young couple living together in picturesque Nara prefecture and expecting a child. Pregnant Kayoko (Hako Oshima) dyes scarves red using safflower,...

Updated through 5/21 — with awards announcements.

As noted last week, with support from the 4+1 Film Festival, we're celebrating the 50th anniversary of Critics' Week with a free retrospective of some of the greatest films screened over the past 50 editions. What follows is a roundup of what the critics are saying about the films screening this year.

"Jonathan Caouette's film Tarnation — created for $300 (£185) on his iMac out of old Super 8 videos and family photos — created a stir at Cannes in 2004 for its original visual language," begins Charlotte Higgins in the Guardian. "In his latest he returns to Tarnation's material: his rich but intensely difficult family life. At the heart of Walk Away Renée is a road trip he takes with his mother, Renée, from Houston to New York State, as he helps her transfer from one assisted-living facility to another. Renée, who received electric shock therapy from the age...

Melancholia director banned from French festival for Nazi comments but film apparently remains in running for top prize

Cannes film festival organisers have banned Lars von Trier from their event after he caused a furore by joking about being a Nazi at a press conference to promote his new film, Melancholia.

The Cannes board of directors declared the Danish director, formerly a festival favourite as much for his outspoken persona as his taboo-breaking films, "persona non grata, with effect immediately" following a bizarre performance in front of the media on Wednesday when he declared he had sympathy for Adolf Hitler.

"Cannes provides artists with an exceptional forum to present their works and defend freedom of expression and creation," the board said in a statement. "We profoundly regret[s] that this forum has been used by Lars von Trier to express comments that are unacceptable, intolerable, and contrary to the ideals of...

Updated.

"It's the end of the world but also the start of something new for Lars von Trier, whose mind-blowing Melancholia offers perhaps the gentlest depiction of annihilation one could imagine from any director, much less the Danish provocateur," begins Peter Debruge in Variety. "If Antichrist was the needle in the eye von Trier needed to shake a bout of pulverizing depression, then Melancholia serves as his unexpectedly lucid response, blending grand-scale Hollywood effects with intimate, femme-focused melodrama. Think The Celebration meets Armageddon."

"It takes a baffling, almost bone-headed premise, the stuff of schlocky genre movies, and from it creates a mesmerizing, visually gorgeous and often-moving alloy of family drama, philosophical meditation and anti-golfing tract," writes the Telegraph's Sukhdev Sandhu. Kirsten Dunst "is Justine, an advertising copywriter who's about to get married (to a sweet, but rather out-of-his depth chap played Alexander Skarsgård) at a remote and lavish castle. The...

Updated through 5/17.

"The political and social tension surrounding the recent imprisonment of Mohammad Rasoulof will inevitably influence the way his most recent film, Good Bye>/em>, is received at Cannes," writes Glenn Heath Jr at the House Next Door. "A late addition to the festival's lineup, along with fellow political prisoner Jafar Panahi's This Is Not a Film, Good Bye unassumingly drops the viewer into the center of Tehran, where a beautiful young lawyer (Lelya Zareh) ideologically lives between a rock and hard place. Recently disbarred for participating in activist campaigns against the government, the woman happens to be pregnant and alone, her husband exiled to work in the desert because of his role as a political journalist. Fed up with Iran, she has decided to leave, aided by an off-the-books immigration specialist (Iran's version of a coyote) who we see only once."

"Through the routine of Noora's life,...

Updated through 5/15.

"Horror elements are wrapped around the unsurprising notion that management fosters an unequal power distribution with workers in the icy neo-thriller Hard Labor [Trabalahr Cansa]," begins Jay Weissberg in, as your inner ear has undoubtedly already told you, Variety. "Though award-winning shorts helmers Juliana Rojas and Marco Dutra know how to create atmosphere, it's uncertain whether they realize how heavy-handed their symbolism is, with its implicit — even explicit — message that capitalism is a malignant mildew on the social contract, creating a festering hole in a new business proprietor's personal relations."

"The well-constructed story is full of parallels and ironic mirrors, but simply less absorbing, less urgent than those contemporary benchmarks of reality-grounded supernatural arthouse films, Let the Right One In and The Host," writes Lee Marshall in Screen. "Middle-manager Ottavio ([Marat] Descartes) is fired from his job of ten years on the very day when his can-do wife Helena ([Helena] Albergaria) signs...

If you’ve seen any of Takeshi Miike’s 80 plus movies (Audition, Dead Or Alive, Ichi The Killer, Visitor Q, Sukiyaki Western Django, etc. etc. etc.) you know that he’s a very talented director, with an artist’s sense of how to deliver screen violence. At his very best, he has the flair of Peckinpah, Kurosawa and Leone. And, thankfully, 13 Assassins shows him at what many are saying is his best yet. Don’t believe us, listen to some of the toughest critics around:

Manohla Dargis of the New York Times calls 13 Assassins a “stirring, unexpectedly moving story of love and blood…”. Andrew O’Hehir of Salon calls it “visually spectacular” and “pretty nearly the samurai classic it sets out to become.” Lee Marshall of Screen International praises the ” magnificent 45-minute showdown that has to be the best final battle sequence in cinema since, oh, Kill Bill at least.

Updated through 9/11.

"Takashi Miike must be at least two people," writes Lee Marshall in Screen. "The Japanese maverick averages between two and three films a year — and yet this last-man-standing samurai tale, his second release so far in 2010, is a confident, stylish swordplay feature played in a nicely jaded, 'twilight of the gentleman warrior' key, that bears little trace of haste. It takes a while to build through the occasionally dull and hard-to-follow historical exposition of the over-talky opening scenes. But once the Seven-Samurai-style band of brothers is assembled, 13 Assassins is pure pleasure: and it culminates in a magnificent 45-minute showdown that has to be the best final battle sequence in cinema since, oh, Kill Bill at least."...

Updated through 9/4.

"That the infirm of mind make for troublesome film subjects is demonstrated once again in Ascanio Celestini's striking but over self-conscious feature debut, The Black Sheep, one of three Italian films in this year's Venice competition." Lee Marshall for Screen: "Told by an unreliable asylum-inmate narrator who is too unreliable from the start to really engage our sympathies, this blackly comic denunciation of the casual way in which people can be committed to mental institutions has the audience caught in a cleft stick between compassion for the quirky social outcasts the film depicts and depression at the sheer sadness of it all."...

"This genre-bending high-school thriller-drama about three students who go missing at a French lycee opens like a teen B-movie, but soon moves into more intriguing territory," writes Lee Marshall at Screen. "Lit and photographed in hyperreal style by leading French cinematographer Agnès Godard and featuring a loose and rangy instrumental soundtrack by Us indie rockers Sonic Youth, it plays with the dark side of suburbia in ways that recall Twin Peaks — though without David Lynch's edge of madness."...

Updated through 5/22.

Korean auteur Lee Chang-dong's quietest and most thematically complete film to date, Poetry charts a grandmother's attempt to write a single poem, while she deals with a failing body and mind, and the terrible consequences of her teenage grandson's irresponsibility," writes Lee Marshall in Screen. "Lee is revealing himself to be something of a Korean Douglas Sirk: like [his] recent films Oasis and Secret Sunshine, this is an intelligent melodrama about a sensitive woman in a bullying male world."...

Robert here, scouring the internet to give you the latest on the films premiering in Cannes.

In Competition

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul (no I don't know how it's pronounced) directs this film about a dying man who's visited by the ghosts of his wife and son, in non-human form. Could we have a late competitor for the Palme? The Av Club calls it the directors's "strangest and most mysterious picture yet," and means so in a good way. "It is a mysterious, haunting, and breathtakingly beautiful film," comes from The House Next Door. A film that's good though otherworldy and bizarre may appeal to Burton and his jury. But it's not all praise. Guy Lodge at In Contention says the film is "a wispy lark with no emotional payoff."Fair Game Director Doug Liman (Jumper, yeah really) directs this film about that...

Robert here, scouring the internet to give you the latest on the films premiering in Cannes. Lots and lots to catch up on!

In Competition

Biutiful Alenjandro Gonzalez Inarritu's film is one of the most anticipated of the festival. In a piece entitled "Beautiful Biutiful" Sasha Stone of AwardsDaily raves the film, while admitting that overall reaction has been mixed. Lou Lumenick of the New York Post is among the dissenters, calling the film "a soul-crushing endurance test at 2 1/2 hours." Entertainment Weekly agrees that the film is depressing but finds a bigger fault. "The problem is that none of the characters are remotely developed." says Owen Gleiberman. Rounding out the mixed reactions, we have MovieLine.com who declares the film "the best film shown so far at the festival."Certified Copy "The best film so far in this year’s Cannes competition" is what Time Out London is calling the...

Mike Goodridge, U.S. editor of Screen International, will chair the jury that will select the winners of the World Awards at the 13th annual Hollywood Film Festival, set for Oct. 21-26 at the Arclight Cinemas in Hollywood.

The jury also will feature critics Dan Fainaru, Howard Feinstein, Allan Hunter, Derek Malcolm, Lee Marshall and Jonathan Romney and festival directors Sandra Hebron, Despina Mouzaki, Jacob Neiiendam and Clare Stewart.

The film lineup will be announced Sept. 30.

London -- Director Joe Wright will preside over this year's Edinburgh International Film Festival Michael Powell Jury, organizers said Monday.

Wright will be president of the festival's main jury alongside actor Frank Langella, USA Today film critic Claudia Puig, journalist, broadcaster and author Janet Street-Porter and Australian actor Sacha Horler.

Wright said he was delighted to be returning to the Scottish shindig, describing it as a place "which has always been the greatest melting pot of the British film industry and culture."

Named in homage to one of Britain's most original filmmakers and inaugurated in 1993, the Michael Powell Award is sponsored by the U.K. Film Council and carries a purse of £20,000 ($32,700).

The jury will pick a winner from Brian Percival's "A Boy Called Dad," Duncan Ward's "Boogie Woogie," Jan Dunn's "The Calling," Justin Molotnikov's "Crying With Laughter," Andrea Arnold's "Fish Tank" Lindy Heymann's "Kicks,...

If you ask me who the coolest director working in Hong Kong right now, the first name to pop in my head would be Johnnie To's. Though he's known as a chameleonic director who has dabbled in various genres (my very first exposure to To was the Chow Yun-Fat tearjerking family drama All About Ah-Long), he's understandably popular in the West for his Triad and cop movies.

What seperates him from his contemporaries is his approach to action scenes, which is less kinetic and huge compared to the gonzo action of John Woo or Tsui Hark. Johnnie To takes his cues from Sergio Leone and makes his shootouts all about the buildup. Do yourself a favor and rent Exiled to see how a bunch of guys shooting at each other can look like gorgeous painting in motion. To is at Cannes this year with another crime story, the upfront-sounding Vengeance.