Cannes Review: Ethan Coen’s ‘Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble In Mind’

announced a fifth season back in February, revealing that it will take place in 2019 and will ask the question of when is a kidnapping not a kidnapping, and what if your wife isn’t yours? Specific character details are few and far between at this point, but it is known that Temple will play a character named Dot, Hamm will play Roy, and Leigh will portray Lorraine. Temple most recently starred in Paramount+’s “The Offer” and is best known for her role in Apple TV+’s “Ted Lasso.” Hamm’s definitive role was as Don Draper in AMC’s award-winning “Mad Men” and he most recently co-starred in the box office hit “Top Gun: Maverick.” Leigh has appeared in a handful of high-profile shows and movies in recent years, including an Oscar-nominated turn in 2016’s “The Hateful Eight,” Amazon Prime Video’s “Hunters,” and Apple TV+’s “Lisey’s Story.

Juno Temple (Ted Lasso), Jon Hamm (Mad Men) and Jennifer Jason Leigh (Atypical) are set as leads in the upcoming fifth installment of Fargo, FX’s acclaimed limited series created and executive produced by Noah Hawley.

CANNES – Lukas Dhont’s second feature, “Close,” starts off where most love stories end, and, in that respect, it begins with almost euphoric joy. Leo (Eden Dambrine) and Remi (Gustav De Waele) are the best of friends.

Belgium’s Lukas Dhont takes a deserved step up to the Cannes Film Festival competition with Close, only his second film — a minimalist melodrama that shows a definite growth in visual style but may be confronting to some with its deliberately unhurried, Eric Rohmer-esque aesthetic. The international success of Dhont’s well-intentioned debut Girl, about a young trans-female ballet dancer, was somewhat blunted in the U.S., where G.L.A.A.D. amplified complaints of misrepresentation on behalf of the trans lobby. Close is a much safer proposition, but may yet sail into choppy waters with its themes of youth suicide.

Given the combustible subject matter and the director’s reputation, French auteur Claire Denis has made a remarkably listless and unpersuasive film in Stars at Noon. Set during the Nicaraguan Sandanista revolution circa 1984, this adaptation of Denis Johnson’s novel published two years later centers on a couple of Americans of dubious character who misspend time in Central America before finally deciding it’s time to split when, in fact, it might be too late. This is the sort of misfire that, just because it comes from a hallowed French auteur, sometimes gets programmed in the Cannes competition even when it manifestly doesn’t deserve to be there.

Guillermo del Toro doesn’t have a new film at the Cannes Film Festival, but the director was on the French Riviera this week as part of a symposium on the current state of cinema. And he had some choice words about movies in the age of streaming.

They all hate each other, Leila (the magnificent Taraneh Alidoosti) tells her brother Alireza (Navid Mohammad Zadeh) when he returns to the family home. It is a rare visit; he works in an industrial plant somewhere on the other side of Iran. He isn’t going to tell his family that he has been laid off with the promise of pay that has never materialized; in the Tehran family that crowds Saeed Roustaee’s long and absorbing clan drama Leila’s Brothers, he is supposed to be the properly functioning son.

Director Léa Mysius expertly crafts a queer, witchy movie in her Directors’ Fortnite debut film, The Five Devils, which received a five-minute standing ovation at the screening I attended. Mysius takes concepts like identity, sexuality, and mysticism and creates an intricate genre film that’s part time travel, part drama, and all heart. 

Detective Hae-joon investigating the death of a man who fell from a mountain top. When he meets the deceased man’s wife in Park Chan-wook’s latest film in competition at Cannes, Decision To Leave.  

It probably says something, in spite of their public comments to the contrary, about the severity of the Coen Brothers’ break-up that each of them has proceeded to make a movie that you not only can’t imagine them making together, but that is so easily classifiable — after all, “Shakespeare adaptation” and “musical bio-doc” are two of the most venerable film types of today. The only genre you could safely consign them to before now was their own; they made “Coen Brothers movies,” and everyone knew what that meant, even if they couldn’t precisely pinpoint it.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticWhen a documentary gets made, as an off-ramp passion project, by a noted filmmaker who normally directs fiction films, there’s a special curiosity and excitement to seeing the angle — and the kind of craft — he’s going to bring to it. “Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind” is the first movie directed by Ethan Coen all by himself.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticWhen a documentary gets made, as an off-ramp passion project, by a noted filmmaker who normally directs fiction films, there’s a special curiosity and excitement to seeing the angle — and the kind of craft — he’s going to bring to it. “Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind” is the first movie directed by Ethan Coen all by himself.

CANNES, France -- Most in the film industry thought Ethan Coen was done with making movies. Ethan did, too.But on Sunday, Coen will premiere his first documentary, “Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind," at the Cannes Film Festival, a movie that was unknown until last month's festival lineup announcement.

so much fun to make,” Coen said when he introduced the film before its Cannes Film Festival premiere in the Salle Bunuel on Sunday night. “I know people always say that, but in this case, it’s true.

One of the topics that dominated the “The Tragedy of Macbeth” press circuit was Ethan Coen‘s absence from the film. With Joel Coen going solo, the decades-long partnership between the Coen Brothers seemed to have reached an inglorious conclusion.

CANNES – It may seem obvious, but sometimes combining two compelling stories doesn’t lead to an overall more captivating film. That’s the primary takeaway from Gina Gammell and Riley Keough‘s somewhat messy “War Pony,” which debuted at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival this weekend.

EXCLUSIVE: After a long Oscar-laden movie partnership with his brother, Ethan Coen makes his solo and documentary debut on the A24 film Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble In Mind, which premieres at Cannes tonight. He and wife/editor Tricia Cooke made this one while brother Joel Coen and his wife Fran McDormand were off making The Tragedy of Macbeth. Here, Ethan Coen describes the allure of making a free form docu on the firebrand singer/pianist behind hits like Great Balls of Fire. Coen worked closely with T Bone Burnett, the music man extraordinaire who collaborated with the Coens on Inside Llewyn Davis. And when the Coens will put the band back together and make another together.

CANNES – We are living in yet another era of European history where old battles over the borders of nation-states are being disputed. Russia has invaded the sovereign nation of Ukraine after already annexing the province of Crimea less than a decade ago.

Four-time Oscar winner Ethan Coen has spoken out about the reasons behind his recent hiatus from filmmaking, as well as his return with the documentary Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind, which makes its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on Sunday.

The Los Angeles Times in 2019 that he was taking a rest from filmmaking to pursue other interests. But then one very big thing influenced not only his return to the industry but to his first documentary, “Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind,” which is premiering at the Cannes Film Festival: the COVID pandemic.“What changed is I started getting bored,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press. “I was with Trish in New York at the beginning of the lockdown.