‘Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind’ Film Review: Ethan Coen Shakes the House With Rock Doc

The major prize-winners at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival have yet to be announced, but there is no question about which film is the most important. “Butterfly Vision” doesn’t just have the distinction of being one of the two Ukrainian productions on display (the other being Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk’s “Pamfir”), it also tells a story about the effects of warfare both on Ukraine’s soldiers and the citizens who have waited for them back home. It is almost incredible that Maksym Nakonechnyi was able to finish “Butterfly Vision” and to bring it to Cannes, where he made a touching speech about the risk of Ukrainian culture being extinguished.

Before they became famous actors and comedians, Jon Hamm and Jimmy Fallon toured the country as a roots rock duo by the name of Burlap.

Prickly protagonists are a dime a dozen on TV these days, continuing long after the reign of antiheroes like Tony Soprano, Don Draper, and Walter White ended. On Apple TV+’s dark comedy, “Physical,” Rose Byrne’s excellent performance as housewife-turned-aerobics maven Sheila Rubin runs the gauntlet of the ‘difficult woman’ archetype.

For decades, Italian filmmakers dominated Cannes.If the 1960s saw Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni and Luchino Visconti reign supreme, somehow the 1970s were even richer. Elio Petri and Francesco Rosi won shared top prizes in 1972, while for two consecutive years later that decade the Taviani brothers and then Ermanno Olmi hoisted Palmes across a border that sits just 40 miles away.This year’s lone competition title from an Italian director (the only other Italian language film, “The Eight Mountains,” comes courtesy of two Belgians), Mario Martone’s “Nostalgia” will probably not break that particular drought, but the Neapolitan director can take solace in another modest honor: Telling a story about mothers and sons, about gangsters and priests, and about a peculiar kind of longing for the past in a place where little has changed for hundreds of years, “Nostalgia” is a nigh perfect candidate to wave il Tricolore.Taking a thin amount of plot and stretching it as far and wide as it can go, the film itself is far from perfect, but it does benefit from “The Traitor” star Pierfrancesco Favino’s terrific lead performance as a man who learns the hard way that there’s no going home again.After forty years abroad, Felice (Favino, of course) returns to his native Naples a stranger in a familiar land.

A Closer Look segment on “Late Night with Seth Meyers,” which you can watch above. “There have been a flood of books from former Trump advisers since he left office, and while most of them have been dishonest and self-serving, there’s one coming out soon that I think has the potential to be refreshingly candid and revealing.

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.

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.

For his directing debut after brother Joel’s first solo outing with The Tragedy of Macbeth, Ethan Coen has chosen a similar saga of ruthless ambition and soul-devouring guilt, telling the rise and fall — and rise again — of Jerry Lee Lewis, from farmer’s son to rock’n’roll idol.

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.

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.

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.

think is the finale; in truth, “Hunt” has more endings than “The Return of the King.” It succumbs to silliness sometimes, populated as it is by characters who take a licking and keep on ticking (or take a shooting and keep on tooting). But the real violence takes place in boardrooms and offices where Lee finds enough quiet savagery to make “Squid Game” look like child’s play.