‘Lux Æterna’ Review: Gaspar Noé Takes Audiences on a Witchy, Twitchy Backstage Tour

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. 

Director Gaspar Noé may not be at the Cannes Film Festival right now, that was last year, but that doesn’t mean he can’t steal the limelight with his typically salacious quotes. His new film is “Vortex,” a drama that boasts a cast that includes legendary Italian filmmaker Dario Argento (“Suspira”; read our review here).

Gaspar Noé is an entertaining interview — no matter what other adjectives you would use to describe his career or his approach as a filmmaker, you have to give him this. And with his latest film, “Vortex,” receiving a limited theatrical release this month, fans of, ah, candid Hollywood interviews are about to get more than they handle.

“Bait,” British filmmaker Mark Jenkin’s breakout feature, could well be considered a horror movie. Set in a quaint little fishing enclave off the Cornish coast, where the ship decks are rickety and the townhouses’ whitewash ever-peeling, the knotty fear of loss is ever-present: of history, of possession, of tradition, of heritage, of liberty.

EXCLUSIVE: Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind director Michel Gondry is readying his next project, which will be on sale in the Cannes market with French seller Kinology.

This review of “Lux Aeterna” was first published on May 20, 2019, after its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.Cinematic provocateurs have flourished at the Cannes Film Festival for years, with everyone from Jean-Luc Godard to Lars von Trier coming to the Croisette with works designed to provoke, confront or even annoy an audience. At this year’s festival, you could say that some of the extreme sections of Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Too Old to Die Young” have been designed to test an audience’s limits and make viewers uncomfortable.But nobody does provocation these days quite like Gaspar Noe does.

Joe Leydon Film CriticWhile staring glassy-eyed at interminably long stretches of “The Last Victim,” I was reminded of a ‘60s variety show sketch I viewed during my adolescence. The premise of the skit: Producers of some returning fall shows were told at the last minute that their series had been expanded from 30 to 60 minutes, and they had to stretch scripts that had already been written.

Four years, two films, and one near-fatal experience after his last feature, writer-director Gaspar Noé has a lot to share. The experimental Argentinian filmmaker – who’s built his career in France over the past 25 years – had a brain hemorrhage in between the 2019 Cannes midnight premiere of “Lux Aeterna,” his assaulting, intellectual 52-minute strobe light thriller about a witch shoot from hell, and the making of his next film “Vortex,” a patient, heartrending, nearly two-and-a-half-hour dementia drama.

Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticBuckle up. “Black Box” is the kind of smart, taut conspiracy thriller Hollywood used to consistently make, only this one hails from France, which has been beating the American studios at their own game lately in the good-movies-for-grown-ups department.

“‘No Good Deed’ was inspired by my many late nights during the early pandemic maniacally searching Zillow listings for a way out of my house,” Feldman said in a statement. “I’m endlessly grateful to Netflix for being such a supportive creative home and for continuing to allow me to turn my crippling anxiety into entertainment.”The upcoming series is part of Feldman’s overall deal with Netflix.

Vortex — which opened this weekend to a full house at NYC’s IFC Center — has an unusual star, Dario Argento. Here’s how the film’s helmer Gaspar Noe convinced the iconic Italian horror movie director into his first lead acting role.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticRemember how you learned in school about “man’s inhumanity to man”? If the director Gaspar Noé has a theme, it’s “the humanity of inhumanity.” Noé’s shock psychodramas confront subjects like murder, sexual assault, and what happens when a roomful of flex dancers go out of their gourds on LSD. As a filmmaker, he’s drawn to extremes — to the sensational and the depraved, the sordid and the evil.

Marilyn Stasio Theater CriticI am woman, hear me roar — with laughter, at “POTUS: or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive,” playwright Selina Fillinger’s delicious feminist farce about the all-female staff that keeps the country out of war and other sticky situations while babysitting the dullard who holds the highest office in our beleaguered land. Playing characters largely unknown to the public within the world of the play are actors Lilli Cooper, Lea DeLaria, Rachel Dratch, Julianne Hough, Suzy Nakamura, Julie White and Vanessa Williams.

Wet Leg have announced a string of 13 headline shows for cities in the US, Canada and Mexico, bridging the gap between a handful of festival sets and their trio of gigs supporting Florence + The Machine.Following their appearances as this year’s Lollapalooza, Mo Pop and Osheaga festivals, the Isle of Wight duo will take to the Phoenix Concert Centre in Toronto, Canada on Monday August 1. They’ll head to Vancouver next, playing the Commodore Ballroom that Thursday (August 4).After another handful of festival sets – including Outside Lands in San Francisco, as well as the Netherlands’ Lowlands – Wet Leg will return to theatres for gigs in San Antonio, New Orleans, Orlando, Atlanta, Louisville, St Louis, Kansas City, Abiquiu, Salt Lake City and Phoenix.

Jerry Seinfeld couldn't have asked for a better TV mom. The 67-year-old comedian took to Twitter on Friday to pay tribute to Liz Sheridan following her death. She was 93.The host posted a black and white picture of him and Sheridan on the set of his hit NBC sitcom.