‘Monstrous’ Film Review: Christina Ricci Stars in a Supernatural Thriller with a Few Surprises

Harry Styles got some help from James Corden to shoot a music video for the Harry’s House track “Daylight”.

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.

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.

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.

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.

this long in an industrial bakery watching the two managers fill out EU grant applications?Soon enough the corners come together and the shape becomes more clear as the part-Roma, part-German Matthias (Marin Grigore) returns to his native Transylvania town either to make amends with his estranged wife Ana (Macrina Barladeanu) or, failing that, to rekindle the flame with former mistress Csilla (Judith State). By way of filial duties, Matthias also has to deal with an ailing father (whose need for an MRI — RMN in Romanian — gives the film its title) and a son too shell-shocked by that unknown forest sight to speak.But the film is just as much Csilla’s story, following the native Hungarian as she carves out a comfortable middle-class existence, devoting herself to her EU-assisted startup and sacrificing whatever personal projects she might have in order to gain affluence in a post-industrial town whose long-shuttered mine has left both water source and the hearts of the men who lost their jobs poisoned for good.Even as the “who” comes sharper into focus, we still can’t quite crack the “why.” Why do we follow Matthias through a seemingly aimless series of encounters as he and his fellow townsfolk debate the finer points of Romanian history? Why do we spend so much time with Csilla as she posts a series of job listings (“Don’t mention the salary,” advises her boss) on every door in town?  And why the urgent need to underline every character’s particular ethnic background?The answer — call it a skeleton key — comes at the one-hour mark upon the arrival of three Sri Lankan migrants to fill the still-vacant posts.

Throughout her career, Mia Hansen-Løve has returned to a familiar milieu — the daily lives of women, drawing out a poignant beauty and humanist sense of drama in the quotidian rhythms of mothers as they go about their work, as well as their caretaking of children, parents and their own inner worlds. There’s something fascinating, and indeed feminist, about simply watching these women, played by some of Europe’s most talented actresses (Isabelle Huppert in “Things to Come,” Vicky Krieps in “Bergman Island”), simply exist in the world, maintaining the delicate balance of day-to-day harmony despite the larger ups and downs that threaten to upend everything.In “One Fine Morning,” Hansen-Løve’s latest, the woman in question is Sandra, played by Léa Seydoux, hair cropped into a pixie cut, clad in the jeans, sweatshirt and backpack befitting a young widowed mother caring for her daughter, Linn (Camille Leban Martins), on her own in Paris.

exercice de style as the French would put it, “EO” has plenty on its mind and nothing much to say, idling through a series of vignettes than more often not end with a punch-line of a forbidden kiss or a sudden act of violence, capturing them all with a flashy and urgent style of a music video or Super Bowl car commercial. One need not look far to see in this tale of a lonely beast of burden traipsing across the countryside a condemnation of modern Polish society, especially in sequences when the titular donkey first witnesses and then succumbs to a bout of skinhead hooligan violence, or when it clops across a forest bed we soon learn was once a Jewish burial site. At the same time, Skolimowski – who shot this project over a two-year period – seems more interested in simply making his camera swoop and soar and generally perform its series of stupid pet tricks. In many ways, this rather silly (if quite entertaining) trifle makes for a fitting entry for Cannes’ 75th edition. Skolimowski approaches the material with the hunger and zeal of a young film student, lifting a framework from Robert Bresson and filtering through references to recent festival provocateurs like Lars von Trier, Refn, and Michael Haneke.

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.

other melancholy tale about two men forming and fostering a life-defining love at a steep elevation.Van Groeningen and Vandermeersch’s “The Eight Mountains” – which premiered in competition at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday – is more than just a Dudes Rock “Brokeback Mountain.” Still, there is something to the comparison. Not for any narrative likeness – as a story about friendship, “The Eight Mountains” explores a bond more fraternal than romantic.

wildly entertaining rock ‘n’ roll fantasia “Leto.”The two films both show that Serebrennikov has strong ideas about how to use music, but otherwise they’re worlds apart. “Tchaikovsky’s Wife” begins with Miliukova (Alyona Mikhaylova) dressed in widow’s black and trying to choose the right words for her funeral wreath; but when she arrives in the room where her husband’s corpse is laid out, Tchaikovsky (Odin Biron, full of quiet Peter Sarsgaard smarm) rouses himself, stands up and asks, “Why is the wife here? Who invited her?”The scene is enough to tell you that this will be Miliukova’s story, and that it won’t be a straight period piece, even though it re-creates 1893 St.

Originally planned to open the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year before the worsening Covid situation forced the festival to again go virtual, Oscar-winning writer-director Michel Hazanavicius made the right decision in insisting his comedy Final Cut (Coupez!), about the making of a low-budget bad zombie movie, should be presented with a full house in a theatre, thankfully not to be watched on your computer at a prestigious film festival. In holding out for the real thing he scored big as it was chosen as the opening-night out-of-competition film of the 75th Cannes Film Festival.

Michael Schneider Variety Editor at LargeThe network upfronts are back — sort of. NBCUniversal kicked off the return of in-person upfronts presentations to advertisers, the first since 2019 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

tended toward edgy remarks — added to the rep.Like so many icons of ’90s culture, Ricci has made a major comeback in recent years. Her latest role is in the thriller “Monstrous,” out Friday, May 13.

Top Gun: Maverick” are warned at one point about a steep aerial climb that will subject them to massive G-force. Their bodies will feel like they weigh 2000 pounds, they are told, with their skulls crushing their spines, and breathing will feel like an elephant is on their chests pressing down on their lungs.It’s a sensation not unlike the film’s relentless onslaught in its mission to entertain, delight and move audiences; “Top Gun: Maverick” resembles an amusement-park ride in all the worst ways, in that every second feels designed to provoke a response.