‘Simon of the Mountain’ Review: Federico Luis’ Sometimes Playful, Often Provocative Debut Weighs What Constitutes Disability

Billy Corgan has addressed his recent comments about not wanting to play Smashing Pumpkins hits by sharing a recent setlist that is bursting with the band’s biggest songs.The frontman recently spoke to Kerrang!, where he discussed his band’s UK tour dates, which wrapped up in Cardiff last night (June 14).“I don’t play any songs I don’t want to play,” he said. “I don’t care if they’re a classic or not, if I don’t want to play it, I just don’t play it.

Siddhant Adlakha Calvin Reeder‘s “The A-Frame” is chock-full of loaded ideas that don’t quite coalesce. A film about confronting death and a lurid fantasy of escaping its grasp, its story of terminal illness has the potential to be intensely personal. However, when it begins toying with sci-fi tropes and possibilities, it becomes both aesthetically and narratively malformed and feels lost in a liminal space between acerbic gallows humor and existential genre fiction without fully leaning into either one.

It would seem that were one to gaze into the future of sci-fi filmmaking, society will never see an end to the concept of UFOs as a plot device, with “They’re Here” the latest, but far from greatest, contender for the spot of genre-defining piece presumably meant to spark a conversation about whether or not we remain alone in the vastness of space. While this particular outing may indeed be rich in onscreen conversation regarding the possibility of interstellar visitors between whoever might be occupying the film at any given moment, it’s far from eye-opening and, it would seem, purposely aimless.

Where the Mountain Meets the Sea.In the D.C. premiere production of Jeff Augustin’s personal tale of a father and son who traverse great distances and differences trying to reconnect, Secka teams with singer-musician Rob Morrison to provide live music and score supporting the drama.Robert Cornelius, as dad Jean, and Isaac “Deacon Izzy” Bell, as son Jonah, carry the narrative, taking turns telling respective sides of their family’s life story.The account spun by Haitian immigrant Jean might be a mix of memories that happened and memories he wishes had happened, he admits.

The indigenous Yanomami tribe living in the Amazon rainforest on the border between Brazil and Venezuela is dwindling. Only 35,000 remain.

Lisa Kennedy Just because Celestina, the soon-to-be young wife in the “The Young Wife” told friends and family that while the honor of their presence was requested, they would be attending a party, not a wedding, doesn’t make it so. The weight of family, community and ritual aren’t so easily evaded.

Matt Smith plays Daemon, a warrior prince who exists among fire-breathing reptiles and palace intrigue. But if his character were ever to leap deeper into the supernatural, Smith has some ideas about where he could go. “I think Daemon would make a really good vampire,” he says.

Simon has a strong twitch that drives him to shake his head, meaninglessly. He sometimes dribbles. The way he looks out at the world from under his brows, especially when people are talking to him, suggests he can’t quite keep up with what they’re saying. When he meets a group of young people from a local daycare center for the intellectually disabled, he naturally falls in with them. He befriends Pehuen Pedre (playing a version of himself) on the top of a mountain, where the group has walked and gotten into difficulties in high winds. When they all manage to get down and back on the bus, Simon gets on board with them. This is where he belongs. 

Bethenny Frankel isn’t happy with Chanel.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic When you sit down to watch a documentary about the Beach Boys, you know what you want: to be immersed in the California dreamin’ of the group’s early surfin’-hit days, in the jaunty beauty of songs like “I Get Around” and “Help Me Rhonda,” and in the story of how Brian Wilson began to figure out a way to turn pop songs into miniature symphonies. You want to be immersed in the recording of “Pet Sounds,” in the Beach Boys’ rivalry with the Beatles, in the derailed masterpiece that was “Smile,” and in how Brian’s mental and emotional problems began to tear himself and the group apart.

CANNES – After screening “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” a world premiere at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, one has to breathe a sigh of relief that director and screenwriter Mohammad Rasoulof is safely out of Iran. A victim of a politically motivated jail sentence for supporting the 2022 Masha Amini hijab protests, Rasoulof‘s latest feature will likely anger the Iranian government even more.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic For more than two decades, Iman (Misagh Zare) has functioned as a civil servant, doing work that his kids — who represent Iran’s younger generation — would be ashamed of. Better to keep them in the dark. At last, for his loyalty, Iman has been given a promotion, not to judge (the job he wants) but to inspector (a job no one wants).

Woman, life, freedom. Down with theocracy! The slogans shouted in the bloody streets of Tehran over the past year echo through The Seed of the Sacred Fig, Mohammad Rasoulof’s long, heartfelt story of an Iranian family that starts to tear at the seams when Iman’s two daughters are told what he really does at the office.

Jessica Kiang The dogged pursuit of the relationship unicorn that is the good break-up informs the wit and winking wisdom of Jonás Trueba‘s “The Other Way Around,” a delightful showcase for the Spanish director’s lithe, airy style, here accented with glistening strands of Madrileño meta-melancholy. A hip, popular twosome decide to call it quits after 14 years, cuing a very funny yet properly grown-up portrait of the ideal couple trying to smoothe, and even to celebrate, their transition into ideal exes. It’s the celebration aspect that will prove their undoing.

Argentinian director Federico Luis’s first film Simon of the Mountain has won the Grand Prize at the 63rd edition of Cannes Critics’ Week.

Carlos Aguilar The lasagna-obsessed feline with a near-pathological aversion to Mondays, who first came into popular consciousness in the late ‘70s as a comic strip, is a diluted version of himself in “The Garfield Movie.” Not only is his suave apathy mostly replaced by an excessive excitedness with only sporadic glimpses of his endearingly negative qualities, but this Garfield jumps off trains, stages a heist, and is subjected to trite physical comedy by way of numerous predictable action sequences. The ordeal mimics a rehashed plot from the dull “The Secret Life of Pets” franchise with Garfield forcefully plugged in.

Carlos Aguilar For about the first hour of their documentary “The Falling Sky,” Brazilian directors Eryk Rocha and Gabriela Carneiro da Cunha introduce us to the traditions and ongoing plight of the Yanomami Indigenous people — namely, fending off invaders — without making their presence known. There are no title cards stating where we are and why, and the only voiceover we hear comes directly from the Yanomami, most often Davi Kopenawa, their current leader and co-author of a 2010 book bearing the same title as the film.

Todd Gilchrist editor Chronicling the eponymous Navy flight squadron across a season of demonstrations, “The Blue Angels” easily ranks near the top of the many Hollywood films to be considered “military propaganda” for their glowing depiction of the activities of U.S. men and women in uniform.

How can you be a leader to your people if you’re on the run from them? It’s a fascinating question, one that could serve as the basis for a great book or film, but one that’s hard to embed in a six-part mini-series, a format that proves the wrong one for the story of how a fake movie played a role in the life of Black Panthers leader Huey P. Newton.

Martin Dale Contributor Paulo Carneiro‘s third feature, “Savanna and the Mountain,” is world premiering at this year’s Cannes in the Director’s Fortnight section. The film depicts a David-and-Goliath struggle between rural folk from Covas de Barroso in the North of Portugal and London-based Savannah Resources, which plans to build Europe’s biggest open-air lithium mine.