‘The Zone of Interest’ Review: Jonathan Glazer’s Often Brilliant Examination Of Human Complicity [Cannes]

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic If you’ve ever wondered when it was that Michel Gondry, the gifted French director of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” became the world’s most annoying filmmaker, you might say the answer is, “He always was.” Yet no one, including me, quite thinks of him that way. That’s because the few works of his that have come to prominence possess a special combination of facility and charm. I adore “Eternal Sunshine,” a virtuoso movie that bends your brain and breaks your heart at the same time. You might simply choose to characterize it as the masterpiece of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, but the truth is that Gondry directed it ­— the leaps in time, the emotionally convulsive performances of Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet — with a masterful sense of play and gravitational control.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic “It’s been about 25 years since I stood on this stage,” since Shania Twain, not long after the kickoff to her set Sunday night at the Hollywood Bowl. She had that figured about right — the calendar shows she last played America’s most favored amphitheater on May 6, 1999. That was a few weeks shy of the moment that her signature song among all signature songs, “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!,” peaked on the charts. When she pulled it out as her inevitable final encore number Saturday, it still felt like it was cresting. It’s a song that may never have truly peaked until all the generations represented at the Bowl this Memorial Day weekend have passed away and/or the day the prerogative to have a little fun has been codified into the criminal as a felony. For as long as there are women, and gay men, and straight men relaxed with themselves enough to buy “Let’s go, girls” T-shirt and diode-blinking pink cowboy hats, Twain will own rights to the ultimate ladies’ night anthem, just as surely as she owns the federal trademark on exclamation points. (She does, doesn’t she?)

The Ultimatum: Queer Love (★★★★☆) is the latest in Netflix’s line of reality dating shows. This one is not hosted by Nick Lachey, but JoAnna Garcia Swisher, who is immediately clocked for being straight, and truthfully isn’t around that much.

Marta Balaga Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest” has scored a Fipresci award in Cannes.  The jury of the International Federation of Film Critics praised the film “for its formal radicality, the complexity of the sound and score, and its contrast between the invisible atrocities behind the wall and a supposed paradise,” Fipresci stated on Saturday.  “By presenting the horror as something usual, and using everyday-like dialogues, it’s a reflection on ignorance as a disease that connects the past with the present.” Glazer’s take on a Nazi family living next door to Auschwitz and enjoying it – loosely based on the novel by Martin Amis, who tragically passed away on May 19, just before the premiere – has been getting rave reviews at the French festival, becoming one of the frontrunners for this year’s Palme d’Or.

What could well be Ken Loach’s final film has as much fire and fury as his debut Poor Cow did in 1967, if we discount his pioneering TV work in the run-up. The visual style hasn’t changed a great deal in the years since, but that’s because the British movie veteran, soon to turn 87, isn’t much fussed about surfaces, it’s the inner lives of his characters that he wants to capture. In that respect, The Old Oak would make a fitting swansong, capping the recent North-East trilogy with a vital film that is clearly the work of the team behind previous Cannes Competition hits I, Daniel Blake and Sorry We Missed You.

Dennis Harvey Film Critic Released to theaters in the theatrical dog days of mid-2020, Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion’s “Becky” became a home-formats hit, its gleefully tasteless home-invasion thrills a guilty-pleasure tonic for COVID captives going a bit stir-crazy. Now Lulu Wilson is back as that title character, more or less the sole survivor of her prior screen outing. You can be sure in “The Wrath of Becky” that age hasn’t dulled her pissed-off homicidal verve, and that fate will surely provide another crop of ne’er-do-wells to tempt its exercise.  However, a different writing-directing duo is in charge this time, Matt Angel and Suzanne Coote. Their efforts generate rewards that are somewhat diminished, if still diverting. Quiver is releases this SXSW-premiered sequel to U.S. theaters, with home-formats dates as yet unannounced. 

Already a big enough hit in the U.K. to earn a second season, anyone who has watched even a few minutes of the NBA Playoffs on TNT has seen the ubiquitous ads for “The Lazarus Project,” premiering June 4th, and probably wondered what the heck is going on.

Manori Ravindran Executive Editor of International Jonathan Glazer’s Nazi drama “The Zone of Interest” has sold into major international territories following its buzzy Cannes world premiere. The film centers on the family of a high-ranking SS official that lives next door to Auschwitz concentration camp. The pic has sold into: Austria and Germany (Leonine), Benelux (Cineart), France (BAC), Greece (Spentzos), Italy (I Wonder), Japan (Happinet Phantom Studios), Scandinavia (SF Studios), Spain (Elastica) and Switzerland (Filmcoopi). In Poland — a significant sales market for the film given it is set there — Gutek has come on board as distributor. (A24 was selling worldwide rights for the film, but did not handle the Polish sale.)

A24 has unveiled a raft of key territory deals for Jonathan Glazer’s hotly tipped Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or frontrunner The Zone Of Interest ahead of the awards ceremony on Saturday.

There has been a lot of talk in recent years about cooking as a form of care, an idea intrinsically linked to the feminist revaluation of the work usually performed by women, which is most often unremunerated yet essential to day-to-day living.

Guy Lodge Film Critic All of life, including death, is in the lengthy, unbroken shot that opens Thien An Pham’s bewitching debut feature “Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell.” We begin on the sidelines of a local soccer match in Saigon’s city center, observing the play from a cool distance before following a shuffling mascot, dressed in a wolf suit, to the adjoining bar. There, crowds watch a 2018 World Cup fixture while a group of young men, turned from the TV, drink and discuss matters of faith, existence and ennui. Thien (Le Phong Vu) is quiet and morose, only half-invested in a conversation already beset with distractions: the sales pitch of a bubbly beer rep, the burst of a sudden summer thunderstorm, a metallic screech and grim thump as the camera again drifts serenely over to reveal the aftermath of a fatal motorcycle crash. In the ensuing rhubarb of bystander concern, Thien stays put.

Cordon bleu is the warmest color in Tràn Anh Hùng’s long but surprisingly light soufflé of a movie, a highly watchable Aga saga that’s so artful, charming and non-boat-rockingly old-school that it might make you wonder, even in a non-ironic way, what Lasse Hallström has been up to lately. In Cannes film festivals gone by, it could arguably have provoked the bidding war of the fortnight, given the track record of such foodie faves as Le Grand Bouffe, Babette’s Feast and Eat Drink Man Woman, which also debuted on the Croisette. But that’s faint praise for a story that, although it’s almost all about fillings, trimmings and toppings, doesn’t seem to have that much content or, more importantly, depth.

There were so many interesting looks on the red carpet at the premiere of La Passion De Dodin Bouffant during the 2023 Cannes Film Festival today!

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor A24’s “The Zone of Interest” is spoken in German, but was filmed in Poland and is written and directed by a British auteur. So what does that mean for its prospects for best international feature at the Oscars? Written and directed by Jonathan Glazer, “The Zone of Interest” premiered last week at the Cannes Film Festival where it emerged as an early favorite for the coveted Palme d’Or after receiving widespread acclaim. The film tells the story of a commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), and his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) who strive to build a dream life for their family in a house and garden next to the camp that was one of the sites where six million Jews were murdered.

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor The Cannes Film Festival has had its fair share of impressive movie premieres this year, with audiences embracing new films from the likes of Jonathan Glazer, Todd Haynes and and Hirokazu Kore-eda. But even the most sustained standing ovation doesn’t guarantee that a movie will walk away with the Palme d’Or, Cannes’ highest honor. It all depends on the vagaries of the jury’s taste, and this one is headed up by Ruben Östlund, a two time Palme d’Or winner for “Triangle of Sadness” and “The Square.” And it’s not just Östlund’s decision to make. The ultimate victor will come down to the personal opinions of jury members Maryam Touzani, Denis Ménochet, Rungano Nyoni, Brie Larson, Paul Dano, Atiq Rahimi, Damián Szifrón and Julia Ducournau.

Michel Gondry’s new film “The Book of Solutions,” playing in Directors’ Fortnight at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, centers on the torturous life of being a creative filmmaker and begins at the heart of the matter: Marcc(Pierre Niney) is in a meeting with the producers of his new film, and they are unhappy with what he has delivered them. They’re ending the shoot, putting a new editor in charge to salvage what is already there, and his producing partner of many years finally turns his back on him.

There’s trouble in the paradise of Savannah, Georgia, where the skeins of Spanish moss-draped over corridors of trees wave in the gentle coastal zephyrs with each night’s picture-perfect sunset. Spouses Gracie (Julianne Moore) and Joe (Charles Melton) have opened their palatial home for a backyard BBQ; he’s manning the grill, and she’s darting about trying to make everything just right, each well aware of their role to play.

I am still searching for my words; my thoughts first ran dry in the opening minutes of the shattering and evocative “Killers of the Flower Moon.” It begins with the Osage tribal elders mourning the loss of their language and customs as they bury a sacred pipe. The scene breaks, next revealing these Indigenous folks — forcibly moved from Missouri to present-day Oklahoma (thought to be terrible, barren land) — discovering oil as psychedelic music erupts with the splash of the black liquid.

reported by Screen International, how it’s impossible to watch the film today and not look at the present. “As white Europeans or Americans through the accident of our birth, we were born into aspects of wealth that were gained through hundreds of years of enslavement of people who didn’t look like us – hundreds of years ago, so we’re conveniently distanced from that.”Cannes Gets a Jump on Blockbuster SeasonCannes may be all about prestige features and future Oscar contenders but that’s no reason it can’t also act as a launchpad for a rather full summer movie season.

“The Zone of Interest,” which premiered on Friday, the British director Jonathan Glazer said he’s been thinking about making a film about the Holocaust for many years, but only figured out the story he wanted to tell after he visited Auschwitz a few years ago. “When we started the film I wasn’t sure what film we were going to make, what perspective it would be from,” he said. But then he visited the camp where 1 million European Jews were gassed and incinerated, and 150,000 others murdered as well. “It began to evolve from my own journey, that visit,” Glazer said. “The house and garden the commandant lived in … Its proximity to the camp was jaw-dropping.