Cannes Coverage 2011: "Restless"

Gus Van Sant is hardly one of the miracle directors of our age, because for every success he's had, he's also had a massive failures. I felt like Restless was going to be one of those missteps, despite optimistic inclinations towards the otherwise. I'm consistently pleased with Mia Wasikowska's performances, each containing a subtle sense of dimension or depth, but as much could not be said of the films she's appeared in. I'd reference my review for Alice in Wonderland, but I never had the drive to actually write on. As expected, the reaction to Restless after its premiere at Cannes has been typically cold to a degree.

Todd McCarthy (Hollywood Reporter): "Van Sant can be good at creating private worlds inhabited by sensitive and/or disturbed characters, but here the individuals are simply not very interesting. The project started as a group of short plays and vignettes by NYU student Jason Lew, a fellow classmate of co-producer Bryce Dallas Howard who subsequently worked them into a play and, ultimately, a script. It still feels sketchy, however, neither deeply developed nor very nuanced. With her Mia Farrow haircut and winsome air, Wasikowska is a welcome presence as always, but one wishes she had more levels to play than brave and resolutely upbeat. In his film debut, Hopper, son of Dennis Hopper, is tousel-haired and cute but struggles to bring dimension and nuance to Enoch’s balkiness."

Cannes playing host to Von Trier, Malick, Marshall

The unveiling of this year's Cannes Film Festival line up wasn't exactly filled with shocks and surprises so much as pleasantries and intrigues. Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life is obviously making an appearance, as if we needed any further confirmation on that one. As predicted, but not confirmed, Lars Von Trier's latest film, Melancholia, will also be making an appearance in the competition. Pedro Almadovar's The Skin That I Inhabit is also to have it's premiere, along with several other wild cards. Restless is playing Un Certain Regard, as noted yesterday, amongst several other films we're sure to hear first words about this time next month. The only real surprise of sorts is Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides playing at the festival. I guess there's always one blockbuster in this heap.

OPENING FILM
"Midnight in Paris," Woody Allen

COMPETITION
"Drive," Nicolas Winding Refn
"Footnote," Josef Cedar
"Hanezu no Tsuki," Naomi Kawase
"Hara-kiri: Death of a Samurai," Takashi Miike

Open Thread: Children, Wake Up!

If things have been generally subdued here at the site for the past two weeks, that's probably a byproduct of the sluggish trend the film industry has fallen into this year. Everything about this year thus far screams of a sort of sedation and lack of enthusiasm, so much that it makes me question the overall happiness of people these days. No film this year has opened higher than $40 million over the weekend, something that should be remedied this weekend by either the child skewing Rio or the horror genre parody Scream 4. Are audiences really just tired with the theatrical experience, or is it just that there's nothing worth seeing out there? I'd very much like to believe the latter, but seeing as Hop is getting higher numbers than Source Code, we could throw that idea out the window.

Interestingly enough, Hanna seems to be playing better with audiences than I expected it would. The theater I went to see Joe Wright's art house feature in was skewing more towards the younger demographic than one would expect. I'm not just talking about teens and such, but there were young children in the audience, of course accompanied by their parents. It's almost as if they were begging to be observed for their reactions in this really frightening action piece. It actually reminded me an awful lot of Coraline in 2009, filled with kids who weren't expecting a terrifying experience when they initially sat down.

The older demographic's response to Hanna was one of unmitigated shock, and it's something that's completely understandable. I'm not sure if you noticed, but Hanna is an absolutely terrible role model for children. She murders people at the drop of the hat, showing little remorse for her actions afterwords. Obviously, I understand that there's more to Saoirse Ronan's character and performance than that narrow description allows for. It's one of the many things that makes the film brilliant, how varying she is in her emotions of love, happiness, fear, anger, ambition, and apathy. All the same, you could excuse the parents for dragging their kids screaming out of the theater some time before the end.

Theatrical Trailer: Restless

Well, for every hard hitting drama that Gus Van Sant (Milk) delivers us, he has to give us something sweet like this. I always have to be careful when anticipating films like this, because I have a soft spot for this type of cute romance in trailers. Quite often, I find my high hopes not be rewarded. A great example would be It's Kind of a Funny Story this year. I hope that a better fate will befall this film, because it features Mia Wasikowski, whose Oscar potential for her turn in The Kids Are All Right seems to be becoming similar to my Oscar hopes for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1. In simple terms, the odds are against her. Take a look at this trailer for Restless and let me know what you think.