Mike Leigh
The agony and the ecstasy of Turner and Timbuktu
From Mali to Mike Leigh, the Cannes competition opens with two films that find terror in rhapsodic landscapes
Opening Weekend: ‘Green Hornet,’ ‘Another Year,’ ‘Nostalgia for the Light’
If you’re looking for real depth, forget the 3-D blockbuster and sink into the Mike Leigh movie
A Thai ghost story wins the Palme d’Or
And Javier Bardem has to split Best Actor—but declares his love for Penelope Cruz
Suicide watch in Cannes
Woody Allen on death: “I’m strongly against it.”
Film Reviews: Handling the truth in ‘W,’ ‘Passchendaele,’ ‘Battle in Seattle’ and ‘Happy-Go-Lucky’
It never rains, it pours. This week the big screen is teeming with history and politics. From America, fairly recent events are mythologized in two docudramas: Oliver Stone spins an instant-replay of George W. Bush’s life and times in W., which could be subtitled Attack of the White House Clones. And Stuart Townsend dramatizes the anti-globalization movement’s 1999 baptism of fire in Battle in Seattle, which conjures a pre-9/11 era of uncomplicated protest. In Canada, meanwhile, Paul Gross launches Passchendaele, his strained but valiant attempt to honour Canadian heroism in the First World War. These three films are radically different in tone and substance, but they are message movies—movies on a mission. And they all attempt to fuse entertainment with politics with mixed results.