Sunday, May 23, 2010

Cannes Review: More Awards, Tender Son, Burnt By the Sun 2

Robert here, scouring the internet to give you the latest on the goings on in Cannes.  The first awards and final reviews are trickling in.

Awards!
  • The top Cinefondation award goes to The Top Sellers says IndieWIRE 
  • In a movie that's less than shocking though I'm sure well deserved, Gregg Araki's Kaboom wins the first Queer Palm.  France 24.

In Competition


  • The Exodus - Burnt By the Sun 2 Nikita Mikhalkov's follow up to his 1994 Oscar winning film, premiered recently in Russia with a massive thump.  The same can be said of Cannes.  According to Variety, viewers "won't have to be experts on Soviet history to see this is jingoistic, proselytizing, badly acted twaddle"And according to The House Next Door "The entire movie is nonstop bombast, with huge battles, epic widescreen vistas, silent-film performances, and one of the most absolutely ridiculous scores I've ever heard in a movie."
  • Tender Son - The Frankenstein Project This Hungarian film deals with the return of a long lost son and is loosely based on Mary Shelly's Frankenstein. "Though the film lacks the narrative glue provided by character evolution, many of the individual sequences are strong," says Variety.  And ScreenDaily notes "Though displaying the visual sure-handed confidence already evident in Delta carries him along for a while, the script doesn’t quite manage to deliver the dramatic impact"

4 comments:

Will said...

Burnt by the Sun 2 is far from being a masterpiece and has very little to do with the first Oscar-winning film, but 'silent-film performances, and one of the most absolutely ridiculous scores I've ever heard in a movie' is way too much.
The acting was fantastic, though it has something to do with that almost every supporting role and cameo was played by Russia's greatest actors. The best performances were given by two fantastic actors - Oleg Menshikov as antagonist Mitya and Yevgeni Mironov. The score is absolutely glorious and hunting.
Of course the subject matter is very difficult - it's not a movie that set in war time it's a war film. During Red Cross scene I started weeping and couldn't stop until it was over. I can't remember what was the last time when I cried during a movie. The first half was fantastic I even thought that Best Foreign Film nomination is a given, conserving how much the love Mikhalkov. Then it went downhill and I perfectly understand why people hated it. I'm not surprised that reviews are so negative, since in Russia reviews were also negative or mixed.

Craig said...

Here's a clip from the Palme d'Or award-winning film "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives", by Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

http://www.france24.com/en/20100523-thai-outsider-apichatpong-weerasethakul-wins-coveted-palme-d%E2%80%99or

Aaron said...

Even though Burnt by the Sun 2 sucks, am I right in assuming that I should put Burnt By the Sun on my Netflix queue?

NATHANIEL R said...

aaron -- i would say yes. I think the reason people are so negative is that the first film is so well regarded.