As your “Screen Talk” co-hosts Anne Thompson and Ryan Lattanzio pack for Cannes, we preview the hot titles for sale, the studio marketing launches, the possible Competition prize contenders, and the movies that have already released trailers. We speculate about the potential brought by President Trump’s latest proposal of a 100 percent tariff on movies filmed overseas. And we preview the summer lineup.
In new news, the already sprawling Cannes Film Festival has just welcomed a few new additions: Bi Gan’s “Resurrection” finally joins the competition after much speculation and anticipation, as well as Eugene Jarecki’s delayed Julian Assange documentary “The Six Billion Dollar Man,” which was pulled from Sundance due to developments in the story.
Among the competition titles without North American berths are Lynne Ramsay’s “Die, My Love,” starring Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson; Richard Linklater’s “Nouvelle Vague,” with Zoey Deutch as Jean Seberg, about the 1960 shooting of Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless”; “It Was Just An Accident,” from exiled Iranian director Jafar Panahi; and “The Young Mother’s Home,” from Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. In Un Certain Regard are two actor-turned-directors looking for homes: Kristen Stewart (“The Chronology Of Water”) and Harris Dickinson (“Urchin”).
But these are small arthouse titles. The packages for sale in the market will drive some business. Susanna White’s movie version of Suzie Miller’s one-woman show “Prima Facie,” which starred Jodie Comer on Broadway, features “Wicked” Oscar nominee Cynthia Erivo; David O. Russell directs Robert De Niro and Jenna Ortega in “Shutout,” about a pool hustler. Rookie director Maria Martinez Bayona’s sci-fi entry “The End Of It” stars Rebecca Hall, Gael García Bernal, Noomi Rapace, and Beanie Feldstein. Marc Forster’s “Anxious People” stars Angelina Jolie as a banker taken hostage with strangers during an open house. Werner Herzog’s “Bucking Fastard” tells the true story of inseparable twin sisters Joan and Jean Holbrooke (real-life sisters Kate and Rooney Mara), who become obsessed with their next-door neighbor. Many market titles never get made, but we hope to see this one, which shot this year.
The official Competition isn’t screaming Academy fare. The likeliest titles to win prizes and head for Oscars include Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value” (Neon; Norway could submit, depending on its English-to-Norwegian ratio) and “The History of Sound” (MUBI could be back in the conversation). Cannes prizes are up to the jury, led by Juliette Binoche, with actors Halle Berry and Jeremy Strong, directors Hong Sang Soo, Dieudo Hamadi, Payal Kapadia, and Carlos Reygadas, and French-Moroccan diplomat/journalist Leïla Slimani. Juries tend to agree on what’s emotionally moving most of the time, which is why the Dardennes have won twice.
The biggest Cannes marketing launch is Paramount’s eighth “Mission Impossible” film, “The Final Reckoning,” which plays out of competition at the festival May 14 with Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie on hand, followed by releases around the world May 23. Opening on May 30 is “The Phoenician Scheme” (Focus Features), which looks like trademark Wes Anderson, with rigidly formal production design and a sprawling cast led by Benicio del Toro.
A24 and Apple are positioning Spike Lee’s out-of-competition Akira Kurosawa reimagining “Highest 2 Lowest,” which opens August 22, as an early fall contender. Starring his frequent collaborator Denzel Washington, who plays a music titan challenged by a ransom note, the movie looks commercial. (Recent audience polls put Washington at the top of the stars who pull moviegoers into theaters.) Opening the same date is Ethan Coen’s detective comedy “Honey Don’t” (Focus) his second solo effort, starring a returning Margaret Qualley, plus Chris Evans, and Aubrey Plaza, which looks like stylish fun.
A24 is also showing at Cannes its Sundance breakout “Sorry, Baby,” a summer release. This is a must-see quality drama in Directors’ Fortnight that marks the discovery of new auteur Eva Victor. This could earn a screenplay nomination at Oscar time.
New trailers are out for Ari Aster’s Competition title “Eddington,” which puts us in the realm of a COVID-era movie of doom-scrolling and social uproar. Shih-Ching Tsou’s Critics’ Week premiere “Left-Handed Girl” debuted its first teaser. Tsou is a longtime producing and writing partner of Sean Baker, who produces and co-writes this story of a mother who returns to Taipei with her two daughters after several years of living in the countryside to open a night market stand.
The summer brings potential pleasures, many of which will inevitably fall flat. Ryan is looking forward to two A24 releases: Celine Song’s “Materialists” (A24), a New York love triangle starring Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, and Pedro Pascal, and horror entry “Bring Her Back.” Darren Aronofsky’s “Caught Stealing” (Sony), given its August 29 release date, is likely to break at Venice early or skip festivals. And “The Roses” (Netflix), Tony McNamara’s rewrite of the original “The War of the Roses” with Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner, looks promising, starring Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch as warring about-to-be-divorcees.
Anne has seen the May 23 release “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life,” a delightful romantic comedy from French screenwriter-turned-director Laura Piani, which Sony Pictures Classics picked up out of Toronto. Also on a small scale is “Familiar Touch” (Music Box), starring theater actress Kathleen Chalfont as an elegant sophisticate coping with dementia.
From the studios, Warners is hanging on a successful launch for James Gunn’s reboot of “Superman.” Anne liked the Cinemacon footage of the icy Fortress of Solitude (Ryan didn’t), and Superman himself David Corenswet looks promising. We both want to see “28 Years Later” (Sony) with Ralph Fiennes under the direction of Danny Boyle and a script by Alex Garland, and Jerry Bruckheimer and Joseph Kosinski’s Brad Pitt starrer “F1” (AppleTV+ and Warners).
As for President Trump’s movie tariff announcement, this one may qualify as noise that won’t amount to much. But his special envoy, Jon Voight, did prepare a report after consulting with guild leaders, who all came back with statements about productive action on the tax incentives front, as opposed to tariffs, which don’t mean much when it comes to movies, which have many participants all over the world. California Governor Gavin Newsom is pushing not only for state tax break bills in progress but a national federal incentive. The point is to bring production back to California before the entertainment industry shrinks into nothingness.
The White House has already started walking back Trump’s comments. There’s the question of whether or not he’s even legally able to do this.
And to wind up, Anne wants to rap horror producer Jason Blum’s knuckles for even suggesting that movie patrons use their phones in a movie theater. It’s sending the wrong message. The whole point of being in a theater is to leave your outside distractions behind and immerse yourself in the big screen experience. He’s teamed with Meta on a chatbot called Movie Mate that encourages people to tap on their phones during movies. Blum staged a one-night experiment on a re-run of the original “M3GAN.”
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