As expected, Sony Pictures Classics, which brought Pedro Almodovar's Broken Embraces to Cannes, has finally annnounced its multi-territory acquisition of Jacques Audiard's micro-community prison film A Prophet, which currently leads the Screen International critics poll. SPC had earlier acquired the Michael Haneke film The White Ribbon, a gorgeous but too long (at two and a half hours) black-and white treatise on bad behavior in a pre-World War I German village that recalls the darkest films of Ingmar Bergman. Here's IFC's critics round-up.

The critics don't always predict the ultimate Palm d'Or. That's up to the jury, which this year is dominated by actresses, from president Isabelle Huppert to Robin Wright Penn and Shu Qi. Alain Resnais' Wild Grass could claim some followers as well, or Jane Campion's return to Cannes, Bright Star. The jury will make their awards announcements Sunday at the Closing Ceremony. Finally, although the Palme d'Or has some impact on which films get submitted for Oscar consideration by each country, they have little influence on U.S. moviegoers.

Wednesday night some badly needed star power arrived on the Croisette for the opening night of Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. Brad Pitt did the press rounds during the day, and showed up at the black tie premiere with Angelina Jolie on his arm. Later they had a great time at the Basterds late night beach party, hanging in the jammed VIP corner with Robin Wright Penn, Til Schweiger, Eli Roth, Emile Hirsch, Michael Fassbender (who was grooving to Guns 'n Roses), Daniel Bruhl, Harvey and Bob Weinstein, Thierry Fremaux, Bryan Lourd, and Hylda Queally.

Brad and Angelina seemed happy, as did an ebullient Quentin Tarantino, although TWC's 50/50 partner on the picture, Universal, UPDATE: is talking to the filmmaker about returning to the editing room post-Cannes to make some trims edits that might include adding a scene, says Tarantino, who reminds that the film, at two hours 27 minutes, is well under his contractual final cut length of two hours 48 minutes.

Pitt talked to the Today Show (below). American Cannes TV coverage was down this year to just IFC, Extra, and E.T.--no Access Hollywood or E!-- CNN left after three days of no action (they should have waited). Jim Carrey got some press from driving a horse drawn carriage under snow machines in front of the Carlton for Bob Zemeckis's latest performance capture animation picture, Disney's Christmas Carol.

Thursday night, Harvey Weinstein threw his annual AmFAR Cinema Against AIDS event at the Moulins de Mougins. Sharon Stone was back to emcee the auction. She broke down crying over her tribute to fellow AID activist, Natasha Richardson. Harvey, whose daughters adore Twilight star Rob Pattinson auctioned off an impromptu set of Pattinson kisses. For $20,000 Euros each. Pattinson took it like a man.

The other big Cannes party of the week was Paul Allen's yacht party on Monday night, attended by Mick Jagger with Victoria Pearman, Tilda Swinton, Paula Wagner and Rick Nicita, Beth Swofford, Laurence Bender, Tarantino, Peggy Siegal, Paris Hilton, Bob and Jeanne Berney, and Dave Stewart, who played for half an hour. The yacht is 3000 square feet, and houses a screening room, observation deck, helicopter pad and submarine. Allen collects relics, including a bud vase from the Titanic, and explorer Ernest Shackleton's compass. The spread included Spanish Paella and oysters.

Here's Pitt's strange Today Show interview:

I sat down with New Zealand director Jane Campion at Cannes to talk about Bright Star a full sixteen years after I first met with her, for The Piano, for which she was the only woman to ever win the Palme d'Or in the 62 year history of the fest. Tragically, she lost the child she was carrying that year. Her daughter Ella was born three years later; spending time with her is the main reason Campion has made only four features since The Piano, and took four years off after In the Cut.

Here's my interview with Campion:

The gorgeously mounted 19th-century drama, told through the eyes of 18-year-old Fanny Brawne, is the true tale of Brawne’s romance with her 23-year-old North London neighbor, the poet John Keats. But their unconsummated two-year relationship was doomed by poverty and tuberculosis. "It was shockingly passionate and painful," says Campion, who relied on Keats's "extraordinary" love letters to Brawne. "It's first love. They don't have any restraint, because they're just discovering themselves and their love at the same time." The Keats Fanny met, says Campion, was "fun-loving, wicked, humorous and challenging."

At last year's Cannes, Paramount Vantage and Overture Films made the announcement that they were backing Michael Moore's follow-up to 2007's Sicko. (Here's my video interview.) Overture execs Chris McGurk and Danny Rosett had worked with Moore when they released Bowling for Columbine at MGM/United Artists. (They're sharing a nice slice of the gross with Moore.) While the doc's still untitled, it now has a release date, October 2, and comes out twenty years after Roger and Me, another doc recounting the perils of capitalism run amuck. The opening will be a year and a day after the Wall Street $700 billion bailout. According to a press release, Moore's film:

...will explore the root causes of the global economic meltdown and take a comical look at the corporate and political shenanigans that culminated in what Moore has described as “the biggest robbery in the history of this country” – the massive transfer of U.S. taxpayer money to private financial institutions.

Here's Moore's statement:

"The wealthy, at some point, decided they didn't have enough wealth. They wanted more -- a lot more. So they systematically set about to fleece the American people out of their hard-earned money. Now, why would they do this? That is what I seek to discover in this movie."

Continuing their buying jag, IFC acquired Lars von Trier's Antichrist, which made quite a splash at Cannes, sparking controversy and debate. UPDATE: IFC had told me the director was willing to make trims on the film. IFC confirms that they are going to review the film again, but that the plan leaving Cannes was to show the uncut version in theaters (there are very few that can/will play it) and Trier's "Catholic" version on VOD. (See this story and this one. IFC, which is owned by publicly held Rainbow Media, has the option of going unrated.) IFC released Trier's last two films.

The distributor also acquired U.S. rights to Ken Loach's Cannes competition title Looking for Eric, which played well here, starring soccer's Eric Cantona. IFC had released Loach's Palm d'Or winner The Wind that Shakes the Barley. At the fest, IFC also bought Romanian director Cristian Mungiu's omnibus film, Tales From the Golden Age. They had released his Palme d'Or winner 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days.

It's easy pickings these days for distributors Sony Pictures Classics, IFC and Magnolia, who describe a plethora of available movies being offered to them for extremely low fees, if anything. Movies hoping to score substantial minimum guarantees are having a much harder time. It is unlikely that the $50 million Agora, for example, or Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus are going to score the cash they were looking for. And many films that screened in the market, either footage or entire films, did not sell either.

The good news is that the world market, while it has become local again--it is no longer possible to sell a B-movie from any given country to other markets around the world--has become more liquid since February's Berlin film festival. High quality A projects and movies with stars are still in demand. There is some high technology money as well as funding in Asia and the Middle East.

Nowhere but Cannes would 2500 media urgently assemble in one place to see a movie at 8:30 AM. As Quentin Tarantino himself said at the jam-packed Inglourious Basterds press conference, "There's no place like Cannes for filmmakers on the face of the earth. It's Cinema Nirvana during this time here on the Riviera. Cinema matters. It's important. Even when people boo --out of passion--it's not just images glazing over you. All the world film press on the planet earth, America, Finland, Iceland, Greenland, even Canada--that's a country--something about them all being here, you drop the movie--bam!--at once everyone weighs in at the same time...I'm not an American filmmaker, I make movies for the planet earth and Cannes represents that."

Well, the press did not boo Inglourious Basterds. Nor, judging from my sampling of critics afterwards, are they anointing it his best. Several wanted to think about it, to figure out what if anything, is missing. "I liked it," said one American festival programmer. "It's not his best," said one French critic. "It's cynical," said another. "The women are great," said one online woman critic.

Could anything live up to the hype? Inglourious Basterds is great fun to watch, but the movie isn't entirely engaging. And it is defiantly an art film, not a calculatedly mainstream entertainment. (Likely to score far better in Europe than anywhere else, the movie may not singlehandedly generate enough boxoffice to save The Weinstein Co.) Tarantino throws you out of the movie with titles, chapter headings, snatches of music. You don't jump into the world of the film in a participatory way; you watch it from a distance, appreciating the references and the masterful mise-en-scene. This is a film that will benefit from a second viewing. I can't wait to see it again.

"It's definitely outrageous, which I was fine for," said a diplomatic Brad Pitt. "These films don't come along very often." He applauded Tarantino for getting the movie made so efficiently, only six weeks after Pitt agreed to star. The two men had been circling each other for a time, and Tarantino was delighted to have written a Pitt-friendly role. The Weinstein Co. and partner Universal International greenlit the picture last summer, after the filmmaker finally found Christoph Waltz to play the key multi-lingual role of Col. Hans Landa. Tarantino was ready to pull the plug if he didn't find the right actor, he said. "The movie was either going to be right on or not going to be at all." (Waltz and fellow German Daniel Bruhl both kissed Tarantino after he said nice things about them.) Basterds wrapped just three months ago, winding up with a running time of two hours 27.

Tarantino set out to make a World War II genre film inspired by the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone (he splashes Ennio Morricone on the soundtrack). "I like dealing in genres, all right?" he said today. "There's westerns, war movies, musicals, swashbucklers...I always liked the sub-genre of genre...a bunch of guys on a mission."

[SPOILER ALERT]Tarantino has fashioned a parallel World War II anti-Nazi fantasy that hangs on his characters. "I am God as far as the characters are concerned," he said. "I created them." But he does not play by the rules. This is a world where anyone can get killed at any moment. The movie stirs up a mixed bag of references and knee-jerk reactions to Nazis as The Basterds, a Jewish-American army troop led by L.T. Aldo Raine (a redneck broadly rendered by Pitt), set out on a mission to collect 100 Nazi scalps, each. (Yes, we see close-up scalpings.) This aspect of the movie is given somewhat short shrift (which may disappoint Tarantino's action fans) as we move onto the central plot, to destroy the entire Nazi high command at a movie theatre in one fell swoop. In this movie, as Tarantino says, "the power of cinema brings down the Third Reich."

Besides Col. Landa, the two best roles in the movie are played by French actress Melanie Laurent as the owner of a cinema and Diane Kruger as a German movie star not unlike Hildegard Knecht Knef. Thanks to Tarantino, said Laurent, "women can be independent in a period film."

Tarantino doesn't ask us to identify with good guys vs. bad guys, he admitted at the press conference. It's more complicated than that. For example, in an ingenious scene that introduces the members of the Basterds, a relatively honorable Nazi who refuses to collaborate with Raine, for example, gets pounded to death with a baseball bat by Sgt. Donny Donowitz (Eli Roth). At the press conference, Roth described playing that scene as "kosher porn," "like performing a sex scene."

Inglourious Basterds is necessarily episodic, separated into sequences. The first, set in the countryside of Nazi-occupied France, is genius. It's a two-hander between self-styled Jew Hunter Colonel Landa and a French farmer (Denis Menochet) seeking to protect his lovely three daughters. Inspired by the opening sequence of Heaven's Gate, this is Tarantino at his absolute best.

As for the film's badly spelled title, Tarantino refused to explain his thinking. "It's an artistic flourish," he said.

Here's Michael Fleming's pre-interview with Tarantino. And my own The Daily Beast round-up of eight movies with buzz.

Jeff Wells posted the opening of the press conference.

At Monday's New Media Panel at the American Pavilion, I debated the merits and weaknesses of fast vs. slow journalism, blogs vs. print, the future of newspapers and the value of Twitter and Facebook with critic James Rocchi (MSN Movies and AMCtv.com), The Wrap editor Sharon Waxman, the LAT reporter John Horn and Spoutblog critic/blogger Karina Longworth. As IndieWire moderator Eugene Hernandez pointed out, Horn is probably still the most powerful media figure of the group, in terms of industry clout and readers, but the landscape is definitely shifting and he expressed his worries about the future, while admitting some resistance to the new technologies. He also admitted that the LAT's balkanized print vs. online situation is not ideal.

I shot a little flipcam video at the start.

Here's much more from Hollywood Elsewhere:

The inevitable has started to occur: massive layoffs are under way at William Morris Agency in the wake of its merger with Endeavor. The smaller agency is expected to dominate the film, indie and television side of the new entity, while WMA will run the music department.

The Monday press conference for Lars von Trier's Antichrist was packed. Right out of the gate, The London Daily Mail's Baz Bamigboye demanded that Trier justify his film. This immediately threw the filmmaker off, and he refused to expound on his thinking. "I don't have to justify," he said, his hand trembling.

"Yes you do," Bamigboye shouted back.

"I cannot justify myself," said Trier. "Because I make films and enjoyed it very much... I feel that you are all my guests, it's not the other way around... I work for myself, and I do this little film that I am now kind of fond of. I don't owe anybody an explanation."

Moderator Henri Behar asked him why he chose this film. "I never have a choice," replied Trier. "It's the hand of God, I'm afraid. And I am the best film director in the world...Other directors may feel the same. Maybe they don't say it."

The actors worked with no preparation, without much talking, they said, guided by Trier. As a result they became "flexible," said Dafoe, who felt that making the film was like a "dream."

"Intense" was Gainsbourg's word. "It was special." But was it enjoyable? "It was--in a weird way."

Asked about the genital self-mutilation, which is shown in close-up, Trier replied, "For me not to show it would be lying. This is a very dark dream about guilt and sex and stuff. It came in naturally."

Trier rewrote Anders Thomas Jensen's initial script (crediting him as a consultant, he said), and made up his own religious mythology. When asked if he lied in his films, Trier replied, "There's a form of honesty in filmmaking that is important to me. I also made films where there are no houses, just a line on the floor. That is lying, yes, but lying in an obvious way."

"I'm not trying to say anything," added Trier, calling Antichrist "a dream film." He doesn't believe in considering the audience when he makes a film. "I've been hit hard by the press before," he said. "I like it, also. It's a good start of discussion."

For the Danes, this is a comeback for Trier. Many were afraid he wouldn't make films anymore, after turning out two films that nobody saw. "Trier was supposed to reinvent cinema," said one Danish critic at the press conference Monday. "This is causing a stir. He hasn't caused a stir since 2003." That film was Dogville, which was followed by its sequel, Mandalay, part of a planned trilogy, and The Boss of It All, which was released by IFC.

Distributor Nordisk Film will open Antichrist in Denmark uncut on 17 sold-out screens May 19 as an arthouse release. "We don't censor anything, we're Danish," said Nordisk's Jan Lehmann. "We've never seen a film like this film. It's a piece of art."

UPDATE: Richard and Mary Corliss defend the movie in Time.

Antichrist is a shocker, no question. It's powerful filmmaking. Danish bad boy Lars von Trier set out to make moviegoers gasp. It's unreleasable as is in many countries--insertion shot, bloody hand job, female genital self-mutilation and all.

The filmmaker may be mentally addled (he made the film after a deep depression), but he's got filmmaking chops. He knows how to manipulate an audience. I was enthralled at the start of the film, an extraordinary slow-motion sequence. And the movie does hang together. He knows where he's going. It's just that much like Ken Russell in The Devils, Trier's taking you to horrifying, hallucinatory places where anything can happen. (Hieronymous Bosch comes to mind.) And where most people don't want to go. Accused of misogyny, the film portrays a woman who is man's worst nightmare, the embodiment of their anxiety about women. A dedication to filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky elicited giggles. The movie itself drew boos and a smattering of applause.

Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Ginsbourg, who are strong naturalistic actors with lean, beautiful bodies, start out the movie in sexual bliss, but move on to other more sinister obsessions and power games after the death of their son. They are so out of whack from grieving that they lose touch with reality. The question is how much their feet were on the ground in the first place.

I can't imagine this film finding a North American buyer. UPDATE: Some disagree; they think a micro indie will pick it up and release it unrated, banking on the publicity building curiosity. The filmmaker has indicated to potential distribs that he will make necessary cuts for North America. IFC, which released his last two films, is a potential buyer-- if he makes trims.

David Hudson rounds up the reaction--posted last night.

Still to come this week: the return of three Cannes auteurs: Pedro Almodovar, Quentin Tarantino and Terry Gilliam. Early reviews of the Spanish director’s Broken Embraces, which stars muse Penelope Cruz, are modestly upbeat, while Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, Heath Ledger’s unfinished last film, which Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell stepped in to complete, has been screened several times for buyers (who are lukewarm so far) but not press. They don’t see it until Friday; that was when Depp was able to come into town from filming Rum Diaries. Jude Law is prepping Hamlet in London.

Nobody has seen Inglourious Basterds, because Quentin Tarantino watched the final print Wednesday night and then brought it to Cannes Friday. The World War II epic starring Brad Pitt clocks in at a final running time of two hours, 27 minutes, well under Pulp Fiction’s two hours 40 minutes. “If I ever did a movie that deserved to be at least two hours 40, it would be this,” the filmmaker said Sunday over champagne on the Carlton Terrace. Tarantino was eager to bring this film to Cannes —his last outing, Death Proof, proved a disappointment around the world. But he now faces a sea of critics armed with expectations of what they want from him.

Alejandro Amenabar's Egypt feminist fable Agora screened Sunday to mixed responses from critics and audiences. Rachel Weisz can seemingly do no wrong, but the movie veers into sword and sandal territory, according to some critics.

Yes, I saw the Lars von Trier. Here's my Twitter feed: "Von Trier's sex and gore-fest Antichrist earned boos and small applause Sunday. Monday's conference will be jammed to the rafters." More tomorrow.

I finally slept in this morning, missing one of the favorites of the festival so far (of course), Jacques Audiard's two-and-a-half hour prison picture A Prophet, which will likely be scooped up by the likes of Sony Pictures Classics or IFC. (Here's Justin Chang's review.) I also missed Monica Belluci and Sophie Marceau (pictured) in Ne Te Retourne Pas.

Instead, I indulged myself with the pristine Cinematheque Francaise/Thomson/Technicolor restored print of Mr. Hulot's Holiday, originally shot in black-and-white in 1953 and reedited by Jacques Tati in 1978. This sojourn on the Atlantic coast of France stars the director as the pipe-smoking, awkward, impish Hulot, who pulls up in a rickety jalopy to join a group of vacationers, some likable, some not. One shot of a little boy carefully, slowly walking up steps with a fresh ice cream cone in each hand is indelible.

The out-of-competition Australian film Samson and Delilah tells a grim tale of two teen Aborigines living in poverty in the Outback who fall in love and run away. Less romance than primal survival story, the gritty drama is tough to watch. Micro buyers seem interested.

People who seem to have money are magnets for partygoers and people who assemble movies. The Abu Dhabi party Friday night was hopping until all hours, and on Saturday evening, as many parties were under way along the marina, the Barclay's yacht looked like it was about to tip over.

At Saturday's groovy Majestic Beach after-party, Focus Features topper James Schamus was all smiles, having survived the red carpet Palais screening of a movie he not only financed and will release, but actually wrote: Ang Lee's Taking Woodstock. The BBC reports on the press conference.. Variety liked it better than IndieWire. The question is, can they improve the misleading ad campaign? The movie doesn't spend much time at the actual event.

Partygoer Tilda Swinton flew into town to support Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Foundation. She has an affiliated cause of her own, the 8 1/2 foundation, which will send 8 1/2 year olds the classic film of their choice. Other party attendees included Woodstock rookie movie actor Demetri Martin, juror Robin Wright Penn, Humpday star Mark Duplass, O-Scope's Adam Yauch, and Antichrist's Willem Dafoe.

The L.A. Times digs into why The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus hasn't sold, even with Heath Ledger starring in his last role. Buyers are waiting for the price to go down, for one thing. In the Cannes market, several buyers including Sony Pictures Classics were duped into watching some reportedly execrable footage of a movie purportedly directed by Paul Verhoeven. Turns out it was his cousin.

Variety rounds up the unusual indie summer suspects.

After each press screening--the first of the day is at 8:30 AM-- the global media hordes (wearing their status around their necks as white, pink, blue and yellow badges) flock to retrieve the next day's press materials from their boxes. Then many of them unpack their laptops at the Orange press room, which has free espresso, water and wifi, to write up their stories--as quickly as possible. Time waits for no one.

The three big gets for the press this at auteur-centric Cannes are 1) Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds) 2) Pedro Almodovar (Broken Embraces) and 3) Lars von Trier (Antichrist). But to talk to the wily Dane, the press have to schlep a half hour down the coast to the Hotel du Cap. Von Trier's holding court there with Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe (who was at Saturday night's groovy Taking Woodstock party at the Majestic Beach). The foreign press corps are favored on all three of these films over the North American print press, who are vying for a precious few available roundtable slots. This means the press conferences --especially for Inglourious Basterds, whose star Brad Pitt may do only one American press interview--will be packed, and the chances of someone without a white or pink badge with a yellow dot getting in are slim indeed. The rest will watch outside on hallway monitors.

Here's a brief tour:

And here's a snippet of the Bright Star press conference.

Martin Scorsese rode into Cannes on Friday. He turned up at the American Pavilion to dedicate the Roger Ebert Conference Center. "Welcome back," fest delegate general Thierry Fremaux said to Ebert, who had been unable to attend for several years as he battled throat cancer. While he used a mechanical voice box at the ceremony, at the reception Ebert communicated with Scorsese, Fremaux, director Paul Cox, Sony Pictures Classics' Michael Barker and Tom Bernard, and critics Pierre Rissient and Kenneth Turan via writing pad. Ebert's blogging the fest and had seen just one film at Cannes so far, Bright Star.

In the evening, Scorsese introduced the ravishing new Technicolor print of Michael Powell's The Red Shoes, one of his favorite films of all time. And he also announced several new initiatives for the World Cinema Foundation, including deals with festival marketing site B-Side and the cinematheque website The Auteurs (which is hooked up with affiliate site Criterion). Here's Scorsese's statement:

“The World Cinema Foundation was created out of need. There are so many pictures in need of restoration and preservation, which, for many reasons, are not getting the attention they deserve. And restoring and preserving is only half the battle, because in order to be appreciated, they have to be seen. Now, they should be seen as they were intended to be seen, but audience awareness can build in surprising ways. Our new relationships with B-Side and The Auteurs are intended to build awareness on many different levels. These relationships will be crucial in drawing attention to the films and the people who made them, which are at the center of the Foundation's work. I'm very excited that Kent Jones, who I've known and worked with for years, has come aboard to lead the organization into the future.”

Earlier this week in Cannes, Mandalay added a movie about Frank Sinatra to Scorsese's list of upcoming projects. I find it hard to imagine any actor, whether or not it's Leonardo DiCaprio (who stars in Scorsese's fall release Shutter Island, based on Dennis Lehane's novel), being able to convincingly portray Sinatra and deliver songs with his voice. The guy's too big, too well-known, and his voice is too identified with his persona. As tough as it was for Will Smith to do Mohammed Ali, he wasn't a singer. Judy Davis did pull off Judy Garland, and Jamie Foxx and Joaquin Phoenix did Ray Charles and Johnny Cash. I don't know. It's Frank! UPDATE: Shawn Levy digs into the Sinatra casting issue.

The new Bob Berney/Bill Pohlad combine scored quite a coup by pre-buying, sight unseen, off a set visit and a script, the new Jane Campion film Bright Star, which screened well Friday morning for the press corps. I caught Berney and Pohlad on the Croisette Friday, beaming over the favorable early reaction. They're opening the film on September 18. "Toronto will be the launch of the campaign," said Berney. Awards season is in their sights, but the prime target audience will be teenage girls, says Berney. Pohlad and Berney still haven't cleared the name of their company, which was hard to choose. "We have to live with it for a while," says Berney, who saw Bright Star two weeks ago.

At the press conference (which the fest notates here), Campion explained that wanting to spend time with her daughter, who is 13, prevented her from making more movies. Since she won the Palme d'Or with The Piano in 1993, she's made only three features: The Portrait of a Lady, Holy Smoke, and In the Cut, which was six years ago.

Bright Star was worth waiting for. The writer-director focuses on the short-lived, tragic, unconsummated 19th century romance of neighbors, poet John Keats (Ben Whishaw) and seamstress Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish), who fell in love but could not marry because he had no money. He lived on the meager offerings of such friends and patrons as Charles Armitage Brown (played in full Scots mode by American Paul Schneider). Campion relied heavily on Keats' witty letters to recreate this world, and pushed her actors to be natural and authentic. The movie is lushly realized in impeccable period detail. It may skew toward Anglophiles and women, but if Berney handles it right and the film finds an audience, it could wind up in the Academy's sweet spot (cinematography, production design, screenplay, directing, costumes, best actress, best actor, and score, among other things).

Also screened for the press today was Ang Lee's Taking Woodstock, a surprisingly comedic behind-the-scenes look at some of the people involved in mounting the iconic 1969 music festival on a dairy farm in upstate New York. Comedy Central star Demetri Martin is well-cast as Elliot, the closeted gay son of uptight Jewish parents running a seedy Catskills motel, expertly played by Imelda Staunton and Henry Goodman, who are hilarious. The ensemble is sprawling and first-rate, from Eugene Levy as wily farmer Max Yasgur and Liev Schrieber as a cross-dressing ex-Marine, to breakout theater actor Jonathan Groff (Hair) as concert promoter Michael Lang.

This movie won't be for everyone, but it worked for me. As a teenager, I drove by Woodstock on Route 17, saw the traffic jams and helicopters, and to my neverending regret, failed to convince my aunt to take us there. Lee (with help from his frequent collaborator, writer James Schamus, who adapted the memoirs of Elliot Tiber) captures the crazy era without losing control of a movie that shifts its tone from scene to scene. THR's Gregg Kilday interviews Ang Lee.

The trend for long-form movies continues at Cannes. IFC has started what is expected to be another Cannes buying spree after last year's marathon of 16 ultimate acquisitions (seven theatrical, nine Festival Direct on VOD) out of the festival.

The three-part Red Riding Trilogy was being chased by several buyers including Bob Berney, but went to IFC. The company is expected to follow a multi-option plan similar to their release of Steven Soderbergh's two-part, four-hour Che. The Trilogy plays well in one sitting despite its length, several people reported, and IFC's Jonathan Sehring was willing to book one-night showings theatrically, he said. The distributor is chipper because their films have been doing well following a low-cost acquisition and release model combined with VOD.

Magnolia stepped up and bought American rights (via its Magnet genre label) to John Woo's epic Red Cliff, the two-part, $80 million, most expensive movie ever shot in China. I've seen Part One and it is epic in scope, crammed with stunning visuals, high drama, a great cast led by Tony Leung and Woo-level action. Here's my prior story. The movie will open in fall 2009. UPDATE: Magnolia/Magnet saw the two-and-a-half cut for Europe and North America, says Eamonn Bowles. The movie was a big hit in Asia, so it was no longer urgent that the filmmakers get a lot of money out of the North America. They didn't.

What a difference casting makes. Thursday's competition film from Andrea Arnold, her second feature Fish Tank, features a break-out performance from Irish actor Michael Fassbender, who made a mark as a starving IRA prisoner in Hunger, and who also stars in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. Often shirtless in Fish Tank, Fassbender had women buzzing after the picture. The movie played well for critics but will likely be a hurry-up-and-wait buy for an IFC, Magnolia or Sony Classics.

Francis Ford Coppola made the right call allowing his semi-autobiographical tale of two brothers Tetro to be shown as the Directors Fortnight opener. Coppola considers the elegant black-and-white drama, which was filmed in Argentina with color flashbacks, to be a small, personal independent film, and told the audience at a Q & A that he felt more comfortable, once there were no competition slots available, with the Fortnight berth. Coppola may wind up releasing the film himself. His script is impressive, but the film suffers from a sprawling polyglot ensemble ranging from Spain's Maribel Verdu and Carmen Maura and Austrian Klaus Maria Brandauer to Americans Vincent Gallo and newcomer Alden Ehrenreich, who don't seem to belong in the same movie, much less the same family. I saw Gallo, who had a rough time at Cannes 2003 debuting his unfinished Brown Bunny, flirting with a girl in the lobby of the Carlton Wednesday, but he didn't turn up to Thursday's morning Q & A, to Coppola's annoyance. THR's Gregg Kilday interviews Coppola, while Variety features Lars Von Trier.

UPDATE: Jeff Wells shot video of Coppola after the nighttime showing:

Lionsgate has a Precious teaser poster and trailer.

Many folks report that the fest is slimmed down this year. Everyone seems to have trimmed their sales so that those who are here are focused on the job at hand. Extraneous expenses are out. Cannes vet Rex Weiner, who has worked both sides of the street as trade journo, filmmaker and publicist, writes up his insider take on the current state of covering Cannes for the Huffington Post. While the two trades both have a toned down presence on the Croisette, they are not slacking in their coverage. It's smart to save on importing expensive personnel by doing the production back in L.A.

Day Three Preview:

Friday brings the first showing of Jane Campion's Bright Star, which Bob Berney and Bill Pohlad are distributing stateside in September. I remember talking to Campion in 1993, the year she won the Palme d'Or for The Piano.

Martin Scorsese is coming to town to introduce a restored Technicolor print of the late Michael Powell's The Red Shoes, which was shot by recently deceased cinematographer Jack Cardiff. He will also pay tribute to Roger Ebert at 2:30 PM at a dedication of The Roger Ebert Conference Center at the American Pavilion. Ebert hasn't been able to fly to the Croisette for several years and promised me he would attend this year. Glad he could make it. He's at his usual digs at the Splendid, where I caught a gaggle of critics hanging out before dinner (from left Derek Elley, Todd McCarthy, Pierre Rissient, David Stratton). Jim Hoberman and Manohla Dargis joined them as well. Cannes more than any other festival truly grants critics ultimate status, which is in short supply these days. That's assuming the critic's outlet passes muster--the fest unaccountably refused Karina Longworth of Spoutblog a credential. Cannes press attache Christine Aimee told me her blog had too little traffic. People ask me whether they should blog to help hang on to their jobs—the answer is yes— but I also say, blog only if you want to and like to. Some people--Longworth for one-- are better at it than others. There's a lot to be said for slow and thoughtful analysis. It's just that fewer people are willing to pay for it these days.

Cannes master promoter Thierry Fremaux knows what he is doing: the photo taken from the Debussy stage of the Cannes press corps wearing 3-D glasses will be seen everywhere. (They had to be returned.) I started out the morning in tears during Up , which as Disney chairman Dick Cook puts it, is Pixar's "most emotional film." Co-writers Bob Peterson and Pete Docter took the idea of an old guy who travels in a house carried aloft by balloons to find a lost South American paradise, and worked it over for a good two years before it passed enough muster to go into voice casting and animation.

Whenever I listen to John Lasseter talk, I wish that everyone in Hollywood would take some of his wisdom to heart. The Pixar approach is to never produce anything unless it will stand the test of time as a good movie. And they haven't delivered one dud yet. They're ten for ten. This one challenges conventional wisdom about subjects (an old man and a chubby boyscout), killing off beloved characters, and lingering over slow moments. Lasseter paid homage to Japanese anime auteur Miyazaki for inspiring him to occasionally take it slow.

Lasseter and Docter admitted that on every Pixar film there are scenes that get worked over and over until they finally cohere--and others that are smooth as butter from the start--at Pixar they call them tentpoles on which to hang the rest of the movie. In Up they include the magical opener covering the history of the marriage of old man Carl (Ed Asner), and the sequence when the balloons pick up the house and sail over the city.

When the Pixar team finally licked their most troublesome scene in South America, which was crucial, they went back and planted details and plot points to lead up to it. Doing a shot over 30 or 40 times is not unusual.

After the press conference, the Up group appeared on the Carlton Pier for a photo op that went awry when the special effects guys who had rigged a 40-foot house attached to a giant air balloon (covered by colored balloons) decided that it was too windy to risk having the flimsy house crash and break apart on landing. So the house and the balloons stayed put. The movie itself will not be so grounded and should take off nicely all over the world on May 29. Cook says Disney is aggressively chasing after all audience quadrants. (The segment that might resist is teenage girls.) It wasn't the most glamorous opening nighter, but Up was the best movie the fest has programmed in that slot for a long while. And Cannes can also count on the film being an Oscar contender.

Here's Variety's Up-themed opener. And here's The Wrap.

On opening night, young ballerinas in pink tutus lined the Palais red carpet steps as Cannes president Gilles Jacob and fest director Thierry Fremaux stood at the top of the stairs to greet their guests (see Life Magazine's red carpet photos), including Ashwarya Rai and Elizabeth Banks, Isabelle Huppert (who has had an amazing 17 Cannes entries) and her jury (among them Asia Argento, Hanef Kureishi, Robin Wright Penn, Shu Qi) plus Pixar's Ed Catmull, John Lasseter, Pete Docter and Bob Peterson, and famed singer Charles Aznavour, who voices Carl in the French version of Up, and officially declared the 62nd Festival de Cannes "open."

At a time when other distribs are treading cautiously, steady Cannes buyer Sony Pictures Classics bets on their own taste and gut instinct for what they can achieve in the marketplace. They don't always wait to see how a film will play at a festival, and try not to overpay (although they get clipped every now and then). They're still betting on theatrical releases like the James Toback doc Tyson, which they bought out of Cannes last year, and the Israeli animated Oscar-contender Waltz with Bashir. "We're thinking long-term," says co-president Michael Barker, who came into Cannes with Pedro Almodovar's Broken Embraces, which is set for a pre-Thanksgiving November release. "It's the fifth one we committed to at the script stage. There are fewer quality films, so it's in our interest to get involved early. It's harder to find films at these festivals than it used to be."

This year they got busy ahead of the fest. On opening day of the 62nd Cannes the venerable studio indie announced that it was taking off the table the North American rights to two sought-after fest titles. They bought their second film with Cache director Michael Haneke, his fifth Cannes competition entry The White Ribbon, a pre-World War I story set in a German village that is disturbed by inexplicable events. A co-production between X-Filme Creative Pool in Germany, Les Films du Losange in France, Wega Film in Austria and Lucky Red in Italy, The White Ribbon was produced by Haneke regular Margaret Menegoz and Stefan Arndt, Veit Heiduschka and Michael Katz.

Clearly, SPC is also in love with Coco Chanel. They now have two films about her, which they will space out appropriately. The first set for a fall release, Anne Fontaine's Coco Avant Chanel, stars Audrey Tautou and just opened in Paris. SPC also acquired all rights from Wild Bunch for U.S. and English-speaking Canada to French filmmaker Jan Kounen's Cannes closing night film, Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky, a Paris romance set in the 1920s between the fashion icon and the composer based on the book Coco and Igor by Chris Greenhalgh. Chanel model Anna Mouglalis and Danish star Mads Mikkelsen star in the film produced by Claudie Ossard (Amelie) and Chris Bolzli. SPC worked with Wild Bunch on Woody Allen's upcoming June 21 release Whatever Works.

One reason SPC does so well at Cannes is that they also have an auteurist bent. They'll be front and center checking out the new Andrea Arnold (Fish Tank), Alejandro Amenabar's Agora, Ken Loach's Looking for Eric, the Alain Resnais (Wild Grass) and the new Mike Leigh (in pre-production) in the market. "More people have to think long-term, it's difficult," says Barker. "It's easy to think short-term. But it's how we've been doing it all along."

One tried-and-true Cannes ritual is the Tuesday night dinner at La Pizza. With many travelers admonished by their bosses to watch their expenses this year, La Pizza is a relatively inexpensive option. Hollywood Elsewhere's Jeff Wells rounded up a gaggle of writers, some print (like The Washington Post's Ann Hornaday) and online (MSN and AMC's James Rocchi) as well as IndieWire stalwarts Eugene Hernandez and Brian Brooks. Julian Sancton will be blogging Cannes for the first time for VanityFair.com. Lionsgate, Fox Searchlight and Jere Hausfater were in the house, as well as the Alamo Drafthouse's Tim League.

This IndieWire Cannes photo of Pedro Almodovar and muse Penelope Cruz dates back to Volver in 2006. They'll be back this year with Broken Embraces, which was one of the most eagerly anticipated films among our group. (Sony Pictures Classics has got it.) Others are Lars Von Trier's Antichrist, of which a few minutes of footage was screened in Berlin. (One acquisition exec called it "a psychological thriller with supernatural edge." Another said it was "bonkers." And another used "artsy.") Bond girl Eva Green was not willing to take on the racy material; Charlotte Gainsbourg took the job opposite Willem Dafoe.

In the case of Antichrist, the market screening is taking place AFTER the press and public screenings, while there is an early market screening of the Alejandro Amenabar film Agora, starring Rachel Weisz as an astronomer in Egypt under Roman rule. She and her disciples are "fighting to save the wisdom of the ancient world," according to one press description. She has two men in love with her (Oscar Isaac and Max Minghella). This I've got to see. Apparently early footage and a script did not lure overseas buyers, but everyone's eager to see the end results.

The buyers are none too pleased that seller Pathe is reporting that Bob Berney's new distribution outfit is finalizing a deal for North America to release Jane Campion's Bright Star, starring Abbie Cornish as Fanny Brawne to Ben Wishaw's John Keats. (UPDATE: Pathe officially announced this Wednesday.) Berney is expected to make several announcements at the festival, but he and his primary financeer Bill Pohlad (who may be adding Summit International's Runaways to the Berney combine) need to finalize a name first.

The buyers have already seen Terry Gilliam's Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. It's apparently quite gorgeous to look at, with some ardent fans, but one exec called it "soulless." Remember, these are buyers looking for commercial product, not critics. This is why I argue that distribs are more likely to forgive competition entries at Cannes, which tend to be arty, after all, after they are explained and praised by critics. Johnny Depp Reads has posted some early Parnassus pics.

IndieWire has posted their schedule of American Pavilion panels (programmed by The Circuit's Mike Jones). How telling that thriving online trade IndieWire is the news outlet willing and able to sponsor the American Pavilion this year. They post a speech by Cannes president Gilles Jacob, who has published a memoir, Life Goes By in a Dream.

The NYT rounds up the Cannes auteurs--and gore. And FirstShowing's Alex Billington spent his day shooting the Cannes billboards.

[A selection of my own Cannes first-day photos is on the jump.]

Heading into Cannes, USA Today rounds up returning Cannes auteurs Tarantino, Lee and Campion.

Lou Ye defies Chinese censors by showing Spring Fever, which deals with homosexuality, in Cannes.

The Chicago Tribune's Michael Phillips on why he loves Cannes.

Lynn Shelton's Humpday was my fave Sundance selection. But how's it going to play in Cannes? It's in director's fortnight, which tends to favor the more indie entries. It's not in the Palais with the stuffed shirts. But still...

This trailer gives too much away.

I've packed too much, as usual, for my ten-day sojourn in Europe. (No paying for bags on international flights.) I fly overnight to London arriving Monday, hang with some friends on jet-lag night (I packed my Tylenol PM) and head for Nice Tuesday morning.

I'm staying in an apartment booked by Variety on the Rue d'Antibes behind the Carlton. I'm praying it isn't too noisy. (I forgot to pack my ear plugs. I'll buy 'em if I have to.) I'll make a stab at grabbing a ticket from fest press attache Christine Aimee for the gala opening night; otherwise I'll catch the 10 AM press screening Wednesday morning and show up for the Disney after-party at the Carlton, which should be fun. Richard Corliss has already reviewed what is by all accounts yet another Pixar winner, Up. Pete Docter previewed some footage at Comic-Con, showing a tubby boy scout hijacking a ride on an old man's balloon ride to a lost jungle world. It looked great. According to Coraline director Henry Selick, who was also wowed by what he has seen, Pixar can now get away with stuff that is usually out of the box for Disney animation. In other words, the movie gets into some dark places.

I'm also looking forward in the first days to competition Fish Tank, Brit actress-turned-director Andrea Arnold's follow-up to her strong feature debut Red Road which won a Cannes jury prize in 2006. The movie stars Michael Fassbender, who also stars in Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. Fish Tank is available for sale.

UPDATE: Here's Justin Chang on this year's clash d'auteurs and the Dardennes brothers lead this year's master class.

President Barack Obama, at the end of his funny, barbed and self-mocking White House Correspondents speech, graciously thanked the assembled press corps for doing their jobs --even when he disagreed with them--and recognized that their profession was under duress. He wished them well as they reinvent journalism.

At lunch last week, one studio marketing exec and I were puzzling over Time, Newsweek and EW. And as I ponder my own future, I am aware that writing for print gave me not only an editor and a deadline that forced me to focus serious time on a column, but gravitas as well. The blog just isn't the same. When it's in print, it means more. To everyone. Said studio marketer doesn't mind Patrick Goldstein's daily rantings online. It's when they wind up in print in the LAT that she gets upset. Is this attitude? Habit? The fact that holding something tangible in your hand makes it more important? Print still does have an advantage (along with serious advertising dollars), if folks can only figure out how to make it dovetail economically with the faster online world.

People take many blogs and online publications seriously, from The Daily Beast (where editors and deadlines still apply) to WSJ.com, where you can find Kara Swisher's All Things Digital blog. She recently interviewed Sharon Waxman, whose online pub The Wrap is trying to compete inside the trade space. Waxman asserted at a recent Fest of Books panel that the trades "never break a story" and "there's no place to go for the essential information you need if you are in the business of TV and movies." Really? She waxes on:

Meanwhile The Washington Post's Walter Pincus, writing in the Columbia Journalism Review, suggests that newspaper reporters and editors have been chasing the wrong goals, fame and glory, instead of serving their readers.

With Star Trek taking off at warp speed, will there be a new generation of Trekkies who know the canon and read the books and follow the world? Paramount is banking on it.

Jack Morrissey passed on links to Star Trek toys, t-shirts and an iPhone. So far I've got three of four Burger King collectible glasses: Kirk, Spock and Nemo. I'm missing Uhura.

You can look at tracking all you want, and listen to studio marketers downplaying expectations. But truth is, if a movie plays as well as Star Trek does, the word gets out. The movie opened to an estimated $31 million on Friday (including Thursday night numbers), and we know that the WOM will be strong. So it's going to do a lot better than those $50-65 million estimates. UPDATE: It grossed an estimated $76.5 million for the weekend but scored only 35% under 25. Of course the core demo skewed older. Paramount has been spending the big bucks on luring the younger demo--which will likely expand on upbeat WOM.

When I sat down with the writers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci at their DreamWorks bungalow on opening day, they were grinning because the reviews are the best of the year so far, an 84 on Metacritic and 91 among the top critics on Rotten Tomatoes. Here's my take. There's even Oscar talk. Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Here's my Flip Cam interview about how they reinvented the five key Star Trek characters, the bromance between Kirk and Spock, how they couldn't even start writing the script for producer/director J.J. Abrams without some kind of go ahead from Leonard Nimoy, why they left out William Shatner, how they approached writing Transformers 1 and 2 and Cowboys and Aliens, and how they came to exec produce the Sandra Bullock rom-com The Proposal. The Star Trek sequel is already starting to keep them up at night.

When you're a squeaky clean white Harvard grad with a demure pixie appeal, what better way to spruce up your street cred than rap on Saturday Night Live? Natalie Portman did, with aplomb (back in 2007) and it's one of the most popular shorts on Hulu. The long tail lives.

Cannes has posted the screening schedule (it's on the jump). Unfortunately for Terry Gilliam, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus doesn't screen until Friday the 22nd. Most buyers will be burned out and gone by Thursday. Will the sellers arrange an early buyer's screening like the one last year for Synecdoche, New York? It's better to have the positive power of the press behind you with a risky challenge of a movie, methinks. Isn't that what festivals are for?

Cinetic Media's John Sloss has already showed the movie to buyers in L.A. in hopes of scoring an early sale. Because Parnassus boasts Heath Ledger's last performance, there will be offers to buy the film. The question is how much they'll be willing to pay. One studio specialty distrib not interested in acquiring Parnassus suggested that Sony Pictures Classics was the perfect buyer. UPDATE: Indeed, SPC will see the movie in NYC before Cannes.

Hulu, which has become such a swift success that hold-out Disney recently joined the other studios partnering in the online streaming venture, is now offering streaming Bollywood films. Bollywood offerings boosted Netflix's early success. There's no stopping Hulu now.

It's not like the Terminator franchise was ever light, exactly. But in the post-Dark Knight era, summer action movies--even Star Trek--are trending dark and edgy, and Terminator Salvation, Angels & Demons, and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen certainly fit the bill. Word on Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is that's darker than any of its predecessors.

On the other hand, word on Mummy director Stephen Sommers' G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, about a unit of soldiers on a mission to save the world from an evil mastermind, is that it's strictly summer popcorn fare. UPDATE: Here's the trailer, complete with toppling Eiffel Tower. Sommers is still playing with pixels. And the Super Bowl spot:

And here's the latest Terminator trailer:

Which one do you most want to see? It's going to be a fiercely competitive summer. Vote for your most anticipated summer action movie:

Thirteen things to know about Tilda Swinton.

West Slide Story is singing the economy blues.

Confessions of an Old Media Junkie: Ira Deutchman's approach is eerily close to mine. Except that I ingest more online media as well.

Another critic gets moved out of his primary role: "Phil Villarreal was reassigned to General Assignments for the AZ Daily Star's Metro desk today," reports David Poland, who has added posters to MovieCityNews. And Columbus, Ohio is also losing its critic, alas.

Star Trek will open huge, and some prognosticators are heralding the year's first $100 million weekend. That's not what the advance tracking shows, which is trending toward older males, or what Paramount wants anyone to believe. But word travels fast. And I will bet that the movie will outpace expectations. Even if the "brand"--everyone's favorite word these days--is damaged. Admittedly, my own daughter-of-a-Trekkie, Nora, 19, is not the slightest bit interested in plunking down her ten bucks.

Early raves suggest that the film could disappoint hardcore Trekkies, reports The Onion:

Running against the pack, NY Press's Armond White has posted a critical pan entitled "Where Young Boys Have Gone Before." And Philadelphia critic Carrie Rickey talks to the original Lieutenant Uhura, Nichelle Nichols.

As of noon E.T. Wednesday, MovieTickets.com reported that Star Trek accounted for 83 percent of their ticket sales, and had sold out 387 performances. Here's their pre-release poll:

STAR TREK PRE-RELEASE POLLING According to female ticket buyers polled at MovieTickets.com Apr. 21 to May 3:

· 52 percent are aware of the film “Star Trek” · 63 percent of those aware of the film intend to see “Star Trek” opening weekend. These are the highest pre-release polling numbers at MovieTickets.com in 2009 amongst female ticket buyers polled the week before a film’s release. “Star Trek” is tracking well across all age groups at MovieTickets.com, save 60-plus. According to the same Apr. 21 – May 3 poll at MovieTickets.com, over 70 percent of three different age groups aware of “Star Trek” say they intend to see the film opening weekend. Here’s a breakdown: · 58 percent of Under-25s · 70 percent of 25-34s · 76 percent of 35-44s · 78 percent of 45-59s · 11 percent of 60-plus

We know how women respond to Rob Pattinson as Edward Cullen in Twilight . I knew the second I saw the first teaser trailer that he was a new heartthrob. He's dishy. In IFC's on-demand release, the British micro-indie How to Be, he plays a depressed loser version of himself. Not a big reach. On the other hand, Pattinson stretches quite a bit as Salvador Dali in Little Ashes, a European art film with a cultural pedigree. Set in Spain, the movie throws together three brilliant young university students: painter Salvador Dali (Pattinson), poet/dramatist Federico Garcia Lorca (Javier Beltran) and filmmaker Luis Bunuel (Matthew McNulty). Garcia Lorca and Dali form a powerful bond that is sexual, but Dali can't handle it.

Most of us remember Dali as a flamboyant performance artist with a crazy waxed mustache. He also created some of the great works of Surrealist art. (I was not the only kid to grow up in New York City in love with the Museum of Modern Art's The Persistence of Memory.) Pattinson is fascinating in the role--you can't take your eyes off him. The movie will play great for the gay audience and for ardent Pattinson fans who can take the homosexual content. But the jury is out on Pattinson's acting. It doesn't help that filmmaker Paul Morrison uses a Euro-pudding approach, so that Brit Pattinson sounds less authentic than Spanish co-star Beltran. Why not have all Spanish actors with subtitles?

Jim Jarmusch's Limits of Control opened well in limited release last weekend. Many filmgoers were lured by the white-haired New York indie icon, who is the epitome of cool. But this movie is maddeningly indulgent.

On the one hand, the film is a marvel of sights and sounds. Jarmusch devotes himself to the sensual pleasures of filming on location in Spain with cinematographer Chris Doyle, reveling in the textures and patterns of the exotic spaces they travel to on their extended travelogue with monosyllabic Isaach De Bankole. The camera work is idiosyncratic, improvisational, stunning. Jarmusch tries to get away with this minimalist, almost silent art film by giving The Limits of Control the patina of a spy thriller--without supplying any plot, character or payoff. He knows that by luring a few stars (Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Gael Garcia Bernal) to play effortless cameos, he can finance the movie. While I respect Jarmusch for indulging his own pleasure, it wouldn't take much to make his films just a tad more nourishing. Clearly, satisfying himself means more to him than satisfying filmgoers.

Reviews (44% on Metacritic) range from appreciation of the film's cinematic virtues to questions of The Emperor's New Clothes. Glenn Kenny, for one, is a fan: "incantatory," he writes.

UPDATE: Jamie Stuart covers the premiere.