CANNES, France (AP) — The Cannes Film Festival got off to a blockbuster, if stormy start, as Baz Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby” opened on a soggy French Riviera.
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“Stories We Tell” is a documentary about Sarah Polley’s family: her father and mother, sister and brother and the sister and brother she has from her mother’s first marriage. It’s about moments they’ve shared that are seemingly prosaic and universally relatable, depicted through the grainy, faded nostalgia of Super 8 — splashing in the swimming pool, laughing around the dinner table — as well as the betrayals and losses that shaped and strengthened them.
Angelina Jolie’s mother had breast cancer and died of ovarian cancer, and her maternal grandmother also had ovarian cancer — strong evidence of an inherited, genetic risk that led the actress to have both of her healthy breasts removed to try to avoid the same fate, her doctor said Wednesday.
“Star Trek Into Darkness” is like fan-boy fiction on a $185 million budget. It’s reverential, it’s faithful, it’s steeped in “Trek” mythology.
“Frances Ha” — On paper it sounds unbearably precious and solipsistic — a cliche, even. Middle-class, college-educated white girl in her mid-20s wanders around New York City with no real home, job or purpose, and as she struggles to find herself, she ends up even more lost. Wah. But as it turns out, “Frances Ha” is absolutely charming: funny, sad, cringe-inducing and heartbreaking but, above all, brimming with authenticity, thanks in large part to a winning star turn from indie darling Greta Gerwig. This is a great showcase for Gerwig’s abiding naturalism; not a single moment from her feels cutesy, self-conscious or false. She and director Noah Baumbach, who worked together on the 2010 comedy “Greenberg,” co-wrote the script, creating a sense of realism through a series of absurd moments. Frances is goofy and guileless, awkward and affectionate but clearly decent-hearted to the core, which only makes her misadventures more agonizing and makes you root harder for her to find true happiness. Baumbach, whose previous films include the subtle, brilliantly observant “The Squid and the Whale,” borrows from a couple of different sources here: the chatty, cultured New York epitomized by 1970s Woody Allen films and the black-and-white intimacy and restless youth of the French New Wave. But there’s a timelessness to this story and a universality: that state of uncertainty between the optimism of college and the responsibility of adulthood. R for sexual references and language. 86 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.