Movie Magazine International Blog

By Moira Sullivan Brigitte Bardot, Plage Macé 1956 Je t'aime... Moi Non Plus , a song Serge Gainsbourg wrote about his love affair with Brigitte Bardot, is a metaphor for Bardot's relationship with popular culture and its custodians, specifically the press and paparazzi. In her later years, she expressed her desire to live to 100 but sadly passed away at the age of 91. She is best known for establishing an animal foundation, Foundation Brigitte Bardot, sacrificing all her possessions to make it a reality. Her impact on animal rights was profound, as she vehemently opposed the slaughter of animals in the name of religion or holiday tradition. Despite speculation, she was a supporter of LGBTQ individuals, such as Maria Schneider, who shared her life with another woman until the very end. Maria admired Bardot for gracefully transitioning from acting to a successful career as a singer-songwriter to an animal rights activist. However, Bardot's life and achievements were oft...

By Moira Sullivan Over the course of film history, the content of traditional genres begun in the silent era has consistently changed in terms of plot, characters, setting, form, and iconography. This is especially true in films directed and written by women. Some films challenge traditional views of motherhood to such an extent that they are frightening. In The Babadook  (2014, Australia), directed by Jennifer Kent, a children’s storybook becomes the origin of an unsettling transformation of what would otherwise be perceived as an ordinary, loving mother. Amelia (Essie Davis) is a widow raising her young son Sam alone (Noah Wiseman), who has learning disabilities and needs constant care. Soon she is unable to cope and later on becomes a demonic mother. The son is clever enough to know that this is not his mother and becomes a caretaker for her. The character in The Babadook children’s book has come alive, a sinister character in black that invades the home and the psyche of ...

                                                    Aissa Maiga © Festival de Cannes By Moira Sullivan The 78th edition of the Cannes Film Festival opened on May 13 with the selection of an exceptional jury and a spirited press conference that set the tone for a politically and socially engaged festival. In the opening night of the Cannes film festival, Robert De Niro took the stage to accept an honorary Palme d’Or and he took the time to criticize the tariffs on film produced outside of the US. Meanwhile Tom Cruise - who did not go to film or acting school - has built a successful international franchise on Mission Impossible The Final Reckoning", which is not subject to tariffs. "Mission: Impossible" is a fictional multimedia franchise, imported or exported between countries. The opening of the film was exciting for the cast and crew and a jubilant Can...

By Moira Jean Sullivan The Exorcist made in 1973 is a classic because its construction commands new audiences ever since its conception by William Friedkin. The film initially was about a professor Chris MacNeil who wants to help her students who are sitting out and missing classes because of a bad university administration. She has a daughter who has become possessed. The film establishes the point of contact from an evil spirit in Northern Iraq that Father Merrin (played by Max von Sydow) out on a dig has gotten mixed up with and he is a presence that the evil spirit fears. Somehow the spirit makes its way to Georgetown and possesses Regan (Linda Blair). Ellen Burstyn plays her mother beset with grief in trying to fix her daughter and enlists the help of Roman Catholic priests who live close by their home. As a famous actress she asks the priests to heal her daughter and she's magnificent in this role. She implores them to conduct an exorcism which requires special permi...

By Moira Sullivan Movie Magazine International was at Cannes again for the 10th time at the 77th Festival de Cannes. What I was looking forward to at this festival was of course the documentary on Faye Dunaway: Faye directed by French American Laurent Bouzereau held in the Cannes Classics venue in Salle Buñuel where I always can get a seat. Faye (2024) © Festival de Cannes Faye Dunaway loves the Cannes Film Festival and her image was the official poster for 2011. I have stood in line in the past with her waiting to get into the Agnes Varda Theatre till an usher recognized who she was and took her in to the front row. She goes to the seminars and asks great questions; she’s a real Cineaste! So the debut of this new documentary film at Cannes Classics Faye  was really something to look forward to.  Dunaway has had her share of difficulties, on the set, certainly not unique for actors, but she is a woman and that makes it different (compare Marlon Brando, John Travolta). ...

By Moira Sullivan The Substance premiered May 19 at Cannes starring Demi Moore. The film opens with the placement of a star on the sidewalk of Hollywood and Vine for guru fitness coach Elisabeth Sparkle. It’s sparkling new but with the passage of time cracks on the star signify the years gone by. What has happened with the career of Elizabeth Sparkle?. The walls in her office are lined with posters of Sparkle that represent her career and she is still at the top of her game. The Substance is extremely well-made and crafted with bright vibrant colors that change for the various scenes. Most of the shots in the film are set in this long corridors and anterior shots were filmed in Antibes near Cannes. Enter program director Harvey played by Dennis Quaid who says “we need her young. We need her now”. Sparkle started her career at the age of 25. She enters the unisex bathroom and overhears ageist and sexist remarks by Harvey about getting a new fitness guru. At a meal he slowl...

By Moira Jean Sullivan The poster for George Millers’ 2024  Furiosa A Mad Max Saga  was the opening film at the 77th Cannes Film Festival and the most anticipated event of the 10 day pageant. There were several screenings and the frenzy to aquire press tickets intensified its launch. Mad Max: Fury Road was an excellent rivieting "road movie" of such extraordinary intracasy and finess so it was a smart move to launch the film, also out of competition. The casting of Anya Taylor-Joy as Furiosa and the magnificent poster graced the wall of the Palais de Festival promising a comparable ride as its predecessor. The narrative features the towering War Lord of the Biker Horde Dementus (Chris Elmworth) standing above Furiosa, eclipsing her. The prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road  , Australian director George Miller decided to cast Anya Taylor-Joy as a younger Furiosa, instead of Charlize Theron. The film seems to have a more polished look compared to its predecessor, with mode...

By Moira Jean Sullivan Nyad is now out on Netflix starring Jodie Foster and Annette Bening about Diana Nyad, a courageous 60+ woman who would not give up her dream of swimming 110 miles from Cuba to Miami. The film tackles the universal question of how great athletes co-exist with their environment. The answer is that nothing exists in a vacuum even a famous solo swimmer in a volatile ocean. A dynamic skilled team is assembled to work with Nyad including her personal assistant Bonnie (Jodie Foster), young deep sea swimmers who put up shark screens, a marine biologist who's well versed in the dangers of jellyfish, John Bartlett - her navigator, and others in a team of about 40 people who accompany Nyad on this Olympian swim to Miami. It's not a straight trajectory with several setbacks before she finally succeeds. It's a plus that the film is set up like that but one can't help being a bit irritated with Nyad’s egotistical personality though there are compelling ...

Born in Flames (1983) © Lizzie Borden Lizzie Borden was guest of honor at the 45th Créteil Films de Femmes festival held March 24 to April 2. Her work was enthusiastically received by a new generation of cinéastes with seminars on her trilogy of films: Regrouping (1976), Born in Flames (1983) and Working Girls (1986). Born in Flames ’ relevance today is illustrated by its intersectionality of race, gender and class that debunks the myth that feminism was a 'white women's movement'. Featuring Kathryn Bigelow as a member of a youth socialist feminist journal, the setting is 10 years after the Socialist Revolution in the US. Borden took seven years to make the film and acquire funding. The brilliant editing of Born in Flames resembles the 'choreographic' editing of Borden’s first film, the documentary Regrouping made in 1976 on four artists in a women’s group. During the course of the film project, Borden introduced other women into the original group and created ...

Blue Jean is set in 1988 after Margaret Thatcher’s conservative government has introduced Section 28, a clause of the Local Government Act which seeks to prohibit “the promotion of homosexuality” by local authorities across the United Kingdom. The clause is directed towards the 'pretend' relationships of lesbians and gay men. Jean is a a high school gym teacher who must keep her life as a lesbian secret at work and cannot risk being open about her relationship with Viv (Kerrie Hayes)   even to her family. The film style by director/writer Georgia Oakley has the look and feel of a film from the 80's. Shot in 16mm the cinematography spotlights run down housing and establishments and an atmosphere that reeks of the butchery of human rights.  Oakley creates an authentic environment at the high school where Jean works. The script written by Oakley is directed towards internalised homophobia of the characters. The enrolment of a new student Lois (Lucy Halliday) who begin...

Mary Harron was a special guest at the San Francisco International Film Festival in April.I had the opportunity to interview her from Sweden after returning from the Créteil International Women's Film Festival in March 24 – April 2. Harron is probably one of the best female auteur filmmakers who writes and directs her own films. She has a very eclectic body of work and her latest film is Daliland about the Spanish filmmaker and surrealist artist Salvador Dalí.  His signature in popular culture is his extravagant looking moustache turned up at the ends held in place with hair oil.  Dalíland takes place when Dalí is 70 years old with flashbacks to his younger years with his muse and Russian wife Gala and the mature Gala is played by the magnificent Barbara Sukowa. Dalí is a curiosity for young people, but he does not impress the film critics of his time when he was in his 70s. He is shown milling around at celebrity parties in the art world where people show up to be ...

At the 76th Cannes Film Festival it was announced that more than 60 hours of rushes of Agnes Varda’s 2000 documentary feature The Gleaners and I will now be available for the next generation of international filmmakers thanks to a new educational initiative from France’s National Audiovisual Institute (INA) and Ciné-Tamaris (Agnès Varda's company run by her daughter Rosalie Varda).  The five-year project offers students a bilingual platform available 24/7 where they can view and download the complete collection of rushes in addition to the edited film in addition to educational materials like photos and press kits from the period of the film’s release.  The innovative indexing technique uses artificial intelligence and documentary engineering techniques, applied for the first time to film footage. Students will be able to search for words and pull footage with specific images or merge unused interviews with footage that did make it into the film to create their own spin....

By Moira Jean Sullivan La Passion de Dodin Bouffant (France 2023); The Taste of Things Most people have small apartments with tiny kitchens and barely enough room for preparing the kind of meal that in the first 17 minutes of The Taste of Things is served to six men in suits and ties by a young apprentice and female cook. Eugénie (Juliette Binoche) learned the art of cooking from her mother and father, a renowned Parisian pastry chef. The main course includes a cream sauce for vegetables she spoons into a large bread bowl, topped off by flaming cake filled with ice cream - “baked Alaska” ("bombe Alaska" actually in this film) or "omelette norvégienne" in French. It is called a “scientific desert” created by the American physicist Sir Benjamin Thompson who made the discovery that egg whites made a great insulator for cold filling in a hot cake. After making this elaborate meal Eugénie almost faints, and I understand why she would after this physically exhausting ...

Wes Andersson's  Asteroid City  premiered at Cannes to a standing ovation on May 23 at the the Grand Théatre Lumière. Featuring an ensemble cast shot during August and October 2021, the film is set in 1955 where 3070 years ago  an asteroid fell to earth in the US southwest desert populated by saguara and mesas. To commemorate this landing, Asteroid City is home to the national Junior Stargazer/Space Cadet convention attended by parents and students on annual Asteroid Day. It is also the site of a US government astronomical observatory. As a huge dark grey mushroom cloud appears in the horizon, the visitors to  Asteroid City  become subject to a lockdown.  The threat of an event eclipsing the atomic testing of the 1950's sends the guests into panic.   The look and feel of the film is almost cartoon like bleeding the faces and clothing of the actors into soft pastels. The aesthetically pleasing aspect of the film also features visual effects b...

By Moira Jean Sullivan            Marco Bellocchio's dramatic narrative  Rapito  (Kidnapped) premiered at Cannes where the award winning and esteemed Italian director spoke about why he chose the project about a Jewish boy kidnapped by the Papal states in 1858.  Baptised Catholic by a servant, after failed attempts to convince the boy's parents to raise him as a Christian, Edgardo is kidnapped by the Inquisitor of the Holy Office Pier Gaetano Feletti (Fabrizio Gifuni) for Pope Pius IX (Paolo Pierobon). Edgardo's parents (Barbara Ronchi and Fausto Russo Alesi) are unable to see their son for months. Bellocchio, who is a non-practicing Catholic, read the story and was deeply touched and wrote the script with Susanna Nicchiarelli, Edoardo Albinati and Daniela Cesellin based on Daniele Scalise's novel  Il Caso Mortara.  Since it is well known that Steven Spielberg had begun a film project on the kidnapping, Bellocchio was quick t...

By Moira Jean Sullivan Un certain regard 'new voice' prize goes to Omen, directorial debut of Belgian rapper Baloji   Omen  (Augure), the first feature film by Belgian-Congolese musician and actor Baloji, won the “New Voice” prize in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival. The film screened May 22 with a rich visual language previously experienced in Baloji's music videos and heard in his electrifying four part masterpiece, the soundtrack for  Augure . This innovative directorial debut is the story of Koffi (Marc Zinga) who decides to return to his home in Lubumbashi in the Congo with his partner Alice (Lucie Debay).  Pregnant and expecting twins, Koffi's family do not welcome them. Koffi was rejected by his mother early in life because he showed signs of being a Zabola (Swahili: Magician) or demon. The film's poster features a Zabola in a haze of pink smoke. Other actors in  Omen  are Eliane Umuhire as Tshala and Yves-Marina Gna...

By Moira Sullivan Quentin Tarantino likes to revitalise actors from film classics. His time working in a video shop gave him the opportunity to see films that are otherwise not very well known to today's Netflix and other popular streaming outlets. He not only knows cult films well but his sets often pay homage to the 70s and 80s. Today's pop streaming culture caters to a whole generation of young film fans do not have the opportunity to enrich their knowledge of film with cult classics. Tarantino can't rediscover everyone. Two actors he has helped are not my favorites - John Travolta ( Saturday Night Fever 1977 to Pulp Fiction 2004) and Christophe Walz (nothing comes to mind from before - to Inglorious Basterds (2009). They will always have Tarantino to thank for their rebooted careers. When it comes to female actors Tarantino brought Pam Grier to the forefront in Jackie Brown (1997) who was a vital presence in B films such as Coffy (1973) and Foxy Brown (1974...