Talking Pictures - Chicago Tribune

'Amour' wins Palme d'Or at Cannes Film Festival

Michael Phillips — Sun, 27 May 2012 23:15:00 GMT

In Michael Haneke's tightly coiled masterwork "Amour," awarded the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival to great acclaim Sunday, a retired music teacher portrayed by Emmanuelle Riva must cope with diminishing circumstances brought on by a stroke. Her husband, a fellow educator played by Jean-Louis Trintignant, soldiers on and becomes her caretaker. And then comes a decision, one that tests conventional notions of love and the limits of what can be endured.

Navigating Cannes screenings a tricky task

Michael Phillips — Fri, 25 May 2012 18:29:00 GMT

CANNES, France — Here’s why the world’s greatest film festival, the one on the Cote d’Azur, means something, and to some filmmakers means everything — even if a lot of the surrounding movies are lame.

Things learned while rubbing elbows at Cannes

Michael Phillips — Thu, 24 May 2012 15:19:00 GMT

For a brief period in the 1920s, just as the international popularity of the French Riviera had begun sowing the seeds of literary and cinematic legend, the Chicago Tribune published a Riviera supplement. One member of its skeletal staff was a young Ohio reporter named James Thurber, newly arrived in France, who wrote (and often gleefully fabricated) for a society report edited by his then-wife.

Brad Pitt kills people and then haggles over his fee

Michael Phillips — Tue, 22 May 2012 12:40:00 GMT

Art and commerce? “They’re not meant to get along,” said Brad Pitt, the Cannes Film Festival perennial, whose film career has led to a bit of the former (art) and a bit more of the latter (commerce).

Cannes Film Festival: Tom Hardy's sliding into stardom with 'Lawless'

Michael Phillips — Mon, 21 May 2012 19:34:00 GMT

Consider Heath Ledger's Joker. If you conduct a Twitter hash tag search using the phrase #reallytoughacttofollow, by rights Ledger's performance in"The Dark Knight" should come up first.

An exacting director survives Cannes' mercurial nature

Michael Phillips — Mon, 21 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Wednesday night seems so long ago; here at the Cannes Film Festival, now halfway through its fantastic paces, it's a hundred films ago.

An exacting director survives Cannes' mercurial nature

Michael Phillips — Sun, 20 May 2012 15:20:00 GMT

Wednesday night seems so long ago; here at the Cannes Film Festival, now halfway through its fantastic paces, it's a hundred films ago.

Cannes, Day 4: No Hooray for Hollywood!

Michael Phillips — Sun, 20 May 2012 03:30:00 GMT

Screening this morning at Cannes as part of the festival's main competition slate, director John Hillcoat's "Lawless"stars Shia LeBeouf and Tom Hardy as Prohibition-era bootleggers whose rural Virginia livelihood is threatened by a bad wind from Chicago, a lawman played by Guy Pearce with the most frightening center-parted hair in recent film history.

Cannes 2012, Day 3: Jason Schwartzman explains it all for you

Michael Phillips — Fri, 18 May 2012 21:36:00 GMT

How do you explain the Festival du Cannes to people who have never gone and never will? It's hugely visible, a Vesuvius that spews glamour every May --all that red carpet, all that Marion Cotillard and Brad Pitt, so many tuxes, all that leg. Yet it's not a public festival, like Toronto or Berlin or Chicago. The average movie lover must wait weeks, months or even years to see what the noise was all about.

Cannes 2012, Day 2: 'Rust and Bone,' with Marion Cotillard, gets early notice

Michael Phillips — Thu, 17 May 2012 10:53:00 GMT

CANNES, France -- Three years ago, French director Jacques Audiard's sprawling, intense prison drama "Un Prophete" won the Grand Prix here at Cannes, a main competition award signifying (despite its name) second prize only to the Palme d'Or.

Bill Murray talks about a director he likes, Wes Anderson of 'Moonrise Kingdom'

Michael Phillips — Wed, 16 May 2012 15:34:00 GMT

CANNES, France -- Here's Bill Murray, a rumpled riot in mismatched summer wear, talking about his ongoing screen collaboration with writer-director Wes Anderson, the filmmaker (who still shoots on actual, tactile-friendly film, Super 16 millimeter in this case) who gave us "Rushmore," "The Royal Tenenbaums,""Fantastic Mr. Fox"and other fastidiously framed and eccentrically observed studies in young people, their addled elders and their elaborate coping mechanisms:

Bill Murray talks about a director he likes, Wes Anderson of 'Moonrise Kingdom'

Wed, 16 May 2012 15:09:00 GMT

Cannes Film Festival preview: Time to get off the beach

Michael Phillips — Mon, 14 May 2012 14:44:00 GMT

Cannes' blend of low culture and high art has produced gems for the ages

Brigitte Bardot in a bikini on a French Riviera beach in the early 1950s. Quick — name a single photograph in existence that reminds you less of "The Tree of Life," last year's top prize winner at the Cannes Film Festival.

Restored film recalls fraught filmmaking

By Michael Phillips — Thu, 10 May 2012 22:03:00 GMT

With movies that are blatantly, ridiculously in love with the theater and its practitioners, the harshest critics tend to be those who love both mediums with equal, sentimental passion — the sort of feeling found in every frame of "Children of Paradise," Marcel Carne's 1945 epic set in the early 19th century Parisian entertainment district known as the Boulevard du Temple, also known as the Boulevard of Crime.

A Marvel moment that's all in the timing

By Michael Phillips — Thu, 03 May 2012 16:54:00 GMT

Timing is everything, and when it comes to the mysterious quantum physics of comic timing, it's really everything.

Will Cannes lineup predict Oscar again?

Michael Phillips — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 15:35:00 GMT

No stooge for the Stooges

Michael Phillips — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 15:18:00 GMT

Here's what I never liked about the Three Stooges, despite Jerome Horwitz (better known as Curly Howard) and his timeless arsenal of vocal delights: I think the Stooges give roughhouse slapstick a bad name.

F is for Foolish: How can 'Bully's' profanity equal 'Saw'-type violence?

Michael Phillips — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 20:21:00 GMT

After 3 trims, MPAA reclassifies documentary PG-13

The words are awful, and they hurt. But the words spoken by one young teenager in particular in the new documentary “Bully” actually hurt less than the letter — R — that the Motion Picture Association of America initially slapped on the film itself.

Bells are ringing, effectively, in films of today and of yore

Michael Phillips — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 20:39:00 GMT

It's not much of a movie, but in the Duplass brothers' "Jeff, Who Lives at Home" a misdialed phone number — Mis-tapped? Mis-punched? Who dials anymore, anyway? — gets the bonged-out dreamer played by Jason Segel thinking he was contacted for a reason. He's already obsessed with the M. Night Shyamalan film "Signs." Surely this must be a sign as well.

Plumbing the 'ravishing' depths of 'Deep Blue Sea' with Terence Davies

Michael Phillips — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 22:05:00 GMT

"Ravishing" is the preferred descriptor deployed conversationally, with passsionate, gale-force emphasis, by the Liverpool-bred writer and director Terence Davies.

'Being Flynn' a microbudget labor of love

Michael Phillips — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 22:33:00 GMT

Opening today, "Being Flynn"is the un-"John Carter."It is small and prickly, not large and Martian. Writer-director Paul Weitz, whose credits include the very good "About a Boy" and "In Good Company," shot his adaptation of Nick Flynn's memoir (which had a different, family-newspaper-hostile title) in five weeks on very little money.

Oscar snubs: The eternal conundrum

Michael Phillips — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 06:00:00 GMT

When the awards go to others on Sunday, think of these 3 excellent performances

Each new Oscars season binds us all together as one, in a collective, sputtering state of exasperation . How could they fail to nominate so-and-so? Are you telling me that so-and-so deserved a best actress or best supporting actor Academy Award nomination any less than thus-and-so? Say it isn't so.

Bad films stand on shoulders of giants

Michael Phillips — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 06:00:00 GMT

Behind every crummy movie there are better ones to blame for its existence. Take"This Means War,"opening this weekend. Please.

Thin year for Oscar music inspires thoughts of past contenders

Michael Phillips — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 22:10:00 GMT

"Not a bad tune," Fred Astaire says in "The Gay Divorcee" (1934), listening to the orchestra and watching the crowd beneath his balcony. "What is it?"

Skeptics making some noise over 'The Artist'

Michael Phillips — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 22:20:00 GMT

If there's one thing I had failed to consider this Academy Awards season, it's that "The Artist" exists not to show people a good time (take it or leave it), but to make them feel like "idiots."