‘Titane’ is a blast.

TITANE is a blast. From the opening scene it just says: here’s what I think of your sentimentality. Euro-cinema doing what it has always done best: being high fashion, provocative, and wildly innovative — The Neon Demon, Irreversible, Enter the Void. A genre mash-up, kind of a Rosemary’s Baby (defiant homage to Polanski?) involving (uh) intimacy with a car. The script might have used a little work, but you’re continually intrigued: stunningly beautiful, ludicrously violent, unpredictable set-pieces – choreographed almost like a musical. Awarded this year’s top prize in Cannes, it puts a dagger in the sand between two filmmaking worlds: could anyone even imagine this getting financed in the U.S., or by some corporate streamer? In this correct and mediocre age, apparently there is still a Europe.

Awarded this year’s top prize in Cannes, it puts a dagger in the sand between two filmmaking worlds: could anyone even imagine this getting financed in the U.S., or by some corporate streamer? In this correct and mediocre age, apparently there is still a Europe.

EXPLORE MORE

‘Leviathan,’ big-canvas Russian epic.

‘Leviathan,’ big-canvas Russian epic.

If "Russian masterpiece" were a style, LEVIATHAN was filmed in it. Karamazov-like bravado and religious parables plus a nonstop flow of vodka. Unsubtle visual political symbolism (the Putin state as rotting Hobbsian whale’s carcass), this one has racked up more 10...

read more
‘Dunkirk’: WWII fought by male models?

‘Dunkirk’: WWII fought by male models?

I did not realize until seeing DUNKIRK that WWII was fought entirely by male models from the Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue. Nor that its commanders (like Kenneth Branagh) mostly stood around posing with binoculars, mouthing pieties through clenched jaws. Nor that...

read more
Another look at ‘Cecil B. Demented’

Another look at ‘Cecil B. Demented’

A film ahead of its time: I took another look at CECIL B. DEMENTED last night, a misunderstood film when it was released, still tragically neglected today. John Waters saw where movies were heading, and this futile rebellion is...

read more