Cannes Dispatch #4: The Edge of Heaven, A Mighty Heart, Rebellion: The Litvinenko Case
Reflecting on the second half of the Cannes Film Festival, GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN encountered Faith Akin’s new movie, The Edge of Heaven (“impressive without being overtly glossy, and he [Akin] travels from Turkey to German with consummate ease”); Michael Winterbottom’s A Mighty Heart, about the intense hunt for a Wall Street Journal reporter, Daniel Pearl, kidnapped by Islamic terrorists in 2002; Competition entry The Diving Bell and The Butterfly; and Andrei Nekrasov’s Rebellion: The Litvinenko Case, a powerful documentary on the murder of a former Russian spy, and an unscheduled addition to the Festival’s official sections.Courtesy of gautamanbhaskaran.com, The Lumière Reader continues to dispatch Gautaman Bhaskaran’s ‘Out of Cannes’ column over the remainder of the festival.
Vicky Cristina Barcelona: What's not to like? Barcelona in summer. Passionate artists Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz spend quality time with the free-spirited Scarlett Johansson. Blazingly sensual escapism, ground in realism. The Woodman's still got it, directing with a big heart and a sure hand. Cruz, liberated from mediocre American movies, is a Almodovarian force of nature.
