Twenty-five years ago, I attended my first Cannes under less than auspicious circumstances. I had a professor promise to grab passes for her students, only to arrive to find that nothing had been reserved. A year living in this country taught me a little bit of the French language and a lot about French bureaucracy,…

Athletic dreams are universal: They transcend borders, ages, and social classes—and yet there are sometimes biases and prejudices tied up in who countries want representing them in international competitions. In the United States, this tension is playing out in the contrast between the “aggressively WASPy” Olympian outfits designed by Ralph Lauren and accusations against Team…

In the dystopian world of “Scales,” a woman’s body is not her own. Instead, it is merely a sacrificial vessel to serve the purposes of the village’s male leaders. Here, it is tradition that every family must sacrifice a daughter to the sea maidens, mermaid-like creatures, so they can continue fishing. However, these men are…

The arc of the new comedy “Wellington Paranormal” is indicative of the fractured landscape out there for TV watchers. Originally broadcast in New Zealand in 2018, the show is a spin-off of the hit film “What We Do in the Shadows,” which has already been turned into an amazing series on FX, although that technically happened…

Here’s an experiment: Try watching “The Souvenir Part II” without seeing the first part. “Maybe some of you didn’t see part one—it probably doesn’t matter, I don’t know,” the filmmaker, Joanna Hogg, told the audience at Directors’ Fortnight after the screening this morning. I’d be curious to hear how “Part II” plays completely fresh. Personally,…

It seems oddly appropriate that the passing of filmmaker and actor Robert Downey Sr. would come the same week as that of Richard Donner. Downey, who lost a long battle with Parkinson’s Disease at the age of 85, and Donner represented, in their own unique ways, the wide range and versatility in filmmaking that seems…