We’re nearly halfway through the year and so far, we have two films that seem like they might still be in the Oscar conversation at the end of the year, Dune 2 and Civil War. With the Cannes Film Festival coming up this month, we should soon have some more contenders to consider.
My predictions below are a bit heavy on sequels. In fact, if the predictions below came true, it would a record year for sequels at the Oscars. Of course, it’s early and it’s totally probable that the majority of the films listed below will not be nominated. Right now, it’s pretty much a guessing game. The production delays caused by last year’s strikes have opened the door for a lot of sequels to receive consideration that they might not receive in other years.
The lineup for the Cannes Film Festival has been announced. After a rather subdued Sundance, film lovers like me are desperately looking to Cannes to add some excitement to 2024. Considering that Cannes is going to see the premiere of new films from Francis Ford Coppola, Paul Schrader, Sean Baker, Kevin Costner, Andrea Arnold, George Miller, David Cronenberg, and Yorgos Lanthimos, it might do just that!
In the past, Cannes has always been hit-and-miss when it comes to the Oscars. But lately, films like The Zone of Interest,Parasite, and The Tree of Life have followed success at Cannes with success with the Academy.
With that in mind, here’s the lineup. If you’re going to Cannes in May, you’re going to have a good time!
Full lineup of the 2024 Cannes film festival.
The Second Act Quentin Dupieux (Opening Film) (Out of Competition)
Competition
L’Amour Ouf Gilles Lellouche
All We Imagine As Light Payal Kapadia
Anora Sean Baker
The Apprentice Ali Abbasi
Bird Andrea Arnold
Caught by the Tides Jia Zhangke
Emilia Perez Jacques Audiard
The Girl With the Needle Magnus von Horn
Grand Tour Miguel Gomes
Limonov: The Ballad Kirill Serebrennikov
Marcello Mio Christophe Honoré
Megalopolis Francis Ford Coppola
Motel Destino Karim Ainouz
Oh Canada Paul Schrader
Parthenope Paolo Sorrentino
The Shrouds David Cronenberg
The Substance Coralie Fargeat
Wild Diamond Agathe Riedinger
Kinds of Kindness Yorgos Lanthimos
Out of Competition
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga George Miller
Horizon, an American Saga Kevin Costner
Rumours Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson, Guy Maddin
She’s Got No Name Chan Peter Ho-Sun
Un Certain Regard
Armand Halfdan Ullmann Tondel
Black Dog Guan Hu
The Damned Roberto Minervini
L’Histoire de Souleymane Boris Lojkine
My Sunshine Boku No Ohisama
Norah Tawik Alzaidi
On Becoming a Guinea Fowl Rungano Nyoni
Le Royaume Julien Colonna
Santosh Sandhya Suri
September Says Ariane Labed
The Shameless Konstantin Bojanov
Viet and Nam Truong Minh Quý
The Village Next to Paradise Mo Harawe
Vingt Deux! Louise Courvoisier
Who Let the Dogs Bite? Laetitia Dosch
Midnight Screenings
The Balconettes Noémie Merlant
I, The Executioner Seung Wan Ryoo
The Surfer Lorcan Finnegan
Twilight of the Warrior Walled In Soi Cheang
Cannes Premiere
C’est Pas Moi Leos Carax
Everybody Loves Touda Nabil Ayouch
The Matching Bang Emmanuel Courcol
Misericorde Alain Guiraudie
Rendez-Vous Avec Pol Pot Rithy Panh
Le Roman de Jim Arnaud Larrieu, Jean-Marie Larrieu
Today, we wish filmmaker George Miller a happy birthday!
Today’s scene that I love comes from 1983’s Mad Max 2 (a.k.a. The Road Warrior). In the scene, Lord Humongous and his followers arrive at a compound. Humongous and his followers are both ludicrous and menacing at the same time. While watching this scene, Miller makes sure that the viewer knows that, even if Humongous’s followers are a little bit daft, Humongous himself is truly dangerous.
Incidentally, when Mad Max 2 was in the pre-production stages, one idea was that Max would discover that, underneath the mask, was his old partner from the first film, Jim Goose! Miller says that idea was abandoned but, just as I imagine Immortan Joe was actually Toecutter grown up, I also always assume that Humongous was the formerly cheerful Jim Goose.
Mad Max (1979, dir by George Miller, DP: Dave Eggby)
Today the Shattered Lens wishes a happy birthday to one of our favorite people, George Miller! The doctor-turned-director began his cinematic career with 1979’s Mad Max and he’s gone on to become one of the most influential and important filmmakers out there. In honor of George Miller’s birthday, today’s scene that I love is from his debut film.
In this scene, the once upstanding policeman, Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson), get his revenge on the last surviving member of Toecutter’s gang. Instead of merely running Johnny the Boy over, he handcuffs Johnny to a car, uses the leaking gasoline and Johnny’s lighter to create a crude timebomb, and gives Johnny a hacksaw. Johnny can either spend ten minutes cutting through the cuffs or five minutes cutting through his ankle. Max drives off and barely notices the explosion behind him. (It seems like it wouldn’t have made difference what Johnny cut through because that explosion came pretty quickly.) Max’s cold expression and the dark road in front of him indicates that Max knows what the future holds for both himself and the rest of humanity. In the scene, Max surrenders whatever traces of mercy that he had left within him. Fortunately, he gets some of his humanity back in the next movie.
Three Thousand Years of Longing, George Miller’s first film since Mad Max: Fury Road, made quite a splash when it premiered on Cannes yesterday. A lot of people said that this film, which features Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba, was the first legitimate Oscar contender to come out of Cannes.
We’ll have to wait to find out if that’s true or not but the trailer is certainly intriguing.
4 (or more) Shots From 4 (or more) Films is just what it says it is, 4 (or more) shots from 4 (or more) of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 (or more) Shots From 4 (or more) Films lets the visuals do the talking.
Today the Shattered Lens wishes a happy birthday to one of our favorite people, George Miller! The doctor-turned-director began his cinematic career with 1979’s Mad Max and he’s gone on to become one of the most influential and important filmmakers out there. In honor of George Miller’s birthday, here are….
4 Shots From 4 George Miller Films
Mad Max (1979, dir by George Miller, DP: Dave Eggby)
The Witches of Eastwick (1987, dir by George Miller, DP: Vilmos Zsigmond)
Babe: Pig In The City (1998, dir by George Miller, DP: Andrew Lesnie)
Mad Max: Fury Road (2015, dir by George Miller, DP: John Seale)
1983’s Twilight Zone: The Movie is meant to be a tribute to the classic original anthology series. It features four “episodes” and two wrap-around segments, with Burgess Meredith providing opening and closing narration. Each segment is directed by a different director, which probably seemed like a good idea at the time.
Unfortunately, Twilight Zone: The Movie is a bit of a mess. One of the episodes is brilliant. Another one is good up until the final few minutes. Another one is forgettable. And then finally, one of them is next too impossible to objectively watch because of a real-life tragedy.
With a film that varies as wildly in tone and quality as Twilight Zone: The Movie, the only way to really review it is to take a segment at a time:
Something Scary (dir by John Landis)
Albert Brooks and Dan Aykroyd drive through the desert and discuss the old Twilight Zone TV series. Brooks claims that the show was scary. Aykoyd asks if Brooks wants to see something really scary. This is short but fun. It’s tone doesn’t really go along with the rest of the movie but …. oh well. It made me jump.
Time Out (dir by John Landis)
Vic Morrow plays a racist named Bill Connor who, upon leaving his local bar, finds himself transported to Nazi-occupied France, the deep South, and eventually Vietnam.
How you react to this story will probably depend on how much you know about its backstory. If you don’t know anything about the filming of this sequence, you’ll probably just think it’s a bit heavy-handed and, at times, unintentionally offensive. Twilight Zone often explored themes of prejudice but Time Out just seems to be using racism as a gimmick.
If you do know the story of what happened while this segment was being filmed, it’s difficult to watch. Actor Vic Morrow was killed during filming. His death was the result of a preventable accident that occurred during a scene that was to involve Morrow saving two Vietnamese children from a helicopter attack. The helicopter crashed, killing not only Morrow but the children as well. It was later determined that not only were safety protocols ignored but that Landis had hired the children illegally and was paying them under the table so that he could get around the regulations governing how many hours child actors could work. It’s a tragic story and one that will not leave you as a fan of John Landis’s, regardless of how much you like An American Werewolf in London and Animal House.
Nothing about the segment feels as if it was worth anyone dying for and, to be honest, I’m kind of amazed that it was even included in the finished film.
Kick The Can (dir by Steven Spielberg)
An old man named Mr. Bloom (Scatman Crothers) shows up at Sunnyvale Retirement Home and encourages the residents to play a game of kick the can. Everyone except for Mr. Conroy (Bill Quinn) eventually agrees to take part and, just as in the episode of the Twilight Zone that this segment is based on, everyone becomes young.
However, while the television show ended with the newly young residents all running off and leaving behind the one person who refused to play the game, the movie ends with everyone, with the exception of one man who apparently became a teenager istead of a kid, deciding that they would rather be old and just think young. That really doesn’t make any damn sense but okay.
This segment is unabashedly sentimental and clearly calculated to brings tears to the eyes to the viewers. The problem is that it’s so calculated that you end up resenting both Mr. Bloom and all the old people. One gets the feeling that this segment is more about how we wish old people than how they actually are. It’s very earnest and very Spielbergian but it doesn’t feel much like an episode of The Twilight Zone.
It’s A Good Life (dir by Joe Dante)
A teacher (Kathleen Quinlan) meets a young boy (Jeremy Licht) who has tremendous and frightening powers.
This is a remake of the classic Twilight Zone episode, It’s A Good Life, with the difference being that young Anthony is not holding an entire town hostage but instead just his family. This segment was directed by Joe Dante, who turns the segment into a cartoon, both figuratively and, at one point, literally. That’s not necessarily a complaint. It’s certainly improvement over Spielberg’s sentimental approach to the material. Dante also finds roles for genre vets like Kevin McCarthy, William Schallert, and Dick Miller and he provides some memorably over-the-top visuals.
The main problem with this segment is the ending, in which Anthony suddenly reveals that he’s not really that bad and just wants to be treated normally, which doesn’t make much sense. I mean, if you want to be treated normally, maybe don’t zap your sister in a cartoon. The teacher agrees to teach Anthony how to be a normal boy and again, what the Hell? The original It’s A Good Life worked because, like any child, Anthony had no conception of how adults felt about him. In the movie version, he’s suddenly wracked with guilt and it’s far less effective. It feels like a cop out.
Still, up until that ending, It’s A Good Life worked well as a satire of the perfect American family.
Nightmare at 20,000 Feet (dir by George Miller)
In this remake of Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, John Lithgow steps into the role that was originally played by William Shatner. He plays a man who, while attempting to conquer his fear of flying, sees a gremlin on the wing of his airplane. Unfortunately, he can’t get anyone else on the plane to believe him.
Nightmare at 20,000 Feet is the best of the four main segments. It’s also the one that sticks closest to its source material. Director George Miller (yes, of Mad Max fame) doesn’t try to improve on the material because he seems to understand that it works perfectly the way it is. John Lithgow is also perfectly cast in the lead role, perfectly capturing his increasing desperation. The one change that Miller does make is that, as opposed in the TV show, the gremlin actually seems to be taunting John Lithgow at time and it works wonderfully. Not only is Lithgow trying to save the plane, he’s also trying to defeat a bully.
Something Scarier (dir by John Landis)
Dan Aykroyd’s back as an ambulance driver, still asking his passenger if he wants to see something really scary. It’s an okay ending but it does kind of lessen the impact of Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.
I’m in America right now and the date here is currently January 26th. Now, I look at that date and I think to myself, “Hey, it’s Australia Day! I’ve got friends in Australia and, according to our site stats, this site has got quite a few readers over there as well! I definitely need to wish everyone a good holiday!”
Except, of course, I’m a day behind Australia. In Australia, it’s currently January 27th. Australia Day was yesterday.
So, what can I say? I’m a day late in wishing everyone a happy Australia Day and the time zones are too blame. I’ve never understood why we need time zones anyways. Don’t even get me started on the International Date Line, which I think was only invented to leave people like me feeling confused.
Oh well. Happy belated Australia Day!
Today’s scene of the day is from the second-most financially successful Australian film of all time, 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road. I don’t know if it’s possible to really describe just how exciting it was to see this film for the first time. At a time when action films were typically unambitious and uninspired, Mad Max: Fury Road grabbed the world and said, “Wake up, dammit!”
Of course, the film itself is about more than just action. It’s about empowerment and freedom and the environment and redemption. It’s a film that seems to be taking place in another world. That is, until you see all the cars and the spray paint and then you’re like, “Oh wait a minute. This just humanity in the future.” Mad Max: Fury Road was nominated for Best Picture and really, it should have won. Does anyone remember which film beat it? (The correct answer is Spotlight.)
In this scene below …. well, the chase begins! And it’s an amazing scene, largely because there is no CGI. There is no shaky cam designed to make things look more exciting than it actually was. Those are actual cars, speeding through an actual desert and that’s an actual person playing a guitar that shoots out fire. And you know what? Give some credits to the drummers too.
This scene was, of course, directed by George Miller. Check it all out below:
Can you believe that the Oscars are just a few hours away!? This is actually shaping up to be an exciting year. Even though I’m fairly certain that I know who and what is going to win, there’s still a strong possibility that we could have a few upsets when the winners are announced on Sunday night!
Well, I guess I better hurry up and post my predictions. Below, I will list both what I think should win and what actually will win.