Fjord -Palme d'or !!!

 all winers here

Palme d'or

FJORD  Cristian MUNGIU  Kudos !!!  next on I guess the Oscars !

Second Palme d')r for Mungiu after 19 years from 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 days, making him the Tenth director in the history of Cannes to win twice. Here's the other nine. 

Fjord also won in Cannes 4 other awards:

-the François Chalais Prize

-Prix de la Citoyenneté (Citizenship Award) 

-Ecumenical Jury Prize

 -FIPRESCI award (International Critics' Prize)

***At the official screening the film was received with a 12 mins. standing ovation, a huge timing for the festival and a good barometer of the success of the projection, much more than the reviews and the trades star ratings. 

The Plague (2025)

Remarkable debut by Charlie Polinger (w/d). It premiered in Cannes in the Un Certain Regard section. Worthy of the DGA Award. Amazingly it was shot in Romania (by Abis studios, art director Vlad Vieru just won a Gopo for the Yellow Tie) !!! Great widescreen compositions. in 2.39 : 1. Also shot on film,35mm by Steven Breckon, another name to follow. 

Joel Edgerton  (also a producer) is the only adult name in the film, the rest is a bunch of kids, real talent.  Everett Blunck as Ben is a stand-out. They won best actors in Sitges, also together with Kayo Martin.

Lord of the Flies in a summer waterpolo camp with shades of masculin Carrie. It's set in 2003, no clue why. It's gross sometimes like teenagers are, it's unpleasant and it feels real. Tough to direct all these kids, and as a first picture, kudos !

 Also great, I mean GREAT sound design and a great score by Johan Lenox, reminiscent also of Pino Donnagio's cues.

Corsa Notturna (see, it's in Italian;) will give you goosebumps. It looks like it's Lenox' first real score too. Bravo !

Also Moby's song Feeling So Real will never feel the same again ! 4 real ;)

7 out of 10 / 3 1/2 out of 5 ! Deserves even more but my empathy was with the filmmaking, not the characters. 

Caveat (2020)

I caught up with Damian McCarthy 1st feature film Caveat after seeeing Hokum in a cinema last week and Oddity in 2024. 

Caveat in Latin means Warning/ Beware. 

Creepy, claustrophobic, atmospheric very low key and extremly well done low budget debut feature shot in Cork, Ireland.

Loses some steam in the third act but it's paced at 1h30 so it's all good. It's basically  for the viewer a one person drama and experiences and emotions -through Issac (Jonathan French's amnesic character).

The harness is a gimmick worthy of Edgar Allan Poe's stories. 

The film's dialogue is minimal, and the sound design/ soundtrack is keeping the ternsion up, as with the camera movements and the set design of the creepy house with falling walls, the basement, floors creaking and those distant cries of the foxes...

The most interesting thing in the film is the drumming toy rabbit that beats Stephen King/ Osgood Perkins' Moneky for creepiness and weirdness.

***The toy rabbit featured in the film was acquired via eBay by McCarthy, who "always had an interest in wind-up toys". It was stripped of its fur and sent to costume and prop builder Lisa Zagone, who finalised its design.

3 1/2 out of 5 / 7 out of 10

Sight and Sound: The uncannily claustrophobic design of the setting matches the tightness of the irrationally unfolding narrative in this slice of ghostly surrealism, so beautifully styled that you can practically smell the mildew-stained walls.

Hokum (2026)

Hokum is No Hokum. 

maybe the best, most intense horror of the year yet.

To be seen on the big screen. It's widescreen -  2.39 : 1, -by Colm Hogan, kudos! - but it's claustrophobic and the sound design is Great !!! And the music too-atmospheric, as a tool of building more sound ! 

From the director od Oddity and Caveat, Irishman Damian McCarthy, a name to follow...

McCarthy provides some genuine good scares 

and gets a restrained performance from Adam Scott (Severance series), at his most serious and downbeat. His character is the obnoxious and depressed writer Ohm Bauman (reminiscences to Richard Bachman, The Shining -Kubrick's- and other Stephen King characters, Jack Torrance, Mort Rainey, George Stark included). 

Hokum is psychological horror mixed with folk supernatural lore, but also a bit more,

Opening and ending bookends raise the quality of the film a lot. 

Liked it better than Weapons and felt the kind of vibe Hereditary gave me back when I saw it in a cinema. 

7 1/2 out of 10 !