Film

Matthew Miele's documentary " Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf's " feels like a retirement party. The extravagant Manhattan department store isn't going anywhere, so those who can afford $6,000 jewel-encrusted pumps can take joy in that (in addition to having such a spectacular shoe budget). Yet, the film's interview subjects, proclaiming accolade after adulation, echo the rosy cavalcade of tributes that accompany a death or departure. And like many overlong remembrances, one begins to hope that each speech will be the...

CANNES, France — Associated Press journalists open their notebooks at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival: JAMES CAAN GOES BACK TO THE 70S They don't make movies like they used to — which is why James Caan was happy to go back to the 1970s in Guillaume Canet's "Blood Ties. " An icon of ‘70s cinema through his role as Sonny Corleone in "The Godfather," Caan plays the patriarch of a divided family in the Brooklyn-set drama. His younger son, played by Billy Crudup, is a cop;...

Film history offers countless cautionary tales about the hazards of making a romantic comedy. For every solid example with gender-spanning appeal, there are dozens of bombs that have people racing home to relive the genre's heyday with yet another viewing of " Annie Hall . " It's possible that only a true visionary can save the species. Unfortunately, Juddy Talt, the writer and star of " Language of a Broken Heart ," is not that person. His inoffensive, if uninspired, indie feature fails on the most basic tenets: It's...

CANNES, France — The Coen brothers' resurrection of the pre-Dylan folk scene in Greenwich Village serenaded Cannes with its period music and melancholy tale of a self-destructive, feline-toting musician. "Inside Llewyn Davis" was met rapturously at the Cannes Film Festival, where it premiered Sunday night. Joel and Ethan Coen said their primary interest was to recreate the atmosphere of the late 1950s, very early ‘60s folk revival amid the coffee shops of downtown New York. "The movie...

"I never saw the movie before," said Karolyn Grimes , 71, remembering living near Kansas City, Mo., in December 1979 and catching out of the corner of her eye flickering images on the television of familiar faces and places from long ago. Working full time and raising seven children, the 39-year-old Grimes had no time to spare, much less to sit around watching television. But something tugged at her as she saw snatches of snow-clogged streets of small-town America and people she...

CANNES, France — Cannes has been the birthplace of many a star, and the latest candidate to shine is Marine Vacth, who plays a teenager confronting the complexities of adolescent sexuality in Francois Ozon's "Jeune et Jolie" ("Young and Beautiful. ") The 23-year-old French model fully lives up to the film's title as Isabelle, a 17-year-old the film follows across four seasons — from a fleeting summer fling to work as an emotionally detached Parisian prostitute. ...

"Robert Blecker Wants Me Dead" wants to be a documentary about the vast amount of wiggle room between being for the death penalty and being against it. And it fascinatingly is that. But on a deeper level (and a skillfully conscious one on the part of filmmaker Ted Schillinger) it's a portrait of two men's utter loneliness in their thoughts. Blecker, a New York Law School professor, supports the death penalty on such a contrary and nuanced level -- he calls himself an "emotional retributivist" --...

" Oblivion " looks marvelous, in the deliciously dystopian way of so many post-apocalyptic films. It's set in 2077, after alien invaders called Scavengers (or "Scavs") have laid waste to our moon, leading to cataclysmic floods and earthquakes that have ravaged Earth. The film features gorgeous CGI shots of such broken, half-buried landmarks as the Washington Monument and the Empire State Building, whose observation deck can now be accessed by walking onto it from a mountain of rubble.

The documentary " Hava Nagila: The Movie " turns out to be a lot like the song "Hava Nagila. " It can claim some seeds of gravitas, but they're ultimately trampled by a lot of goofy enthusiasm. The song is a perfectly catchy entity that sparks quite the dance party after many a Jewish wedding (and some not-so-Jewish ones), but it's also kitsch. The movie, too, is flawed, but not enough to undo its infectious joyfulness. As the film opens, it's immediately clear that narrator Rusty Schwimmer is going to lay the...

Perhaps more ceremony than cinema, "Taking Chance" breaks many a movie rule. It barely has a plot, contains the absolute minimum amount of dialogue and lacks the usual antagonist-protagonist conflict. It could also be said that its real hero never speaks and barely has any scenes. And yet rules, of course, were made to be broken. "Taking Chance," premiering tonight on HBO and filmed on location mostly in Montana, is both troubling and inspiring, a film in the spirit of "Saving Private Ryan" but...

CANNES, France — There's something nasty lurking in the woods — and inside the characters' heads — in darkly comic Cannes Film Festival entry "Borgman. " In Dutch director Alex van Warmerdam's supernaturally-tinged psychological drama, a mysterious interloper emerges from a forest and knocks on the door of a wealthy family's modernist mansion. Borgman, the titular stranger played by Flemish actor Jan Bijvoet, insinuates himself into the outwardly idyllic life of the clan,...

CANNES, France — Little could lessen the fever-pitched excitement for "Hunger Games: Catching Fire," but heavy rain nevertheless dampened the film's lavish Cannes party. Stars of the "Hunger Games" sequel, Jennifer Lawrence, Liam Hemsworth and Sam Clafin, arrived Saturday at the Cannes Film Festival. "Catching Fire," perhaps more than any other film not actually screening at Cannes, is seeking to use the festival's global platform to promote the highly anticipated sequel. ...

WESTMINSTER, Md. — When McDaniel College senior Ashley Hopkins graduates later this month, she will be able to tout the filmmaking skills she developed in college. She can shoot, edit and upload videos. All she needs is an iPhone and a few apps to make it happen. Hopkins, of Baltimore, was enrolled in the inaugural offering of Cell Phone Cinema, a course that debuted at McDaniel College in Westminster this spring. In the course, students created their own 12-minute film.

CANNES, France — Associated Press journalists open their notebooks at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival: Will a switched-at-birth Japanese drama tug on Steven Spielberg's heart strings? The Cannes Film Festival was wondering that Saturday, when Kore-eda Hirokazu's elegant and emotional "Like Father, Like Son" premiered. It quickly emerged as an early contender for the Palme d'Or, the winner of which will be decided by a jury headed by Spielberg. Though reviews...

CANNES, France — The Weinstein Company's fall slate of awards contenders will feature a glamorous Grace Kelly, a brawny Nelson Mandela and a mysterious J.D. Salinger. Harvey Weinstein previewed some of his company's most anticipated upcoming releases at the Cannes Film Festival on Friday. He's made a habit of such previews, doing the same in 2012 for the Oscar-winning films "Django Unchained" and "Silver Linings Playbook. " Last year, Weinstein said, was "as good as any year at Miramax"...

Well into "One Nation Under Dog," HBO's revealing but difficult documentary about our deep bonds with canine companions, we reach a point that is nearly too awful to watch. With plenty of warning to viewers, the film shows what happens at an animal shelter's last stop — a fate met by a couple of million dogs each year in the United States. A half-dozen dogs are set into a large metal box. They seem eerily resigned to this moment; no snapping, no squirming, no escape attempts. The lid is shut and sealed, and a worker...