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      Jennifer Lawrence Gets Her First Cannes Premiere. (It’s a Risky One.)

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      In “Die My Love” with Robert Pattinson, she plays a mother with postpartum depression. She was four months pregnant then and the hormones helped a lot.Years ago, at the peak of the “Hunger Games” phenomenon, Lionsgate spent heavily on lavish parties to promote the franchise at the Cannes Film Festival. Private villas were rented and transformed into extravagant replicas of the movies’ opulent Capitol, complete with servers in eccentric wigs, chocolate fountains that flowed for hours and enough colorful macarons to feed a small city.Though the organizers had clearly missed the film’s critique of capitalist excess, the “Hunger Games” villa parties were still a decadent good time. But what’s surprising is that for years, those soirees were the only thing that ever lured the series’ star, Jennifer Lawrence, to Cannes. Despite being the kind of glamorous, Oscar-winning actress the festival loves to showcase, Lawrence has never starred in a film premiering at Cannes until now.At a Sunday news conference for the movie “Die My Love,” she seemed just as surprised. Turning to her director, Lynne Ramsay, Lawrence said, “I really cannot believe that I’m here with you and this happened.” But the film, which is already the subject of awards chatter for Lawrence’s no-holds-barred performance, is another indication that the 34-year-old actress is itching to push further into darker, riskier material.Adapted from a novel by Ariana Harwicz, the drama stars Lawrence and Robert Pattinson as Grace and Jackson, a young couple struggling with Grace’s postpartum depression. At first, she just appears a bit listless, muttering to herself and snapping at chatty cashiers who try to draw her into conversation. “Everybody gets a little loopy the first year,” advises her mother-in-law, played by Sissy Spacek. “You’ll come back.”But Grace doesn’t. As tension continues to build with Jackson, she begins acting out in increasingly upsetting ways — hurling herself through a glass door, stripping down to her underwear at a child’s party — just to feel anything that might snap her out of her stupor. Though the film is not an easy watch, Lawrence dives into her character’s descent with full commitment.At the news conference, the actress said she was four months pregnant with her second child when she began shooting the film. “I had great hormones,” she said, “which is really the only kind of way I would be able to dip into this sort of visceral emotion.” Still, she had to draw a strong line between herself and the character.“As a mother, it was really hard to separate what I would do as opposed to what she would do,” Lawrence said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Eiza González Says Legend of Zelda Changed How She Looks at Life

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      “At first glance you’d be like, ‘Oh, it’s a simple game,’” said the star of the new movie “Fountain of Youth.” “But it’s so much more deep than anyone could imagine.”Eiza González isn’t quite sure where she lives at the moment.“I’m a bit of a nomad,” she said in a video call from California, where she has a house in Los Angeles and a ranch in Ojai. “I’m here, there, everywhere.”That included Cairo, Bangkok, Vienna and various parts of Britain for the film “Fountain of Youth,” about an art thief and his entourage who go on a global quest for the source of the mythological waters.González plays Esme, a “protector,” though of what and whom isn’t always crystal clear. She describes the character as “Machiavellian fun, a huge enigma and kind of a poker face, but a sassy and witty girl.” The movie will stream on Apple TV+ starting May 23.It was her third project with the director Guy Ritchie — “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” landed in 2024 and “In the Grey” will come out this summer — and her first time in an action movie at an Indiana Jones-like level.“I think he really enjoys someone that is willing to take risks and play and push themselves, and he saw a lot of desire in me,” González said of Ritchie before explaining why psychology books, the Criterion Channel and LED light therapy are on her list of must-haves. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Psychology BooksI’m currently reading “Rewire” by Nicole Vignola. I’ve also been reading “Please Unsubscribe, Thanks!” by Julio Vincent Gambuto. Anything that is a deep dive into psyche and understanding the human behavior. I would’ve most definitely become a psychologist if I wasn’t an actress.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What to Expect in a ‘Final Destination’ Movie

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      We have a premonition of the (mostly terrible, often funny) things you’re likely to see in any of the films from the long-running horror franchise. Follow along below, and beware.If every terrible feeling you ever had — every lurch in your stomach during a bit of plane turbulence, every sinking feeling on a subway train that’s going just a little too fast, every tightening of your chest when driving behind a huge semi truck — always came spectacularly, horrifyingly true, you might be in a “Final Destination” movie.The first film in the franchise, directed by James Wong, was expanded from an unproduced spec script for an episode of “The X-Files” written by Jeffrey Reddick. It follows a group of teenagers who, after avoiding a fatal plane crash on a school trip because one of their classmates has a premonition of the disaster, discover that Death won’t let its plans be foiled so easily. That film has since spurred five others, all known for the Rube Goldberg-esque kill sequences that occur when Death returns to claim its victims in increasingly bizarre accidents.With the latest film, “Final Destination: Bloodlines” (directed by Adam Stein and Zach Lipovsky), now in theaters, we have a premonition of what you can expect to see in any given “Final Destination” movie. You might even say we’ve seen it all before.Opening DisasterA very unhappy roller coaster ride in “Final Destination 3.”Warner Bros.These films come out of the gate with massacres of biblical proportions: a plane exploding to smithereens in midair, a roller coaster careening into crowded fairgrounds, or a bridge packed with cars crumbling into the water. They can speak to cultural paranoias, like the safety of air travel and amusement parks, or create cultural paranoias in and of themselves. The accident in the second film that involves a logging truck and a busy road traumatized a generation of drivers. Since these disasters are visions, the movies get away with starting off the action by killing the characters we are just getting to know, paving the way for the breakneck speed (and broken necks) to come.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ari Aster’s ‘Eddington’ Polarizes Critics at Cannes Film Festival

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      Set in the pandemic’s early days, the noted horror director’s Covid comedy satirizes the national mood during lockdown. Reactions have been polarizing.Ari Aster, the director behind the horror films “Hereditary” and “Midsommar,” is no stranger to upsetting an audience. But with his new movie “Eddington,” which premiered Friday at the Cannes Film Festival, Aster may have devised his most harrowing cinematic experience yet: forcing us to relive 2020.Set in May of that year, the film chronicles a clash in the fictional New Mexico town of Eddington between the conservative sheriff, Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix), and the liberal mayor, Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), after the latter insists on mask mandates and lockdowns during the pandemic. “There is no Covid in Eddington,” insists Cross as he refuses to wear a mask, though his mounting frustration with Garcia may also have something to do with the mayor’s complicated romantic past with Cross’s wife (Emma Stone).To bring his enemy down a peg, Cross decides to mount his own mayoral campaign, plastering his cop car with misspelled banners (“Your Being Manipulated”) and spouting conspiracy theories about his opponent that he posts online. But as Eddington erupts in Black Lives Matter protests and teenage activists begin training their phone camera on Cross, hoping to catch him in an act of police brutality, the escalating tensions in this small town threaten to claim lives right and left.Aster is keen to zero in on the moment when our fraying social fabric was torn apart, and the movie has already inspired battle lines as strongly drawn as the political sides “Eddington” means to satirize. Early reviews have been wildly mixed, and at a cocktail party that followed the Cannes press screening, I watched several critics square off: Though fans of the film found it bold and daring, detractors called it unfunny, too on the nose, and more eager to lampoon annoying liberals than the conservative main characters.Will audiences be anxious to revisit the fraught early months of the pandemic when “Eddington” hits theaters on July 18? The cast is stocked with A-listers — in addition to Phoenix, Pascal, and Stone, Austin Butler also appears as an online cult leader — but for all of Aster’s evident craft, “Eddington” is hardly a crowd-pleaser. He initially keeps the proceedings relatively grounded, but the second half of the film spirals into a sort of absurd surrealism that will feel familiar to anyone who saw Aster’s last movie, “Beau is Afraid” (2023).Then again, that might not be many people: “Beau,” which also starred Phoenix, was a costly box-office bust that reportedly lost A24 around $35 million. To release Aster’s next movie during the superhero-laden summer season is a risky bit of counterprogramming: Amid all those capes, could audiences be enticed to choose masks instead? More

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      At the Cannes Film Festival, the Mood Is Uncertain and Unsettled

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      The threat of tariffs and the struggles of Hollywood have dampened what is usually an international party. Even the early standouts are somber.For days leading up to the opening of the Cannes Film Festival, it seemed that rain would dampen the 78th edition. The film gods spared the worst. The red carpet remained dry Tuesday and so did the beautiful people parading into the Lumière, the grand auditorium where each year cheek-kissing, glad-handing stars and deal makers get this generally fizzy party going. At the 2024 edition, a barefoot chanteuse had sung Bowie’s “Modern Love” to Greta Gerwig, the president of the jury, delighting her and everyone else in attendance. This year, by contrast, the atmosphere inside the room was moody and felt more uncertain than the weather.There were the usual smiles, couture gowns and starry entrances. Yet overall it was a fairly sober affair, and only partly because the evening featured a poignant tribute to David Lynch, who died in January. When Juliette Binoche, the president of the main competition jury, took the stage, she spoke about the obligation of artists to testify on behalf of others, mentioning the hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7 and quoting the Palestinian photojournalist Fatima Hassouna, who in April was killed with 10 family members in an Israeli airstrike. Hassouna is featured in a documentary here, “Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk.”Later during the ceremony, Robert De Niro received an honorary Palme d’Or (handed to him by Leonardo DiCaprio), and spoke of democracy and the arts. “America’s philistine president has had himself appointed the head of one of our premiere cultural institutions,” he said, an apparent reference to President Trump’s naming himself chairman of the Kennedy Center in February. De Niro then referenced the topic that started phones pinging throughout the entertainment industry on May 4, and led to stark headlines and head-scratching.Leonardo DiCaprio giving Robert De Niro an honorary Palme d’Or.Sameer Al-Doumy/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesTo wit, President Trump’s May 4 announcement on social media that he was imposing a 100 percent tariff on movies “produced in foreign lands,” an issue he called a national security threat. The next day, a White House spokesman, Kush Desai, said that no final decisions had been made on such tariffs, but that the administration was “exploring all options to deliver on President Trump’s directive to safeguard our country’s national and economic security while Making Hollywood Great Again.”Like other film lovers, I responded to this tariff threat with a mixture of concern and confusion. Among other things, how such tariffs would work is baffling given the movie world’s complexity and internationalism, or how it’s possible to even define which films are “produced in foreign lands.” Marvel’s “Thunderbolts*” was partly shot outside the United States; when Florence Pugh steps off a skyscraper in the movie, she topples from a building in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The specter of retaliatory tariffs from other countries is another concern, given how reliant American companies are on the global market. In 2024, “Inside Out 2” was the top-grossing movie both domestically and overseas, with 61.6 percent of its overall box office coming from abroad.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Thunderbolts’ Director Discusses Movie Ending and Changes Made During Testing

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      The filmmaker Jake Schreier explains how a test of the film led to a change in the ending and other developments.When the director Jake Schreier spoke with me last weekend about his new movie “Thunderbolts*,” he could barely believe the Marvel blockbuster had actually come out.“It’s strange to work for three and a half years on something and then make peace with it being in the world,” he said. “You work on these movies right up until the deadline. We only finished this thing maybe three weeks ago and even for the home version, I was still tweaking the effect shots two days ago in my hotel room.”But now that the movie — about a team-up of Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova, Sebastian Stan’s Bucky Barnes and other rogues — has made its way into theaters, Schreier was able to discuss some of its late twists, including the cheeky new title change teased by that asterisk.Spoilers will follow.The decision to add the asterisk was part of Schreier’s initial pitch for “Thunderbolts*,” he told me. Still, he was surprised by just how willing the Marvel Studios president, Kevin Feige, was to commit to a marketing change that has now retitled the movie “The New Avengers.”Recently rumored to be in negotiations to direct Marvel’s forthcoming “X-Men” reboot, Schreier had been on Marvel’s radar for a while. After his breakout film, “Robot & Frank,” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2012, he met with the studio about potential directing opportunities and worked on second-unit photography for “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” directed by his college friend Jon Watts. Still, Schreier didn’t feel quite ready to take on a project so huge until his acclaimed work on the Netflix series “Beef.”But there was something else about this project that made it the right opening salvo with the studio. “The main thing is just if a movie has Florence Pugh in it, you should try to direct it,” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Hurry Up Tomorrow’ Review: The Weeknd’s Overextended Music Video

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      A filmic companion to the Weeknd’s latest album, this meta psychological thriller is all style and no substance.Beneath the lurid adrenaline of the Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights,” which Billboard classified as the No. 1 song of all time in 2021, is really a story of emptiness, explains Anima (Jenna Ortega). A superfan of the singer, she tells this to the Weeknd (a.k.a. Abel Tesfaye) himself — while his hands are bound to the bedposts in a hotel room.Like an acid-trip pop-star spin on Stephen King’s “Misery,” this sequence from “Hurry Up Tomorrow,” a filmic companion to Tesfaye’s latest album (supposedly his final one as the Weeknd), is in some ways the most apt manifestation of the story his music has always circled around: the devil’s bargain of fame, the hedonism that offers a fun-house portal to self-oblivion.But the film, directed by Trey Edward Shults, who wrote the screenplay with Tesfaye, primarily amounts to an overextended music video that shrinks and cheapens the universe that the Weeknd’s songs gesture toward. Tesfaye plays himself as a heartbroken superstar who exists in a seemingly perpetual bender alongside his best friend and manager, Lee (Barry Keoghan). After losing his voice onstage during a show (based on Tesfaye’s real experience), he finds solace in Anima, a mysterious girl in the crowd, whose obsession with him plunges him into a kind of ego-death horror show.This would all seem to make for a proper farewell to a musical identity that has always gravitated toward the darkly cinematic. It was in the alt-R&B sound he helped pioneer and the shadowy persona he cultivated; the conceptual trilogy of his latest three albums all featured a distinct protagonist traversing underworlds and afterlives (and, at one point, winding up with a bandaged nose à la Jack Nicholson’s private eye in “Chinatown”).We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Cannes Film Festival 2025: Is This an Early Front-runner for the Palme d’Or?

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      “Sound of Falling,” which tracks four German girls over the course of a century, drew early raves. But it might not go the distance.Survey journalists during the first few days of the Cannes Film Festival, and you’re likely to hear some grumbling. Though it may seem uncharitable to complain in such a glittery, glamorous location, it’s practically tradition for critics here to shrug at the initial salvo of movies, wondering how long it will take for a viable contender to emerge that could win the prestigious Palme d’Or.Sometimes, it takes quite awhile. Unlike other major film festivals, Cannes, which started Tuesday, doesn’t front-load its highest-profile titles: Significant movies unspool every day over two weeks, and the Palme winner often does not debut until the festival’s back half.This year, though, an early pacesetter seems to have emerged. Directed by Mascha Schilinski, “Sound of Falling” skips through time to track four girls who have lived on the same German farm over the course of a century. From the prewar era to the modern day, these young women contend with many of the same issues, from nascent sexual curiosity to brutally violent repression.It’s arty and lengthy in the way that Cannes juries often favor, and many of the early reviews were rapturous, especially those by critics who had prescreened the movie before the festival began. To hear those scribes tell it, “Sound of Falling” is “transfixing” (The Hollywood Reporter), “astonishingly poised and ambitious”(Variety), and “a high-water mark that will be hard for another feature to reach” (Vulture).Still, the response on the ground wasn’t entirely positive after Wednesday’s premiere. A critic friend texted me that he found the film “pretty vacuous” and the fest’s popular Screen International grid, which compiles scores from a dozen critics on a scale from one to four, gave “Sound of Falling” an average of 2.8. That’s respectable, but last year’s Palme winner, “Anora,” hit 3.3, while the previous victor, “Anatomy of a Fall,” earned a 3.0.Can passion win out over consensus? Stay tuned. More