TMW #52: Cannes preview, the best outdoor ads and a horror quiz
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Bonjour cinephiles,
Or to put it another way, Happy Cannes Day. Yep, the world’s prestigious/glamorous/sometimes notorious (looking at you, Lars von Trier) film festival has kicked off again. Alas, there are no Wingmen swooping down the Croisette this year, but we are bringing you a preview of the biggest movies in and out of Competition.
Elsewhere, we’re marking this week’s release of Final Destination Bloodlines with a double whammy. Firstly, in honour of the horror sequel’s killer marketing campaign, we’ve rounded up the finest/funniest/freakiest outdoor marketing campaigns for you to rubberneck at (please, no reading while behind the steering wheel). And secondly we’ve got a quiz homaging scary movies’ eternal fondness for the word ‘final’, even if sometimes (often) used in the loosest sense.
Like a good boogeyman, only much nicer, you can’t keep us down; we’ll be back on Friday with a review of Bloodlines plus the week’s other big releases. In the meantime, hit us with your likes, shares, restacks and comments - we promise you good karma and great independent film writing in return.
Au revoir for now,
Matthew (Matt and Jordan)
Palais Prospects
Five films we can’t wait to see at this year’s Cannes Film Festival
Having debuted two Best Picture winners in the last five years (Parasite and Anora), Cannes has become more important than ever to film culture. This week the 78th annual world cinema fest kicks off, drawing everyone from Tom Cruise to Lav Diaz to the most famous Croisette in filmdom. The Movie Wingman won’t be in attendance, but our FOMO knows no limits when it comes to these five future classics (fingers crossed).
Alpha
Four years after bagging a shock Palme d’Or for her seriously weird, car-boning body horror Titane, Julia Ducournau is back in competition with Alpha – sure to be one of the festival’s hottest (and most disturbing) tickets. Billed as Ducournau’s “most personal, profound work”, the French writer/director has assembled an eclectic cast (Emma Mackey, Tahar Rahim, Golshifteh Farahani) around newcomer Mélissa Boros, who plays the film’s 13-year-old lead. Raised by a single mother, their lives change when Alpha comes back from school one day with an ‘A’ tattoo on her arm. We’re dreading watching it – in a good way.
Die, My Love
After six-or-so years of A-list ubiquity, Jennifer Lawrence movies have become a rare treat of late. That would be reason enough to anticipate this adaptation of a 2019 novel about a mother in the throes of postpartum psychosis, but add co-star Robert Pattinson and director Lynne Ramsay to the mix, and you’ve got a must-watch. Ramsay may have only made four films across a 26-year feature filmmaking career, but with a 100% hit-rate to date, Die, My Love should be worth the near-decade wait.
Eddington
Following the mixed reaction to surrealist epic Beau is Afraid, writer/director Ari Aster returns with this star-studded Neo-Western. One of the first releases from a major filmmaker to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic, the tantalising teaser indicates that Aster is dealing with the not-at-all controversial topics of American politics, gun violence and social media radicalisation. Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone, Pedro Pascal and Austin Butler star. Expect discourse levels through the Palais roof for this one.
The History of Sound
Director Oliver Hermanus last directed the criminally underseen Living – a remake of Kurosawa’s Ikiru and weapons-grade tearjerker, so expect the full waterworks from this period love story. Internet boyfriends Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor star as the destined lovers in question, who go about recording “the lives, voices and music” of ordinary citizens in post-WWI America, only to find something extraordinary in each other. A guaranteed headline-grabber.
Sentimental Value
With little more than a logline and filmmakers’ priors to go off, it can be hard to identify the must-sees at film festivals. But Sentimental Value, which reunites Worst Person in the World director Joachim Trier with that film’s star, Renate Reinsve, is as close to a dead-cert-great as you’re likely to get this year. Reinsve plays Nora, an actor and the daughter of a renowned filmmaker (Stellan Skarsgård) who casts an American actress (Elle Fanning) in a role Nora was born to play. Big yikes, big yes.
Three promising debuts
One peculiar trend at this year’s Cannes: three feature-directing debuts from well-known actors. Eleanor the Great is Scarlett Johansson’s character-drama starring 95-year-old June Squibb as a woman who strikes up an unlikely friendship with a 19-year-old student (Erin Kellyman). Kristen Stewart directs The Chronology of Water, a memoir adaptation about a young woman (Imogen Poots) who finds salvation through swimming and writing. And Nicole Kidman seducer/known-cinephile Harris Dickinson adds a ‘director’ tab to his IMDb page with Urchin, starring Frank Dillane as a homeless person trying to turn his life around. Could the next great actor-turned-director be among their ranks? (Jordan Farley)
The Cannes Film Festival 2025 runs from 13-24 May.
Top of the billboard charts
In light of Final Destination Bloodlines’ inventive marketing, we look back at some of the most head-turning, traffic-stopping outdoor advertising…
Final Destination Bloodlines
In a neat marriage of subject matter and execution, this meta FBR eye-catcher has a couple of unfortunate billboard workers succumbing to Death’s plan while putting up an ad (the slightly shonky effects are also in keeping with the film series).
Spider-Man: Homecoming
This epic teaser for Tom Holland’s first solo Spidey movie riffs on the centerpiece Staten Island ferry set-piece.
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