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After the Southern Gothic thriller elements of 2017’s The Beguiled and the broad rom-com antics of 2020’s On the Rocks, which saw Sofia Coppola departing slightly from the aesthetic territory that she’d staked so forcefully in her earlier work, Priscilla finds the filmmaker firmly back in her wheelhouse. Based on Priscilla Presley’s 1985 biography Elvis and Me, Coppola’s latest is another impossibly photogenic tale of fame, solitude, material wealth, and female desire in a world that often contrives to deny its existence. In conjunction with the film’s release, we ranked all of Coppola’s features to date. David Robb

Editor’s Note: This entry was originally published on June 23, 2017.

9. The Bling Ring (2013)

As this film’s Bling Ringers raid sprawling manses for McQueen sunglasses, Alaia dresses, and Birkin bags, Coppola responds with a propulsive collage of modern pop iconography, filling the screen with paparazzi shots, step-and-repeat footage,...

Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons turned the Cannes Film Festival into a glamorous date night. On May 20, the husband-wife duo attended the premiere of "Killers of the Flower Moon," the highly anticipated Martin Scorsese movie Plemons appears in. This marked the married pair's first time walking the red carpet together at the annual event, and they coordinated outfits for the special occasion - Dunst wore a vintage strapless Chanel dress and diamond necklace, while Plemons matched in a classic tuxedo and bowtie.

After snapping sweet red carpet photos with his wife, Plemons climbed the Palais des Festivals steps to pose with Scorsese and several of his costars, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Lily Gladstone, Tantoo Cardinal, and William Belleau. Brendan Fraser, another standout from the ensemble cast, was not present for the festival. After its debut, "Killers of the Flower Moon" received an impressive 9-minute standing ovation, signaling that...

Exclusive: Elle Fanning (The Great) is set to star alongside Timothée Chalamet and Monica Barbaro in A Complete Unknown, the Bob Dylan biopic that two-time Oscar nominee James Mangold is directing for Searchlight Pictures.

The film heading into production in New York this summer watches as a young Dylan (Chalamet) shakes up the music world in 1965, as he pivots to performing with an electric guitar for the first time. Fanning will play the role of Dylan’s early ’60s love interest, university student and artist Sylvie Russo.

Jay Cocks (Gangs of New York) wrote the script, with Mangold handling revisions. Dylan’s longtime manager Jeff Rosen will produce alongside Veritas Entertainment Group’s Bob Bookman, Alan Gasmer and Peter Jaysen, Automatik’s Fred Berger, The Picture Company’s Alex Heineman, and Mangold. Exec producers include Dylan, as well as Automatik’s Brian Kavanaugh-Jones and Andrew Rona.

Recognized thus far in...

Clint Eastwood was in show business for nearly twenty years when he finally made his directorial debut with 1971's "Play Misty For Me." The shift from actor to director wouldn't have been possible without the help and encouragement of his friend Don Siegel, a filmmaker perhaps as responsible for Eastwood's iconic screen presence as Sergio Leone. Like Eastwood, Siegel had decades of experience and had fashioned a professional, unpretentious style of working that Eastwood would embrace.

For starters, he took the work seriously. "Play Misty For Me" would not be a vanity project, but the work of a dedicated professional committed to the art of making movies, one who was willing to take a pay cut just for the chance of doing the work. The result was a movie that even now ranks as one of Eastwood's best.

"Misty" has the economical sensibilities that would become a trademark of his directorial work,...

Actress Nicole Kidman poses for the Fall 2022 issue of "Perfect" magazine, photographed by Zhong Lin:

Kidman started her acting career in Australia with the 1983 films "Bush Christmas" and "BMX" Bandits. 

Her breakthrough came in 1989 with the thriller "Dead Calm" and the television miniseries "Bangkok Hilton". In 1990, she co-starred in the racing film "Days of Thunder", followed by roles in "Far and Away" (1992), "Batman Forever" (1995), "To Die For" (1995) and "Eyes Wide Shut" (1999).

She then received two consecutive nominations for the 'Academy Award' for 'Best Actress' in "Moulin Rouge!" (2001) and "The Hours" (2002), winning for "The Hours".

Kidman has since starred in "The Others" (2001), "Cold Mountain" (2003), "Dogville" (2003), "Birth" (2004), "Australia" (2008), "The Paperboy" (2012), "Stoker" (2013), "Paddington" (2014), "The Beguiled" (2017), "Boy Erased" and "Destroyer" (2018.

In 2012, Kidman received her first 'Primetime Emmy Award' nomination for 'Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie' for her role in the HBO film "Hemingway & Gellhorn"...

...and returned to television...

"The Furniture," by Daniel Walber, is our weekly series on Production Design. You can click on the images to see them in magnified detail.

Any excuse to talk about What a Way to Go! is a good excuse. But the centennial of Ted Haworth is an especially excellent excuse. He was nominated for six Oscars, starting with Marty in 1955. He won for 1957’s Sayonara. Highlights from the rest of his career include Some Like It Hot, The Beguiled, and Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid.

But none of those movies could hold a candle to the astonishing level of creativity on display in What a Way to Go! The epic 1964 comedy of love and loss stars Shirley MacLaine as Louisa May Foster, a many-time widow and heiress. Each husband, with one particularly tragic exception, begins the marriage as a near-pauper who wants nothing but love. But their passion inevitably leads them...

It seems like the whole word has an opinion on Spider-Man: Homecoming at this point, with many loving the film while others…not so much. Thankfully, the Cinemaholics are back this week to weigh in with their thoughts, beginning with a spoiler-free review for all of you who are still waiting to see this one in theatres.

Special guest Mae Abdulbaki joins the show for the first time as well to lend her thoughts, kicking off the episode with a great question: Which actor has been the best Peter Parker/Spider-Man?

Later in the show, the Cinemaholics tackle some mini-reviews. The first is Castlevania, Netflix’s new anime series based on the video game of the same name. Next is The Beguiled, which is a remake of the 1971 film starring Clint Eastwood, with this one starring Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman and Kirsten Dunst. Finally, we check out The Big Sick,...

By H. Perry Horton

Plus, a visual comparison of the 1971 and 2017 films.

The article Beguiled by ‘The Beguiled:’ How Sofia Coppola Came to Remake a Clint Eastwood Vehicle appeared first on Film School Rejects.

Chicago – The human-ness of being human never changes, fundamentally. The mating season arrives, and the effect makes for both great connections and bad decisions. Director Sofia Coppola emphasizes this in a reverent film production of the story called “The Beguiled.”

Rating: 5.0/5.0

It began as a novel in 1971 by Thomas Cullinan (originally entitled “A Painted Devil”) and was adapted into a film version that same year by director Don Siegel, starring Clint Eastwood (the same team that brought us “Dirty Harry”). Sofia Coppola wrote the screenplay adaptation for her directorial version, focusing on how the relationships developed and changed in a Southern girls boarding school during the Civil War, when adjacent to the property a wounded Union soldier is found. Coppola generates an understanding of how women are, in a repressed society, when faced with their own longings and desires. This is framed by a tense situation – almost a thriller – as...

Yes, we know: It’s a little premature to assemble a list of the best movies of the year when there’s so much left of it. We have yet to see a lot of exciting new work from major auteurs like Christopher Nolan (“Dunkirk”), Alexander Payne (“Downsizing”), and Guillermo del Toro (“The Shape of Water”), not to mention heavy-hitting studio-produced spectacles like “Blade Runner 2049” and “Star Wars: The Last Jedi.” But those last two wouldn’t even qualify for this list of the best independent films of the year, anyway, and they’ll have plenty of time to hog the spotlight.

Fortunately, we’ve found plenty of movies from around the world to celebrate, and while they haven’t all been box office sensations, they provide overwhelming evidence that the art form is thriving well into the second decade of the new millennium, and shows no signs of slowing down.

Cannes jury member Jessica Chastain raised some eyebrows during a festival press conference in May when she castigated the competition films depiction of women characters as “quite disturbing.” She added, however, that her comments did not apply to the entire festival selection, and now we know at least two films Chastain did like. The actress suspended her self-imposed social media hiatus to recommend two Cannes favorites to see this holiday weekend: Sofia Coppola’s “The Beguiled” and Bong Joon Ho’s “Okja.”

Read More: Jessica Chastain Blasts Portrayal Of Women In This Year’s Cannes Films As ‘Quite Disturbing’

“The Beguiled takes a typical male fantasy and changes it up. The power is with the women in this remake,” she said of the film that earned Coppola the award for best direction out of Cannes. She was even more enthusiastic about “Okja,” which struck a personal chord for Chastain, who is vegan.

Just before Sofia Coppola's The Beguiled debuted at the Cannes Film Festival, I revisited Don Siegel's 1971 version, starring Clint Eastwood. As I noted, Siegel's film "is more layered, even more problematic -- and open to interpretation and later repudiation -- than I had anticipated, so I am very much looking forward to Sofia Coppola's reading and presentation of the material." Our own Shelagh Rowan-Legg saw the film at Cannes and filed a a very fine review, writing in part: "While not without some problems of gender representation, the film is a gorgeous and campy romp, disguising itself as a period piece with just the right touch of horror." She also noted: "This adherence to stereotypical gender roles, and the idea that all women are...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

2017 has now crossed the halfway mark, so it’s time to take a look back at the first six months and round up our favorite titles thus far. While the end of this year will bring personal favorites from all of our writers, think of the below 28 entries as a comprehensive rundown of what should be seen before heading into a promising fall line-up.

Do note that this feature is based solely on U.S. theatrical releases from 2017, with many currently widely available on streaming platforms or theatrically. Check them out below, as organized alphabetically, followed by honorable mentions and films to keep on your radar for the remaining summer months. One can also see the list on Letterboxd.

Abacus: Small Enough to Jail (Steve James)

Steve James’ filmography has long been about finding entry into larger conversations through intimate portraits. The director’s landmark debut, Hoop Dreams, and latter-day...

All of a sudden the scary decline at the indie box office has reversed. Through the first five months of 2017, only four films opening limited in the standard four New York/Los Angeles theaters opened with a per theater average of $20,000. In the last four weeks, four films have opened strong as “Beatriz at Dinner” (Roadside Attractions), “The Big Sick” (Lionsgate) and “The Beguiled” (Focus) opened well and reached crossover crowds.

This week’s addition, Sundance comedy hit “The Little Hours” (Gunpowder & Sky) is the latest surprise. Loosely inspired by the bawdy 14th-century Boccaccio classic “The Decameron” (The Hollywood version starred Joan Fontaine while Pasolini shocked in 1971), this tale is set in the Medieval Italian countryside with bawdy contemporary dialogue as a randy peasant hides out at a convent after his master catches him with his wife. It did strong business at four theaters on two coasts.

This comes the...

MaryAnn’s quick take… If Jane Austen wrote a horror movie. An almost serene sinisterness infuses female-gazey carnal intrigue… but it could be even more feminist than it is. I’m “biast” (pro): I’m desperate for stories about women; love the cast

I’m “biast” (con): nothing

(what is this about? see my critic’s minifesto)

So who is — or are — the beguiled of The Beguiled? Is it the badly wounded Union soldier taken in by the girls and women of a Virginia seminary school in 1864 while the Civil War rages nearby? Does he feel the need to enchant his captor-nurses so thoroughly that they wouldn’t dream of turning him over to the Confederate army as a prisoner of war? (He does indeed attempt this.) Or is it those few students and teachers remaining at the otherwise abandoned school, so secluded, so bereft of charming male companionship?...

Plot: During the Civil War, an injured Union soldier (Colin Farrell) is taken-in by the residents of a Southern girls' school, but his presence soon stirs up trouble among the repressed students and teachers. Review: The Beguiled is director Sofia Coppola’s feminist take on Don Siegel’s unusual 1971 thriller of the same name, which famously starred Clint Eastwood as the injured... Read More...

Kirsten Dunst never shies away from challenging characters.

For her, Edwina in The Beguiled is definitely one of her best performances yet.

Dunst is reunited with director Sofia Coppola in The Beguiled as a teacher at an all girl’s school in this re-adaptation of Thomas Cullinan's novel.

The film revolves around a group of girls during the Civil War in Virginia, who provided shelter to a Union soldier. However, sexual tensions arises to create rivalries--leading to an unexpected turn of events.

The movie also stars Nicole Kidman, Elle Fanning, and Colin Farrell.

The Beguiled is playing nationwide in theaters today.

Watch our exclusive sit-down interview with Kirsten Dunst below:

Source: Exclusive to Lrm...

How much does it take to push a good person to the edge? What constitutes a “good” person? Are our sexual instincts something that will always ultimately prove to be our undoing? The answer is never as cut and dry as we tend to think, and the sad fact of life is that even the most decent of human beings can be twisted into something unrecognizable. Sofia Coppola’s latest film, The Beguiled, is a film that explores these ideas, and does so in a calm, tasteful, and meditative way that really sticks with the viewer.

The story takes place a few years into the American Civil War at a Southern all-girls’ boarding school. One of the girls stumbles upon a wounded Union soldier — Colin Farrell’s John McBurney — and takes him back to the school, headed by Nicole Kidman’s Martha Farnsworth. She begrudgingly agrees to take him in,...

Director Sofia Coppola has a unique style of directing that marks her as one of the best female directors today.

For Elle Fanning, she was delighted in reuniting with Coppola in The Beguiled, in which they worked together in 2010’s Somewhere.

Based off the Thomas Cullinan novel, it’s about young women at a girls’ school who are sheltered from the outside world in Virginia during the Civil War. A wounded Union soldier unexpectedly shows up and the woman provides him shelter. Soon, the house is taken over with sexual tensions, rivalries and unexpected turns of events.

The film stars Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, Elle Fanning and Oona Laurence.

The Beguiled is currently playing in nationwide today.

Lrm had an exclusive sit-down interview with director Elle Fanning for The Beguiled. Our correspondent Nancy Tapia talked with Fanning about her character and Coppola’s direction style.

Check out our TV video...

With The Beguiled, Sofia Coppola has made her first adaptation and remake. The filmmaker’s retelling has little in common with Don Siegel’s 1971 film, though. Coppola was more interested in adapting Thomas P. Cullinan‘s A Painted Veil than remaking Siegel’s movie, which features a drastically different depiction of the all-girls school, led by Miss Martha (Nicole Kidman), and […]

The post ‘The Beguiled’ Director Sofia Coppola on Making Gothic Drama and Avoiding the Original [Interview] appeared first on /Film.

Men and women are different in many ways though perhaps one of the most subtle and misunderstood is in the way we communicate in a group. There's a version of the "bro-code" for women which remains mostly a mystery - sometimes even to women - and considering how badly women are under-represented in the film industry, one doesn't often see the nuance of female interaction on the big screen.

Enter Sofia Coppola who, from her first feature, showed a capability of not only capturing the way women interact but doing so in a way that feels like we're in the middle of the conversation. With The Beguiled, Coppola returns the story to author Thomas Cullinan's original vision, telling it from the female perspective while also trimming the unnecessary to deliver an intimate observation on [Continued ...]...

The Beguiled is director/writer Sophia Coppola’s remake of an offbeat, little-seen 1971 gem that starred Clint Eastwood. Though directed by Don Siegel, best known for tough crime drama (he directed Clint in Dirty Harry the same year), the original had a strong feminist bent, so it’s seems suitable that the story is retold from a woman filmmaker’s perspective. The new film is faithful to the original to the point where it may seem unnecessary to some, but it’s a compelling story and Ms Coppola and her cast do an admirable job.

The Beguiled is a haunting gothic western that takes place near the end of the Civil War in a Southern mansion that functions as a small all-girls private school. As the war rages on outside its wrought-iron gates, headmistress Martha Farnsworth (Nicole Kidman) tries to maintain civility inside. The youngest student Amy (Oona Laurence), discovers...

Sofia Coppola's remake of The Beguiled has multiple changes compared to its novel source material and director Don Siegel's 1971 adaptation with Clint Eastwood.

As one of the most influential woman filmmakers working today, only Sofia Coppola could sneak in a castration scene. In “The Beguiled,” Coppola flips the script on the original 1971 Don Siegel film starring Clint Eastwood, putting the women at the center of her version and mapping a clear blueprint for a female gaze in cinema.

Set during the Civil War, the film concerns an injured Union soldier who wreaks havoc on the inhabitants of Miss Farnsworth’s School For Girls in Virginia. A house full of women thrown into a tizzy by the presence of a man isn’t the most radically feminist story; that Coppola tells it by objectifying, emasculating, and symbolically castrating her central male character certainly is.

Read More: Sofia Coppola On Female Sexuality In ‘The Beguiled’ And Why She Hopes Gay Men Find Colin Farrell Sexy

The female gaze is a term as new as its burgeoning canon,...

The Ischia Global Film and Music Fest has announced that Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled will open the festival this year.

Colin Trevorrow will be honored this year with the Breakout Director award for The Book of Henry. Both films will play outdoors on the Italian island at the Regina Isabella Resort’s beach theater.

Coppola was honored in Cannes with best director for The Beguiled, a thriller set during the Civil War staring Kirsten Dunst, Elle Fanning, Nicole Kidman and Colin Farrell. The Focus Features Film is a remake of the 1971 Southern Gothic film starring Clint Eastwood.

The Book of...

It’s been a bit of a rough week for Sofia Coppola, at least in the micro world of Film Twitter media. Her new film, “The Beguiled,” starring Nicole Kidman, Colin Farrell, Kristen Dunst and Elle Fanning has received excellent reviews and it heads into the arthouse box-office this weekend with strong chances for success (here’s our review). But online, the film—a Civil War-set movie based on the book by Thomas Cullinan and something of a very loose remake of the 1971 movie by Don Siegel — and Sofia’s art has been put under the microscope.

Continue reading Sofia Coppola: Listen To 4 Hours Of Podcast Talks at The Playlist.

After winning the Best Director Award at Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled will make its way into theaters for a limited release in Los Angeles and New York this weekend.

Based off the Thomas Cullinan novel, it’s about young women at a girls’ school who are sheltered from the outside world in Virginia during Civil War. A wounded Union soldier unexpectedly shows up and the woman provides him shelter. Soon, the house is taken over with sexual tensions, rivalries and unexpected turns of events.

The film stars Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, Elle Fanning and Oona Laurence.

The Beguiled is currently playing in limited theaters in Los Angeles and New York. It will be expanded nationwide on June 30.

Lrm had an exclusive sit-down interview with director Sofia Coppola for The Beguiled. Our correspondent Nancy Tapia discussed the novel adaptation on to screen, Coppola’s...

Probably one of Clint Eastwood’s lesser-known films, the 1971 Civil War drama The Beguiled would at first blush seem an odd choice for a remake by Sofia Coppola, especially since she had never seen the original. But as I say in my video review above, somehow by taking the focus off Eastwood’s wounded Union soldier character and placing it squarely on the rising tensions — sexual and otherwise — caused by his presence in a school for young women in Virginia, it is one…...

For anyone who's seen Don Siegel's sensational 1971 adaptation of The Beguiled, drawn from Thomas P. Cullinan’s gothic novel A Painted Devil, it's not hard to see why Sofia Coppola would be attracted to the material. From her debut feature, The Virgin Suicides, Coppola has had a lingering interest in the lives of women trapped by circumstance in one way or another, which the story—set in an all-girls boarding school in Virginia three years into the Civil War—ably extends. But while Coppola's vision is predictably sharp in the way that it tackles the story's sexual politics and laser-like focus on feminine desire, the film also feels flattened, its underlying lurid, psychosexual appeal absorbed into a kind of dreamy gossamer haze.Immediately, the opening—the ornate pink curlicues of the title card; the figure of a small girl walking alone along the forest path framed by dense foliage,...

In less than 20 years, and with five feature films under her belt, filmmaker Sofia Coppola has amassed a rather small but powerful slate of motion pictures. Small though it is, her filmography is a charged batch of feminist expression that tells the world she isn't ready to unleash her next expression until she is good and ready. So it is that we come to her sixth feature, The Beguiled, a remake of the 1971, Don Siegel-directed, Clint Eastwood-starring thriller about the dangers of misogyny in the days of the American Civil War. As with her previous works, it's an immaculately crafted and powerful drama of human interaction and survival in this male-dominated world, and, once again just like her previous efforts, The Beguiled is a phenomenal film, an early candidate as one of the best films the year will offer. Based on the 1966 novel written by Thomas P. Cullinan,...

Fresh off becoming only the second woman ever to capture the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival last month, Sofia Coppola’s artistry lands in theaters everywhere for the first time in four years (“The Bling Ring”) with her Civil War-era revenge thriller “The Beguiled.”

Coppola’s Palme d’Or contending adaptation of the novel by Thomas Cullinan features a plethora of talent including Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, Elle Fanning and Colin Farrell.

Continue reading 22 Of The Best Revenge Films at The Playlist.

If you're in the market to watch massive robots level cities and various other historical monuments in the ongoing battle to save humanity, then oh boy, do I have a movie to recommend for you! But if you are looking for an antidote to summer tentpoles about aliens and monsters -- perhaps something more sinister, something with more heart, or if you just want to see a movie where women actually actually speak to one another -- might I suggest The Beguiled or The Big Sick (both out in L.A. and NYC on June 23 and expanding next week).

Exclusive: Kirsten Dunst Says She'd 'Definitely' Make a Cameo in 'Jumanji' Remake But Hasn't Been Asked!

Focus Features

The Beguiled is a remake of the 1971 film of the same name, which starred Clint Eastwood as an injured Yankee soldier taken in by an all-girls academy in the Antebellum South. The 2017 iteration tells the story from a woman's perspective...

Enter here for your chance to win a pair of passes to an advance screening of the new film from director Sofia Coppola, The Beguiled starring Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, and Elle Fanning.

For your chance to receive a pair of complimentary passes to see the new film The Beguiled at the Landmark Main Art Theater in Royal Oak, Michigan on Monday, June 26th at 7:00Pm, just look for the “Enter the Contest” box further down on this page. But hurry because there are a limited number of passes available and when they’re gone, they’re gone!

About The Film

The Beguiled: Adapted by acclaimed writer/director Sofia Coppola from Thomas Cullinan’s novel of the same name. The story unfolds in Virginia at a girls’ school during the Civil War where the young women have been sheltered from the outside world. When a wounded Union soldier is discovered and taken in,...

Summer allegedly belongs to the blockbusters, but this June's offering up some spotty pickings in the franchise world, beyond the rise of a long-deserving female superhero and the remounting of a Universal horror landmark. So feel free to ditch Cars 3, Despicable Me 3, and Transformers: Dear God How Many Has It Been Now and give something a little off the beaten path a look. Like, maybe, a boundary-busting romcom, or a musical thrill ride forged from vinyl, or an enigmatic slow-burn horror oddity. Here's what you need to check...

What do we mean when we say that a filmmaker is “limited”? Is it that their talents are relatively confined? Or is it that because of their particular sensibilities, they choose to make films within a specific arena? Perhaps the better question is: How much does that matter? A filmmaker like Hong Sang-soo, for example—at Cannes this year with both The Day After and Claire's Camera—could certainly be described as “limited” in some respects; but he still produces some of the most consistent and interesting work in the contemporary cinematic landscape. It can't be denied, though, that it's always exciting when filmmakers push themselves and make films squarely outside their comfort zones, which could be said of Sofia Coppola who returns to Cannes this year with The Beguiled. Adapted from Thomas P. Cullinan’s gothic novel A Painted Devil as well as the original 1971 movie adaptation by Don Siegel,...

Cannes Ends with…Awards — 3rd of 3

The heightened security with machine gun armed soldiers and policemen constantly patrolling was intensified after the Manchester Massacre. With a pall over the festival, one minute of silence was observed for the 22 murdered and flags hung at half-mast. In addition to that, the sudden death at 57 of the Busan Film Festival deputy director Kim Ji-seok and that of the James Bond star Roger Moore brought the film world into a new perspective as we join the larger world to face the random indications of human mortality. High security vs. cinema as a sanctuary of freedom is highlighted this year like no other time that I can recall in my 31 years here.President of the jury, Pedro Almodovar

But life does go on, the jury judges, the stars get press attention on the red carpet and the rest of us continue to wait patiently in...

The 70th anniversary Cannes Film Festival capped off weeks of seaside premieres—and controversy—May 28 with its prestigious award ceremony. Bringing together the film industry’s “crème de la crème,” Pedro Almodóvar and his jury made this year’s celebration somewhat unconventional, awarding a tie for best screenplay and an unprecedented special 70th anniversary award for Nicole Kidman, who appeared in an unrivaled four projects in the 2017 festival. Sofia Coppola made a triumphant return to the festival after famously being booed for 2006’s “Marie Antoinette,” taking home best director for her adaptation of Thomas Cullinan’s novel “The Beguiled.” Coppola is only the second female in history to win the award (the first being Yuliya Solntseva in 1961 for her film “The Chronicle of Flaming Years”). The critically lauded film, set to be released June 30 from Focus Features, stars festival darling Kidman, plus Kirsten Dunst, Elle Fanning, and Colin Farrell. The coveted Palme d’Or,...

After nearly two weeks of viewing some of the best that cinema will have to offer this year, the 70th Cannes Film Festival has concluded. With Ruben Östlund‘s Force Majeure follow-up The Square taking the top jury prize of Palme d’Or (full list of winners here), we’ve set out to wrap up our experience with our favorite films from the festival, which extends to the Un Certain Regard and Directors’ Fortnight side bars. Check out our favorites below, followed by the rest of the reviews. One can also return in the coming months as we learn of distribution news.

120 Beats Per Minute (Robin Campillo)

Sometimes a movie doesn’t need much character development to make an impact. The ensemble cast that comprise Robin Campillo’s AIDS activists in 120 Beats Per Minute all work together to be the same voice. Through this group, the director captures a force...

The 2017 Cannes Film Festival has come to an end in history-making fashion. When Jury President Pedro Almodóvar announced the Best Director prize to “The Beguiled” helmer Sofia Coppola, she became the second female director in the festival’s 70-year history to claim the prize. The last woman to win Best Director was Soviet filmmaker Yuliya Solntseva in 1961 for “The Chronicle of Flaming Years.”

Read More: 2017 Cannes Winners: ‘The Square’ Wins the Palme D’or, Sofia Coppola and Joaquin Phoenix Also Honored

Coppola earned strong reviews for “The Beguiled,” a feminist adaptation of the Clint Eastwood-starring 1971 film of the same name. Nicole Kidman, who won the 70th Anniversary Prize earlier today, plays the headmistress of a secluded school for girls in 1864 Virginia. Their lifestyle is disrupted by the discovery of a wounded Union Army solider. Elle Fanning and Kirsten Dunst also star.

In his A- review, IndieWire senior film...

You know you’re experiencing a strong year at the Cannes Film Festival when everyone has a different favorite movie. For some critics and journalists, the best was saved for the end, with Lynne Ramsay’s post-modern detective story “You Were Never Really Here” standing out in the competition; for others, the competition peaked early with Andrey Zyvagintsev’s kidnapping drama “Loveless.” And some people looked far beyond the competition for festival highlights, singling out selections from Un Certain Regard, Directors’ Fortnight and Critics Week, not to mention the out of competition screenings that were part of the Official Selection.

See MoreThe 2017 IndieWire Cannes Bible: Every Review, Interview and News Item Posted During the Festival

In other words, Cannes is a lot of things to a lot of people, and each member of the IndieWire team attending the festival this year experienced the program in different ways. The following list...

Kirsten Dunst is no stranger to the glamorous red carpet of the Cannes Film Festival — but this year, her experience at the star-studded occasion was a little more eventful than usual.

On Wednesday, Dunst joined director Sofia Coppola and her costars to walk the carpet for the premiere of their upcoming thriller The Beguiled. While strolling alongside the group, Dunst, 35, was suddenly overcome with emotion — a whole lot of it. She cried, she wiped away her tears, she laughed and then cried some more.

Coppola and Dunst’s costars Nicole Kidman, Elle Fanning and Colin Farrell were quick to come to the rescue,...

The Beguiled ladies (and gentleman) dressed to impress at the film's premiere at the 70th annual Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday.

Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, Elle Fanning, Colin Farrell, director Sofia Coppola, Addison Riecke and Angourie Rice were all smiles as they posed for the cameras on the iconic red steps at the Palais des Festivals before entering the screening.

Getty Images

Kidman, who has been dominating the fashion game at the Croisette, was stunning in a metallic, flapper-inspired Michael Kors Collection gown. The 49-year-old actress completed her look with chandelier earrings, silver heels, a low ponytail and burgundy lips.

Getty Images

Related: 5 Frocks and Counting! Nicole Kidman Stuns in a Series of Gorgeous Gowns at Cannes Film Festival

Fanning, 19, looked ethereal in a custom-made, strapless, lilac Rodarte dress. The Neon Demon actress opted for a neutral look and accessorized her evening wear with diamond earrings and a pearl-and-diamond necklace.

Getty Images

Watch:...

Female power: (from left) - Colin Farrell as the alpha male in The Beguiled with Elle Fanning, Nicole Kidman, Sofia Coppola and Kirsten Dunst Photo: Richard Mowe

Director Sofia Coppola has attended the Cannes Film Festival more times than she cares to remember - the first being on father Francis Ford Coppola’s shoulders for the premiere of Apocalypse Now when she was 8.

Sofia Coppola: “To have meetings with the special effects team about wounds was definitely something out of my norm.” Photo: Richard Mowe

She has presented most of her own films including Marie Antoinette in 2006 and The Bling Ring in 2013. And two years ago she served on the Competition jury.

Today at her media encounter and before tonight’s (24 May) premiere of her latest film The Beguiled, a revisiting of Don Siegel’s 1971 version with Clint Eastwood, she talked about her interpretation of the Gothic Civil War...

Cannon fire rumbles menacingly in the distance, but it’s human desire that might prove to be the greater threat after all in The Beguiled. Set to the backdrop of the American Civil War, Sofia Coppola‘s film is a sumptuous and often campy erotic horror, one that marks a confident debut genre outing for a director better-known for contemporary and often quite personal filmmaking (Lost in Translation, Somewhere, etc.). Although primarily based on the 1966 book by Thomas Cullinan, it appears, at first glance, to be a remake of Don Siegel’s 1971 film adaptation rather than any sort of new reading of the original text. Coppola, of course, is far too clever for that.

Colin Farrell portrays Corporal John McBurney, previously played by Clint Eastwood, a Union soldier who is found injured in a Mississippi forest by a young girl who decides to take him to her secluded Catholic presentation school to recover.

The Beguiled is a respectable but pallid redo of a hothouse Civil War melodrama made with much more flair and power by Don Siegel, and starring Clint Eastwood, 46 years ago. Other than to place slightly more emphasis on the female empowerment angle of a group of Southern women turning the tables on an injured but scheming Yankee soldier they’ve taken into their isolated household, it’s hard to detect a strong raison d’etre behind Sofia Coppola’s slow-to-develop melodrama. Focus Features will release this modest effort in late June as counter-programming presumably aimed at a youngish female audience.

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Between “The Virgin Suicides” and “Marie Antoinette,” it was already quite clear that Sofia Coppola loves watching Kirsten Dunst struggle to make peace with some kind of purgatory. In “The Beguiled,” the mustiest and most conventionally entertaining film of Coppola’s brilliant career, Dunst is once again cast as a woman with so much to give and nowhere to go, but this is the first of her characters who actually has a legitimate hope of escaping from her limbo.

Alas, peace can be hard to come by in the middle of a war, and freedom even harder. And if Edwina Dabney wants to get herself out of the Confederacy, she might have to let the Union inside first.

Ruthlessly shorn from Thomas P. Cullinan’s 1966 novel of the same name (and not remade from the Don Siegel adaptation that first brought its story to the screen), “The Beguiled” is a lurid,...

It’s so far so good for Sofia Coppola’s “The Beguiled” at Cannes, which played well for the press on Wednesday morning. The movie is a gorgeously shot battle of the sexes led by the formidable duo of Nicole Kidman and Colin Farrell (who both star in another competition entry, “The Killing of a Sacred Deer”) along with Coppola’s “Virgin Suicides” star Kirsten Dunst and “Somewhere” star Elle Fanning.

Read More: With ‘The Beguiled,’ Sofia Coppola Seeks Cannes Redemption with a Southern-Gothic Remake

Writer-director Coppola reenters the Cannes spotlight with her high-profile adaptation of Don Siegel’s 1971 Clint Eastwood Civil War drama, based on the 1966 Thomas Cullinan novel. About two years ago, Coppola’s production designer Anne Ross urged her to remake the movie, a well-reviewed flop when released. Audiences weren’t ready for Eastwood’s tall, dark, and handsome soldier to be manhandled by a school full of vengeful women.

Author: Jo-Ann Titmarsh

Don Siegel’s 1971 The Beguiled is a much loved classic, telling the story of a Union soldier holed up in a boarding school, where he beguiles each of the females and earns his comeuppance. So what would Sofia Coppola, one of a handful of female directors in competition in Cannes, bring to the story that is new by viewing it from a woman’s perspective? The answer is: very little.

Coppola remains faithful to the novel and the original screenplay, as we follow Amy (Oona Laurence) into the woods to forage for her infamous mushrooms. She’s a little red riding hood toting her basket all alone in the humid forest and she is about to stumble upon John McBurney (Colin Farrell), a wolf in Yankee clothing. As Amy helps the injured deserter back to her school, we meet the rest of the ladies: Martha (Nicole Kidman), the headmistress,...

The greatest favor you can do for Sofia Coppola‘s “The Beguiled,” and yourself before you watch it, is to put all thoughts of Don Siegel‘s 1971 Clint Eastwood-starred film of the same name from your mind. As a standalone film, Coppola’s version abounds in pleasures: from the starry cast (at least four of whom almost coincidentally seem to be hitting their career-best strides at exactly the same moment) to Philippe Le Sourd‘s cinematography, all misty woods, dangling creepers and softly sparkling candlelit interiors.

Continue reading Sofia Coppola’s ‘The Beguiled’ With Nicole Kidman, Colin Farrell & Kirsten Dunst [Cannes Review] at The Playlist.

With her sixth feature, “The Beguiled,” Sofia Coppola returns to Cannes in the main Competition. It’s her first time since 2006, when the reception for royal costume drama “Marie Antoinette” evolved from a scattering of boos to became a reported misfire. That’s the power of the Cannes echo chamber. Her visually sumptuous and witty $40 million studio movie earned a standing ovation at the public screening and a range of reviews, but only made $60.8 million worldwide — not nearly enough to make it profitable.

Coppola had better Cannes luck with her smaller-scaled first feature, the dreamy literary adaptation “The Virgin Suicides” ($10.6 million worldwide). It starred Kirsten Dunst and broke out of Director’s Fortnight with critics’ raves. Her Tokyo-set Bill Murray-Scarlett Johansson two-hander “Lost in Translation” ($117 million worldwide) debuted in Venice on its way to Coppola’s Original Screenplay Oscar.

Back on the indie side were Chateau Marmont Hollywood-slice...