Cannes Film Festival 2016

Just a quick note that we are currently in Cannes, France, covering the Cannes film festival. Our unstoppable and talented writer/photographer Moland Fengkov is there to bring you reviews, pictures and commentaries about the movies presented in the official selection as well as sidebars such as Certain Regard. You can follow our coverage in this blog, including commentary and pictures about the movies presented in competition. In addition, exclusive movie reviews will be posted on our Cannes festival page.

AFI Fest 2015 Full Lineup and Free Tickets

The lineup for AFI Fest 2015 has been announced and there are plenty of goodies including new movies by Werner Herzog, Michael Moore, Marco Bellocchio, Jacques Audiard and much more.

Since yesterday, you can also get free tickets online at the AFI Fest website but be aware that pretty much everything is already sold out. They usually release more tickets during the course of the festival though.

Plume Noire will cover the festival, focusing on a few handpicked foreign films - we already have a few reviews of movies that will screen at the festival including Tale of Tales, Son of Saul and The Lobster, with more to come.

Click here for more information about AFI Fest 2015's lineup, movies, reviews and our blog.

Looking Back at the Cannes Film Festival 2015

Mad Max: Fury Road's Tom Hardy in Cannes

A few updates regarding our coverage of the 2015 Cannes film festival:

We've posted a recap which you can find in our Cannes festival blog here. This post includes our final thoughts about the festival and its awards, some choices being surprising while others were disappointing. While visiting our blog, have a look at all the gorgeous pictures our Cannes expert brought back from the festival's red carpet and press conferences.

We've also started posting trailers for the movies we covered at Cannes. You can watch all these Cannes movie trailers here and we will be adding more as other reviews get published.

Our 2015 Cannes film festival coverage also keeps getting updated. Including the full film line-up, all the awards winners and our blog entries, it most importantly features our exclusive reviews. So far the following movie reviews are available: Love (trailer), Son of Saul (trailer), The Measure of a Man (trailer), Standing Tall (trailer), Tales of tales (trailer), Mad Max: Fury Road.

Of course, more reviews are coming soon. After spending 10 days mostly surviving on Nespresso shots, our critic is finally getting some well-deserved rest for a few days so stay tuned for more content ...

2015 Cannes Film Festival

The Cannes film festival just started today, and as usual Plume Noire is in Cannes to cover the festival's movies and red carpet highlights.
We will bringing you exclusive reviews as well as photos and commentary pieces which will be included in our festival blog.

We are more particularly looking forward to seeing the 5 following films:

• The Sea Of Trees (Gus Van Sant)
• Love (Gaspar Noé)
• Dheepan (Jacques Audiard)
• Carol (Todd Haynes)
• Yakuza Apocalypse: The Great War of the Underworld (Takashi Miike)

Stay tuned for more updates and visit Plume Noire's 2015 Cannes Film Festival coverage here ...

AFI Fest 2014 Awards and Recap

Here are all the 2014 AFI Fest award winners:

• New Auteurs Critics’ Award: Self Made

• VIZIO Visionary Special Jury Award: The Tribe

• Special Jury Mention for Screenwriting: Güeros (read our Güeros review)

• Special Jury Mention for Cinematography: Violet

• Grand Jury Award for Live Action Short: Buffalo Juggalos

• Grand Jury Award for Animated Short: Yearbook

• Special Jury Mention for Collection: David O’Reilly for Children’s Songs

• Special Jury Mention for Breakthrough Filmmaker: Joe Callander – Gary Has An Aids Scare

• Special Jury Mention for Vision: Kevin Jerome Everson – Sound That

• Special Jury Mention for Outstanding Achievement in Direction: Morgan Knibbe – Shipwreck

• World Cinema Audience Award: Red Army

• New Auteurs Audience Award: Güeros

• American Independents Audience Award: 10,000 Km

• Breakthrough Audience Award: The Midnight Swim

Also, there was some cool events such as the Sophia Loren tribute and we are in the process of posting reviews from the festival - we've already reviewed the Dardenne Brothers'Two Days, One Night, Quentin Dupieux's Reality and Tommy Lee Jones' The Homesman, which is already playing in theaters in limited release. 

AFI Fest 2014's French movies

This year will be a great edition for French cinema aficionados as the AFI Film festival will be showcasing a pretty extensive selection of French films, including a few Cannes 2014's contenders. 


Works by major filmmakers such as Olivier Assayas, the Dardenne brothers (with this year's Palme d'Or), Bertrand Bonello and Quentin Dupieux will be presented while we will also get the chance to discover entries from a few newcomers who not that known on our shores.


For more information, read about AFI Fest's French movies here ...

AFI Fest 2014 Lineup Announced

The full lineup for AFI Fest, which will take place once again at Hollywood and Highland in Hollywood, has been announced.

The festival will feature a a special homage to Italian actress Sophia Loren as well as plenty of great international movies, some of them having already been shown on the festival circuit, including at this year's Cannes edition.

Plume Noire will once again cover the festival, focusing on international films, documentaries and of course French movies. We will bring you some exclusive reviews as well as a few blog posts, pictures and videos.

Stay tuned for more updates. In the meantime, check out AFI Fest's full lineup here ...

LA Film Festival Awards & Picks

Here are the LA Film Festival Award Winners:

• Narrative Award: The Man from Reno
• Documentary Award: Stray Dog
• Honorable Mention: Walking under Water
• LA Muse Award: Los Ángeles
• Best Narrative Short Award: The Runway
• Best Documentary Short Award: The Queen
• Best Animated Short Award: Butter Lamp
• Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature: The Young Kieslowski
• Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature: Meet the Patels
• Audience Award for Best International Feature: Someone You Love
• Audience Award for Best Short Film: The Gunfighter
• Audience Award for Best Music Video: Turn Down For What: Lil John and DJ Snake

Here are Plume Noire's top 3 picks:

• Los Ángeles
• Jimi: All Is by my Side
• Frank

2014 LA Film Festival

Haven't been posting here for a while but since the LA film festival has officially started last night (it's running until the 19th at Nokia Live, Downtown LA), we just wanted to confirm that we will be covering it as usual. Please visit our new site to read our fest coverage.

Not only will we be reviewing films and documentaries but we will be commenting on the festival in our blog and post pictures.  Make sure to visit our festival page for more updates as content will be added during the next 7 days.

Plume Noire 2.0 is Here

For those of you who might have missed it, I just wanted to let you know that after 13 years, Plume Noire relaunched with a new look.

Started in 1998 - and yes we were one of the first online magazines about films - Plume Noire went under a much-needed revamp. Instead of just one big site for both the American and French market, we are now offering two new sites. The original Plume-Noire.com remains online, acting as an archive for the first decade (1998 - 2011) while PlumeNoire.com is now the official home for our Los Angeles site (in english only); As for LaPlumeNoire.com it is the home for our Parisian site (in French only).

Also the other big change is that we are now only focusing on movies. You can find Plume Noire's movie reviews here and Plume Noire Cinema here.

AFI Fest 2013 coming soon

Just a reminder that we will once again cover the AFI film festival, which will take place in November from the 7th to the 14th.

We will update our festival section as news are coming in, whether it's in terms of film program or tickets.

For the time being, we know that French filmmaker Agnes Varda (Cleo de 5 a 7) will be the guest director and will present 4 films.

For more information, go to http://www.plumenoire.com/afi-fest-2013/

Cannes and LA Film festivals coverage coming up

Just a reminder that we have some cool festivals coming up. First, there will be the 66th edition of the Cannes film festival in France, from May 15th to May 26th. A month later, the L.A. film festival will take place once again downtown Los Angeles, from June 13th to June 23rd.

Plume Noire is planning to cover both festivals as usual - we've been doing this for more than 10 years - and you will find below links to our coverage for both events. We will update those pages as news are coming in and, once the festivals begin. You will find there our exclusive reviews and blog posts including pictures from the glamour step and repeat red carpet:

• Click here for our coverage of the 66th Cannes film festival
• Click here for our coverage of LA Film Fest

2011 LA Film Festival Awards

The list of winners has been announced. Here are the 2011 LA Film Festival Awards ...

2011 LA Film Festival - Habana Eva

I will not waste too much time blogging about Cuban entry Habana Eva (Habana Eva review) as a review will follow soon but the biggest question that comes to my mind is what in the hell were the programmers of the LA film fest thinking when they decided to include that unintentionally funny piece of cheesy soap in their Cuban selection.

I know that there aren't hundreds of Cuban movies available to screen internationally but I can think of a dozen of films that would have pay homage to the island rather than embarrass it. If the idea might have looked interesting on paper, the two lovers of a young Cuban girl acting as metaphor for the two choices the country has (capitalism/entrepreneurship vs. traditions), the direction was horrendous and the acting was Mexican-telenovela poor. The director and the peppy lead actress Prakriti Maduro were present for a Q&A.

2011 LA Film Festival - The Guard

While you might not be familiar with the work of writer/director John Michael McDonagh as the Guard (The Guard review) is his first feature as a director, the fact that his brother is none other than the man behind the viciously funny In Bruges should give you an idea of what to expect. Politically incorrect, mean and furiously hilarious, The Guard uses an investigation as a pretext to confront an African-American FBI agent (Don Cheadle) with a somewhat close-minded Irish cop (Brendan Gleeson). Of course the two protagonists are representative of their culture and the resulting clash managed to poke fun at both worlds without being condescending. A Q&A with Gleeson and McDonagh followed the screening, the two men showcasing their Irish sense humor while answering to quite a few idiotic questions from he audience.

2011 LA Film Festival - Love Crime

French thriller Love Crime (Love Crime review)wasn't on top of my list of films I wanted to see at the LA film festival as I'm not particularly fan of the perfect crime subgenre; and to be totally frank, it is the presence of gorgeous French actress Ludivine Sagnier (Swimming Pool) at the screening that decided me to give it a shot.

The last film from the late director Alain Corneau proved however to be an exciting piece of manipulation with corporate backstabbing in the background. Not only were the mechanisms behind the crime finely tuned but the casting centered on Sagnier and Kristin Scott Thomas was right on target. The sreenning was followed by a Q&A with Sagnier.

2011 LA Film Festival - Elite Squad 2

While I wasn't sure what to expect from the sequel of the hugely successful Elite Squad, as I hadn't embraced it as much as everybody else, I must admit having been pretty surprised by Elite Squad 2 (Elite Squad 2 review), writer/director José Padilha having delivered a pretty nervous film that grabs you from the beginning to the end. Slick and action-driven without falling into over-the-top action, the film is reminiscent of those vicious Italian crime thrillers from the 70's, which were usually featuring a lonely crusader going against a corrupted system; This is actually the message that Mr. Padilha repeats several times throughout his film, reminding you in the process that you are not here to watch such a subtle work, but his direction is tight and intense enough to make you forget a few mafia cliches.

2011 LA Film Festival - The Fatherless

Don't ask me why but I've always had a thing for family dramas, you know those formulaic films where a family gathers but things take a wrong turn. Usually secrets are revealed during diner, brothers, sisters and lovers start fighting and, when the end comes, some relationships have broken for good. While the French are usually good at this, this is a German take on that subgenre which throws an additional dose of drama by setting it up in a former hippie collective where everybody was sleeping with everybody. The film is certainly interesting but it lacks to provide anything more than other films in that niche, the allusions to incest and the nearly suffocation of a baby (following Bad Intentions, this is the second film so far in this year's LA film festival selection to show this - I've noticed a trend at various film festivals where recurrent themes can be found among several films the same year) not being enough to elevate The Fatherless (The Fatherless review) beyond its genre.

2011 LA Film Festival - Paraiso For Sale

It's no secret that Panama has become for the last few years a haven for American retirees, the low cost of living in that country allowing expats to come buy houses on the beach for a few dollars - not even mentioning the absence of taxes to pay.

As the word spread across Northern America, not only have legions of seniors started to invade that country but greedy developers have also jumped the bandwagon, decided to turn Panama in another Cancun. The documentary follows three characters, a man running for major to protect locals against those developers, an indigenous fighting developers who are stealing their land and one of the first American residents who is now trying to fight this invasion as well. What we witness is a story that can be seen throughout South America and also in my native Provence (to a lesser extent), which is foreigners buying houses, developers kicking locals out while stealing their property and the price of housing becoming too high for local.

While the documentary does a great job at delivering its revolting message, one will regret that it doesn't confront the first American residents who, despite fighting against the invaders, were the ones who opened the can of worms in the first place.

The three main protagonists were present for the Q&A at the LA film festival, adding a dose of emotion to the screening. (Paraiso for Sale review)

2011 LA Film Festival - Bad Intentions

The Peruvian entry Bad Intentions (The Bad Intentions review) was probably the entry I was looking forward to the most and it didn't disappoint me. The film about a weird little girl who thinks she will die when her brother will get born provided a haunting look at the mind of a somewhat twisted kid while showcasing in the background the political turmoil that was shaking Peru in the 80's.

Writer/director Rosario García-Montero who was there for the Q&A admitted that it was somewhat of an autobiographical work; So far my favorite film at this Los Angeles film festival edition.