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Ali Abbasi’s “The Apprentice,” a portrait of the friendship between Donald Trump and Roy Cohn, leaves little doubt about who is top dog. The film is so thoroughly owned by Jeremy Strong, who plays Cohn, that the ostensibly headline-grabbing notion of having a Trump biopic compete at Cannes almost seems beside the point. With a…

Critics Week at Cannes, of course, is where new rising filmmakers are often found, mostly presenting their first feature. Sometimes there’s an obvious theme to be sussed out, but mostly the spiritual theme is the energy of young filmmakers plying their trade. The three films in this dispatch have some light parallels, two of them…

In 1974, film producer Bert Schneider – the producer behind such industry shifting New Hollywood hits as “Easy Rider, “Five Easy Pieces, and “The Last Picture Show” – put together a fake film production in order to help Huey P. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party, escape to Cuba after a warrant is issued…

I cannot think of a single reason for another Garfield movie, and apparently, the people who made this couldn’t, either. It reminds me of the legendary comment about “Nancy,” which, like “Garfield,” was originally a comic strip known for the spareness of its design and the helium-weight lightness of its humor. When asked to explain…

With so many films playing in Cannes, from the competition to the sidebars like UCR and Fortnight, right through to the special presentations and other premieres, it’s often a point of amazement to ponder the sheer diversity that you get from these selections drawn from around the world. Despite the vast differences in production scope,…