Juho Kuosmanen’s first feature, The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki, is a modest-seeming film that hits all of its marks with unusual precision, following featherweight boxer Mäki (Jarkko Lahti) in the two weeks leading up to a big fight against American champ Davey Moore. Mäki is nervous and evasive, slacking on his training and running away to the distraction of his maybe-fiance. Throughout the film, he’s trailed by a documentary crew (a detail based on reality) that repeatedly stages faux-verite scenes of Mäki in training, meeting financiers, et al. — in a sly way, Kuosmanen is almost congratulating himself on the high […]

Cannes 2016 By Blake Williams Sometime around the fourth week of April — after word got out that Cannes festival director Thierry Frémaux had rejected Bertrand Bonello’s highly anticipated new film, Nocturama, in which a gang of young radicals plant bombs all over Paris (a film that was definitely finished and was definitely submitted to and seen by the selection committee); after various news outlets began circulating footage of the Cannes municipal police force’s elaborate terror drills at the Palais des Festivals, with faux wounded tourists writhing in agony on the pavement, simulated car bombs, coordinated police raids and all; […]