Right now and for the next week or so, a few hundred lucky film critics (including representatives of The Playlist) are at the Cannes Film Festival where they get to see some of the most anticipated films of the year all within a few days of each other. But what are the rest of us to do? Sure, "Moonrise Kingdom" opens next week, but some of the films in competition at Cannes don't even have distributors, and it could be months or even years before they make it to movie houses in your own country.
Fortunately, a few promotional clips have been released for most of the big movies at Cannes, and an extended presentation from the festival itself, focusing on the opening ceremony, has provided brief glimpses of many of the films we'll be hearing about in the next week or so. Starting at about the 14:17 mark in the video (linked below) you'll find a bonanza of footage, some of which is old, most of which is new.
Perhaps the most important is a new clip from Andrew Dominik's "Killing Them Softly" (at about the 18:17 mark), which gives our first look at Brad Pitt in action in the crime drama, alongside the great Richard Jenkins. For most of its lifespan, the film kept to the title of its source material, "Cogan's Trade," and fans have kicked off about the change, but apparently director Dominik always wanted it that way, and you can see why from the dialogue in this scene. "Brad's character calls what he does 'killing them softly' — with a minimum of fuss," Dominik told USA Today. "It sounded like a movie title to me. 'Cogan's Trade' kind of sounds like a Clint Eastwood title to me from 1972."
Meanwhile, at around 16:08, you'll find a clip from John Hillcoat's "Lawless," with Tom Hardy and Guy Pearce. At 19:02 you can see a tiny snippet from Walter Salles' "On The Road," and shortly thereafter comes a very brief clip from Lee Daniels' "The Paperboy." Things close off (appropriately, for the in competition film that will screen last) with Jeff Nichols' "Mud." We'll be bringing you our verdicts from all of these films over the next week or so, but in the meantime you can find all the clips at the link right… here. [Cannes]