Robert Pattinson sheds his sparkly Twilight pallor and fangs for this frenetic, David Cronenberg–helmed adaptation of Don DeLillo's acclaimed novel about a Wall Street wiz who embarks on a trippy journey through Manhattan—and through his own jagged psyche.
Wait, is this a Twilight lovefest? R.Pattz has Cosmopolis, but Robsten's other half, Kristen Stewart, joins the star-studded cast of this big-screen version of the famed Jack Kerouac novel, often hailed as an essential entry in the Beat Generation canon. Along for the metaphysical ride are Garrett Hedlund, Kirsten Dunst, Amy Adams and Viggo Mortensen.
Brad Pitt reteams with his The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford director, Andrew Dominick, in this crime saga that finds Pitt putting on his best scowl as a mob enforcer sussing out a poker game gown awry.
Writer-director Lee Daniels debuts his follow-up to 2009's Precious: a sweltering Florida potboiler about a young man (Zac Efron) who helps his reporter brother (Matthew McConaughey) investigate a man on death row, but ends up falling for the convict's femme-fatale wife (Nicole Kidman).
Quirky storyline, quirky getups and quirky cast? Yep, it's oddball savant Wes Anderson's latest flick, which opens this year's fest. The storyline in question? A boy and girl run away while at summer camp. The getups? Boy scout uniforms. The cast? Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, Edward Norton and Tilda Swinton. Uh-huh: We're so there.
Based on Matt Bondurant's book The Wettest County in the World, this true-to-life Prohibition-era crime drama pits three bootlegging brothers—played by Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy and Jason Clarke—against corrupt law-enforcement officials out to take them down.
Whaddya know? Matthew McConaughey is this year's Cannes MVP! The actor, who also appears in The Paperboy, pulls double duty in Mud—a romantic yarn in which he plays a fugitive on the run from bounty hunters, and on a quest to reunite with this true love, played by Reese Witherspoon.
The Spanish Civil war serves as both the backdrop and the catalyst for this sweeping, action-packed romance between Ernest Hemingway (Clive Owen) and Martha Gellhorn (Nicole Kidman), as filtered through a lens of social unrest and sexual tension.
Three years ago, writer-director Michael Haneke won the Palm d'Or for the stark and unyielding The White Ribbon. Now, he's angling to pull a twofer victory with this tale about two octogenarians whose strength is tested when their daughter (Isabelle Huppert), suffers a stroke. Expect the filmmaker to bring his austere eye and clinical aesthetic to the film's wrenching material.
Who says Cannes is all about highbrow cinephilic indulgence? The fest is no snob when it comes to animated flicks, having debuted Kung Fu Panda 2 here last year. Carrying the torch for 2012 is this threequel to the beloved critter franchise, in which our lost band of Central Park animals try to find their way home to Manhattan but end up in…we'll give you one guess.
France's most famous modern-day gamine, Audrey Tautou, puts her beguiling allure to work as unhappily married woman living in the 1920s French countryside whose isolated and miserable existence leads her to make some shocking, destructive decisions.
Cannes loves Abbas Kiarostami: The acclaimed Iranian writer-director has screened four films at the fest, winning the Palm d'Or in 1997 for Taste of Cherry. His latest, about an elderly man and a young woman who meet in Tokyo, continues the director's delicate, tenuous exploration of the space between intimacy and estrangement, and of the ephemeral sensuality that seeps through it.
2012 SUMMER MOVE GUIDE: Big Breakouts