by Indy Datta

The Cannes Film Festival has just kicked off, and like any self-respecting film nerd with an incipient gambling problem, I’ve already had a flutter on the winner of the Palme d’Or. Sadly, the early reviews suggest that my punt on rank outsider Sleeping Beauty may not be the making of my first million.

The only British entry in competition this year (and another of the relatively rich crop of films from female directors), Lynne Ramsay’s We Need to Talk About Kevin, bowed – in contrast – to a wave of awestruck reviews (as is the way these days, you get the tweets of awe first, the breathlessly filed reviews a few hours later). James Rocchi, for Indiewire and Dave Calhoun, for Time Out London, give the measure of the critical reaction so far. Melissa Anderson at Artforum crystallises my first reaction to many of the stills I’ve seen: viz, wow that’s the scariest looking kid I’ve seen on screen since the early appearances of creepy Glen Bishop on Mad Men.

More from Cannes next week (and in due course, a Cannes diary from our undercover man on the spot). I’m already cracking my knuckles and getting ready to get medieval on the ass of any critic who calls Tree of Life a “tone poem“.

A year after playing Cannes last year, Mahamat Saleh Haroun’s A Screaming Man is one of this week’s UK releases: a sadly rare example of African cinema playing theatrically in the UK. Here’s the trailer.

Scorsese’s Taxi Driver which, if it needed any introduction before, shouldn’t after Niall Anderson’s post for us a couple of days ago, is also getting a big screen outing this week, in advance of the upcoming Blu-Ray release, but the big commercial release of the week is Joe Cornish’s Attack the Block. I haven’t seen it yet, so I can’t make any judgment on the merits of the pocket controversy that’s allegedly raging in film reviewing circles – do nurse-mugging Sarf London hoodies deserve to be applauded as action movie heroes? Maybe if you’ve seen it, you could weigh in in the comments section? Is my constant shilling for the comments section getting annoying yet?

Anyway, I’m not linking to the Attack the Block trailer. I think even my mum’s seen it at this point. Instead, have a link to Mr Cornish’s finest film work to date, The Toy Patient.

The big US release this week (assuming you’ve already seen Priest and A Serbian Film, of course), is Bridesmaids, the writing and starring debut of Saturday Night Live stalwart and film comedy bit part killer Kristin Wiig, directed by “Freaks and Geeks” creator Paul Feig and produced under the Apatow umbrella (which pedigree has already led one writer to christen it the first “homance”: is that a word we really needed?). Could this be Wiig’s Tina Fey/Mean Girls crossover moment? The New York Times has an interesting profile of Wiig, which also includes some dish on her differences with her male producer and director while making the film. Everyone’s seen the trailer, I guess, so instead, here’s one of my favourite SNL/Wiig sketches, in dodgy camcordered off the telly form. PIRACY.

In other stuff!

Star Wars clips with funny subtitles are the lowest form of wit, right? Wrong!

Actually, I can’t top that, and it kind of brings us back to where we came in. Quit while I’m ahead? Yeah.

Next week on Mostly Film really will be mostly about film. Spank the Monkey’s endurance session at the Terracotta Far East Film Festival will kick us off on Monday. See you then.