| May 23, 2025 
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Hi, film fans! It's that time of year when we're talking art house and blockbuster at the same time, thanks to the twin arrivals of the Cannes Film Festival and the summer movie season. To a movie lover like me, this is heaven. First up is Cannes, where the mood has been uncertain, writes The Times's chief critic, Manohla Dargis. She described "a fairly sober affair" thanks in part to the threat of tariffs combined with Hollywood's recent struggles. But it's still Cannes and that hothouse can produce controversies like the reaction to the polarizing "Eddington," the new Ari Aster satire about Covid and politics in a fictional New Mexico town. My colleague Kyle Buchanan has been reporting from the festival daily and witnessed critics actually squaring off over the film. Later, he talked with Aster, who hadn't seen the wildly mixed reviews and wasn't aware of the arguments over it. He said simply that he was trying to make a movie "about what the country felt like to me" and that he was very worried for the nation's future. Not everything divided the critics at the festival. For the most part they liked Kristen Stewart's feature directing debut, "The Chronology of Water," although the filmmaker told Buchanan she thought the reviews were being too nice! And the critics generally disliked "Alpha," Julia Ducournau's follow-up to "Titane," one of the craziest Palme d'Or winners ever. Actually, dislike is putting it mildly. The film is tied with "Eddington" for some of the worst reviews of the festival, according to Screen International's ranking. OK, that's the art house side of the equation. What about the blockbusters? We're very excited about "Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning," which may or may not be Tom Cruise's final outing in the franchise. (He himself is being cagey about that.) In her review, Dargis called it "enjoyably unhinged" and that is a great description. There are some eye-popping stunts, an "M:I" signature, but also a lot of callbacks to previous movies in the series, including the return of a character from the 1996 movie that kicked everything off. I don't want to spoil it, but the return elicited laughter and a huge round of applause at my screening. Lastly — though it may well be No. 1 at the box office this weekend — is the live-action remake of "Lilo & Stitch." Our critic Brandon Yu was mixed on it, writing that it was "a moderately fun, mostly serviceable and often adorable revamp." But love for the original 2002 animated movie has exploded in the years since it was released and the rambunctious alien Stitch has become a merchandising juggernaut for Disney. "It's been the biggest, broadest, all-encompassing demographic for a toy, I think, that we've ever created," one toy company executive told my colleague Ashley Spencer. Whatever you decide to watch this weekend, enjoy the movies! | STREAMING RECOMMENDATIONS | | |
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