Cannes got it wrong this year by awarding Palme d’Or to Cristian Mungiu’s very moderate Fjord

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Film about a couple on trial for child abuse isn’t a patch on the director’s previous Palme winner, while other disappointing films seemed to grab the jury’s attention These were the prizes for a Cannes under pressure. The Hollywood A-listers and big-hitters were A-listing and big-hitting at home this year. And what about the international heavyweights from Europe and Asia that highbrow festivaliers are always saying are loads better than the Americans anyway? Well, many of those only showed up in the physical sense. For me, most of the films from the accepted laureates and auteurs were very moderate, and I have to confess being sceptical about this year’s Palme d’Or, Fjord , by Romanian film-maker Cristian Mungiu (who won the Palme nearly 20 years ago with his searing abortion drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days). Fjord is, in fact, a perfect example of an established European star director using a big Hollywood name: Sebastian Stan, playing a grumpy and religious Romanian IT engineer,...
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Sting review – low-budget alien-spider horror offers laughs and out-of-your-skin shocks

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A fun-filled terror yarn featuring a flesh-eating alien secretly reared by a 12-year-old that delights in cutting its teeth on the apartment block’s pets

This killer-spider-from-outer-space movie feels like a cross between Alien and TV’s Only Murders in the Building. It’s a mostly fun throwback horror comedy set in a Brooklyn apartment block where 12-year-old Charlotte (Alyla Browne) finds a spider, puts it in a jar and calls it Sting. “Awesome,” she marvels when Sting doubles in size in two hours, hungrily tapping the glass for more cockroaches to chomp on. What Charlotte doesn’t know is that her new pet is a flesh-eater recently hatched out of an asteroid that crash landed on Earth.

At the screening I attended, someone a few rows behind couldn’t hack it and walked out after a few minutes. Which is a credit to first-time feature director Kiah Roache-Turner, who pulls off a couple of moments that will make you jump out of your skin using simple shadow tricks and oh-there-it-is! shocks. But really, the film’s mood is larky, with some big laughs as Sting cuts its teeth on the building’s pets. There’s a majestic fluffy white Persian cat, and a parakeet that steals the show acting-wise with its worried face as Sting scuttles out of an air vent.

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