In the blooming spring garden of a Bondi terrace, Australian actor Sarah Snook is talking about fame. Not the kind reserved for her heroes – those grandes dames of the silver screen, Meryl Streep and Judi Dench – but the kind of slow-blossoming renown that comes with a promise: Sarah Snook is an actor to watch.

“I wonder if they’ll get sick of watching,” laughs the 28-year-old, who has been described as everything from the “next Cate Blanchett” to the “next Leonardo DiCaprio”.

“The amount of times I leave the house in my very daggy woollen jumpers, no make-up and I haven’t brushed my hair in three days. I don’t care, it’s who I am, but there is a tiny thought in my head: ‘What would it be like to be photographed like this?’ ”

The “one to watch” tag has stuck to Snook ever since she was short-listed, fresh out of NIDA, for the lead role in the English-language film version of Stieg Larsson’s phenomenally successful novel The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

In the end, the role went to New Yorker Rooney Mara. But Snook was flown to LA for screen tests with the film’s star, Daniel Craig, and in the process caught the eye of influential Hollywood producer Scott Rudin.

It’s partly thanks to Rudin’s strong backing that Snook has become the go-to girl of the moment. In October, she’ll be seen alongside Michael Fassbender and Kate Winslet in Steve Jobs, the biopic about the late Apple co-founder, and again with Winslet in director Jocelyn Moorhouse’s highly anticipated The Dressmaker. Then she heads to the UK, where she starts rehearsals at the iconic Old Vic theatre, playing in Ibsen’s The Master Builderopposite Ralph Fiennes.

Matthew Warchus, the Old Vic’s new artistic director, recently described her as “a remarkable actress”, her talent as good as Judi Dench and Judy Davis rolled into one.

And his decision to cast her in The Master Builder? To “give Ralph a run for his money”.

Snook’s resumé reads like a game of snakes and ladders. The Girl with the Dragon Tattooaudition – advance. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo rejection – retreat. Title role in TV pilot Clementine after her first LA screen test – advance. Clementine dumped – retreat.

Missing out on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was a blow, she says, but only briefly. “I said at the time I didn’t feel I was ready for it physically or mentally and I wasn’t confident in who I was as a person,” Snook says. “I feel like doors will forever open and close, so just get on the turntable.”

Being cast in a stage play with Ralph Fiennes is still sinking in. It comes close to trumping her equal billing with another ’90s heartthrob, Ethan Hawke, in the 2014 film Predestination. (Hawke described her work in the film as “incredible”, saying at the time: “I have never been a part of a performance that has been better than this.”)

For Snook, Fiennes and Hawke represent “childhood markers of ‘wow’,” she says.

“They had both reached a pinnacle of success at an age where I was suddenly aware of who actors and actresses were.”

The Dressmaker is the latest ladder in Snook’s career. “She was so brilliant and funny in the [audition] room that I wanted to start working with her immediately,” says Jocelyn Moorhouse. “She’s one of those unique, one-in-a-million talents. “She’s just got so much potential. She’s creative, funny and she has the most expressive ways of putting her character on screen.”

Snook describes her first day on set – which began with her only scene with both Winslet and Judy Davis – as terrifying. “It was like the first day of school,” she says.

“I was thinking, ‘Oh God, I’ve really got to really bring it today.’ Luckily, my character had to be awkward and nervous.”

Sarah Snook grew up in Adelaide, the youngest of three girls. Her parents separated and she won a drama scholarship to the prestigious Scotch College, where she did drama classes three nights a week. She was 18 when she moved to Sydney for NIDA but her family could not afford to support her, and she did not qualify for government support.

She worked nights at the Vibe Hotel and on weekends as a fairy at children’s parties.

It gives her a strange comfort to think that someone will one day look at their childhood album and recognise the girl in the fairy costume. “Oh my God, I know her,” she deadpans. “That’s the fairy who’s on Home and Away!” She is proud of putting herself through uni, but it was a difficult time and the scars linger. “I spend an unconscionable amount of money on food, then I look at a pair of shoes for $50 and think, ‘Oh, I don’t think so, that’s too much. I’ll buy the $2 thongs over there.’ ”

NIDA underpinned her passion for technique. She still recalls a voice teacher who advised that the emotions are held in the open-mouthed vowels of words. “So if there is a line you’re meant to cry on,” says Snook, “a good way to approach it is to say all the vowels in a sentence, removing all the consonants, then putting them back in.”

Her NIDA buddy, actor Josh McConville, says Snook’s daring choice of roles sets her apart. “Bold, risky characters require absolute technique and precision,” he says. “This is the most exciting thing about her.”

All morning, Snook has been sliding into a series of stunning dresses for our photo shoot. Luminously beautiful, the embodiment of a Hollywood star, she wears each one like a second skin. For our interview, she changes back into a tangerine T-shirt and comfy draped pants, and munches a salmon sandwich. There’s nothing of the diva about her; only a slight sense that she would rather be elsewhere – honing her craft, not talking about it.

I meet her fresh from watching her latest film, the children’s comedy Oddball – a feel-good true story about a colony of little penguins saved from a fox attack by a farmer’s dog. She is utterly arresting on screen, even as a park ranger in khaki dungarees and steel-capped boots. I’m curious: why this role, in between so many more notable productions? Snook points to advice from her friend and fellow actor Mykelti Williamson, with whom she worked on the pilot for Clementine. “He said, ‘Don’t break the flow,’ ” she says. “Which I take to mean, ‘Don’t get in the way of yourself, don’t over-think things.’ I did it because it was there.”

Her dream run in cinema has been bookended by two ABC miniseries. In the adaptation of Kate Grenville’s novel, The Secret River, she played convict woman Sal Thornhill; still to come is The Beautiful Lie, based on Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and set in Melbourne. Friends and family keep her down to earth, as does her partner of five years, Angus McDonald.

The couple live together in Melbourne, where McDonald is a university research manager and musician. “He’s been a solid anchor and a reminder of what is reality and what is important in life,” Snook says. Only a year ago, Snook told an interviewer she worried about being recognised on the street. “That [fame] kind of terrifies me,” she said at the time. “Particularly if the idea is to be an actor and tell stories about real life, or even imagined life … If you can’t interact with people, then where do you begin?”

Today she is relaxed, circumspect; she continues to catch public transport, her relationships are intact. And her attitude to fame seems to be changing. “You can’t do what I do and hope people enjoy it – and if they do, say, ‘go away,’ ” she shrugs. “It’s something that’s par for the course.”

It’s as if somehow Snook needs to atone for her success, put her fame in a box until she’s ready to open it. “I do feel I skipped a few steps,” she says earnestly. “A number of my extremely talented colleagues from drama school have been given slightly different opportunities. It’s not that they won’t get their bigger moments of luck, but I feel like I’ve not quite done my time yet.”

Then the photographer picks up his camera and Snook is back on set, smiling; leaving only the thinnest wisp of her ethereal presence behind her.

Erin O’Dwyer – Daily Life – September 20, 2015

Australia’s leading film producer, Roadshow Films, has indicated it will narrow its focus to “Australiana” films rather than try to compete with Hollywood in genres such as romantic comedy.

Roadshow’s head of production, Seph McKenna, said this was a “pivot point” for the company as it accepted it could not compete fairly with Hollywood’s stars, budgets and results in particular genres including comedy, sci-fi or zombie films. “When we try to make films that Hollywood makes, on a budget we can afford, it doesn’t work,” Mr McKenna told a ScreenWest audience seminar at the Cinefest Oz Festival.

He said comparing the trailers of two romantic comedies released during the same period of 2010 — the Melbourne film I Love You Too and the US film Date Night — was “illustrative of what we’re up against. (Australian lead actors) Brendan Cowell and Yvonne Strahovski cannot compete with Steve Carrell and Tina Fey.”

He also pointed to other recent romantic comedy releases from Roadshow that had not performed as well as hoped at the box office, including the musical Goddess and Working Dog feature Any Questions For Ben? starring Josh Lawson, as well as a number of recent genre films that could not compete with similar Hollywood fare, including post-apocalyptic film The Rover, crime drama Felony and Perth zombie film These Final Hours. “If the story can be told nowhere else other than Australia, then I’m interested,” Mr McKenna said.

Historically, Roadshow’s biggest successes have fit Mr McKenna’s description of “Australiana”. Roadshow has seven of the top 15 highest-grossing Australian films, the first two of which are essentially “studio films” — Happy Feet and The Great Gatsby — followed by Red Dog, The Dish, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, Muriel’s Wedding and Mao’s Last Dancer.

The two highest-grossing films at the Australian box office are classic “Australiana”— Crocodile Dundee ($47.7 million in 1986) and Australia ($37.5m in 2008) —followed by Babe’s $36.7m in 1995. Others major hits that could be described as such include Crocodile Dundee II ($24.9m in 1988), Red Dog ($21.4m in 2011) and The Man from Snowy River ($17.2m in 1982). The current hit, Last Cab To Darwin, starring Michael Caton, also fits the bill, with $4.8m at the box office already. This will probably rise to $7m, making this the first year since 2001 with four local filmsearning more than $7m.

Roadshow will soon release the family comedy Oddball, starring Shane Jacobson, Deborah Mailman and American star of Frozen, Alan Tudyk. The dramatisation of the true story about a Warrnambool farmer who trains a Maremma sheepdog to protect from ferals a colony of penguins fits the “Australiana” billing, as does the other major local release coming this year, Universal Pictures’ The Dressmaker, a romantic period drama with an all-star cast led by Kate Winslet, Judy Davis, Hugo Weaving and Liam Hemsworth.

Mr McKenna said Australian films still had opportunities globally with mid-budget films as American studios focused upon “the big spectacle” and “gigantic event” films that need to “be watched around the world”.

“They’re working as much as they did during the Harry Potter era,” he said of the US blockbusters. “The Australian and independent business, it’s a much more nuanced story (and) that’s where (there are) opportunities for subsidised film systems (including Australia’s) over Hollywood. Hollywood is handcuffed to big- event films.”

Michael Bodey – The Australian – August 31, 2015

More Here:

www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media

In his keynote address at SXSW, indie producer Jason Blum outlines the secret to his success.

At the 87th Academy Awards, Whiplash won Best Film Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Supporting Actor for Simmons [L], and was nominated for Best Adapted Screeplay and Best Picture.

Everybody wants to know the secret to Jason Blum’s success. If there was a turning point for the indie producer, it was, of all things, “The Tooth Fairy,” the big-budget studio film starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Having worked in acquisition for Miramax in the ’90s, Blum eventually left to forge his own path as an indie producer.

“I produced eight movies, 7 1/2 of which nobody has ever heard of,” Blum told the audience at his SXSW keynote address earlier today. “I got frustrated making movies nobody had heard of,” he explained. So he went on to produce “The Tooth Fairy.”

“I couldn’t stand it. It was what I thought I always wanted. I was there every day in the trenches and I hated everything about that job. But what I loved — and what I got from ‘The Tooth Fairy’ — was to see how studio movies were released,” he explained.

The experience inspired him to create Blumhouse Productions and a business model that relies on low-budget films ($3-5 million) using experienced directors looking for creative control. After “Paranormal Activity” made Hollywood take notice, Blum stuck with the successful model and repeated the success with low-cost franchises like “Insidious” and “The Purge.”

“Everyone thought I was nuts because everyone thought ‘Paranormal Activity” was a magic trick… Then we had the sequel to ‘Paranormal’ and ‘Insidious’ and ‘Sinister.’

Recently, we had ‘The Purge’ which was the moment when the establishment finally was like ‘this guy is on to something.'” According to Blum, “Purge” cost $3 million and grossed $80 million worldwide.

Blum outlined the key elements of his low-budget model:

1. Everybody above the line works either free or for scale.

If an actor asks for a trailer or other frills, he’ll tell them, “You can have all those things, but you have to pay for it yourself. But more often than not, those things go away.”

2. Never work with first time directors.

“We work with experienced directors. We make a deal — we’re not going to pay you a lot, but you get to do what you want to do. Most directors get final cut. It’s ‘auteur’ filmmaking, but for commercial movies…

I tell directors: ‘I can’t promise you a hit, but I can promise you the movies is going to be yours.’ When you work for a studio, they pay you a lot of money, but in exchange for that, they tell you what to do.

3. Cut down on time spent negotiating.

The way we structure our backend, we key the payments to the box office — so that cuts the negotiating way down and it’s very transparent. One of the things I’m most proud of is that we’re really transparent with our process.”

4. Don’t release every movie wide.

“One of the benefits of doing low-budget movies is you don’t have to release them wide to recoup. You can release it in a smaller way, make your money back and keep going.”

5. Don’t go with the hot directors.

“The directors that everyone’s chasing, we’re not chasing. If someone says ‘we’re meeting every studio in town,’ I always say they should enjoy those meetings and shouldn’t come here.

My perfect director would be James Wan, who had done “Saw” and had two difficult experiences with a studio. He couldn’t get a movie made and had a ton to prove and there was no way ‘Insidious’ was not going to be a great scary movie… Experienced directors can do a lot more with less.”

6. Story and character matter — even in horror movies.

“The scares don’t work if the story and characters don’t work… if you take away the toys, the director has nothing to focus on but those things. I think it makes the movie stronger.”

7. Don’t think about a sequel until the original is shot. “Whenever anyone is doing an original movie and they say ‘we want to end it this way for the sequel,’ I always say ‘don’t do that.’ You can always figure out a sequel, but it’s really bad to plan for a sequel. We don’t think about the sequel. We think about making a really good movie and if it’s good, we think about a sequel.”

8. Shoot in Los Angeles.

Blum said he shoots 80% of his films in Los Angeles because “you get the best actors” and talent is willing to accept a smaller paycheck if it means they can “kiss their kids goodnight.”

Now that Blum has a number of financially successful movies to his credit, he is using that power to shepherd non-genre indies such as “Whiplash,” which recently received raves at Sundance. “I could never have made ‘Whiplash’ five years ago,” said Blum, who also produced “Creep,” which is having its world premiere at SXSW.

Talking about the future of film distribution, Blum emphasized that “a wide release shouldn’t always be the golden ring” and anticipated that theatrical windows will eventually collapse.

“The fact that we haven’t collapsed windows is pushing the best artists into TV,” he said, “‘True Detective’ wouldn’t have happened eight years ago.” Along those lines, he’s trying to emulate his low-budget film model in TV.

“We’re interested in having the same conversation with showrunners that we’re having with directors… Let’s make 10 episodes for $300,000 each.”

When asked for advice about how to break into the industry, Blum urged the crowd not to wait for approval from Hollywood. “The advice I give for filmmakers starting out is don’t wait for me. Don’t wait for the industry… It’s a mistake to wait for Hollywood to tell you you have a good idea. If you have a good idea, try to make it on your own as cheaply as possible… on your phone.”

By Paula Bernstein | Indiewire | March 9, 2014

Some must-read insights into the success of low-budget producer Jason Blum.

Writer-director Eli Roth, who served as the moderator for an in-depth, hour-long conversation at the 2015 Produced By Conference on Saturday, May 30 in Los Angeles with producer Jason Blum and top executives at Blum’s wildly successful company, Blumhouse Productions, opened up the session with quite a bit of flair.

“I’m so excited to be moderating this panel,” Roth told the audience, “not just because I am a fan of Jason and Blumhouse, both personally and professionally, but because if there is one question we all have [it’s] how [you] take a $15,000 horror movie and turn it into a $1.4 billion dollar empire?”

While Blum didn’t give up the ingredients to the secret sauce, he and his team did provide some unique insights about low-budget filmmaking, which you can find below:

1. Work with people. Do more than just give and take orders.

In the case of Blumhouse, collaboration sits at the center of what the company describes as its “director-oriented approach” to filmmaking, which grew out of their firm low-budget production model. Head of Physical Production Jeannette Volturno-Brill told the audience that Blumhouse extends a director free reign over a film as long as the scope of his or her vision remains within the confines of the budget. She likened the director to “MacGyver.” “We say, ‘You’re a MacGyver. You have two Popsicle sticks and a roll of duct tape — what do you want to make?'”

To keep projects within their respective budgets, Volturno-Brill said she and her colleague, Blumhouse Head of Post-Production Phillip Daw, work closely with each director and the crew to determine how the money is best spent in line with the director’s vision for the film.

The collaborative spirit between Blumhouse executives and the directors and crew brought onboard for each project emerges from the $3-5 million production model, which is structured such that each participating entity — no matter whether it’s Blumhouse, the director, the crew or the actors — enters into a project on an equal financial footing. According to Blum, $3-5 million “is about what we are able to recoup on the movies if they don’t get a wide release. In a worst case scenario we break even, or maybe lose a little bit of money, but not very much, and everyone gets paid scale.”

Because no one entity has more or less to lose than another, collaboration between all parties becomes all that much easier and, as Blum also noted with regard to Blumhouse in particular, “it allows us to do all the stuff I talked about — to take chances, do weird things, do different kinds of movies.”

2. Work with the same people. If not always, then as often as you can.

One of Volturno-Brill’s biggest priorities — which makes it one of Blumhouse’s biggest priorities as well — is her commitment to the crew. Throughout the panel discussion, Volturno-Brill stressed the importance of taking care of your crew — noting, in particular, how most of the people that fill the positions on a Blumhouse set are people who have worked on another one of the company’s projects (or perhaps even more than one) before.

According to Volturno-Brill, working with the same crew on multiple projects provides a certain level of stability to the production process that isn’t usually characteristic of the set of a film being helmed by a first or second-time director (which is generally the caliber of directors that Blumhouse works with on a regular basis). When Blumhouse has a rapport with crew members, it also makes Volturno- Brill’s job easier because it provides her with the creative muscle to guide the director such that that the film stays within budget, and the director never feels as if his or her vision is being compromised.

Blumhouse has facilitated long-term relationships with crew by bringing many aspects of the production process in-house, making it possible for them to edit, color correct, mix and even produce certain visual effects for their projects without having to go to a third-party provider.

3. Be flexible.

“We have to be nimble,” noted Blum very simply. “When directors and actors are working for scale, you shoot when they want to. When you’re paying them seven-figure sums, you shoot when you want to.” Being nimble means that once a script is ready to be shot and talent get attached, Blum and his team need to be ready at a moments notice because A-list talent won’t make a commitment to a low budget movie that plans to shoot in 12 months as it could potentially cost them a job on a much bigger budget film. Said Blum: “I have to be able to say, when you have a four month window, you call me and on Monday we’ll start our prep.”

4. Have fun.

“Everyone says we do low-budget because it’s big profits — and I’m not saying that isn’t a terrific thing,” Blum said. “But we’re certainly at a place in our lives where we could be doing expensive movies and we choose not to, and I really feel like there is a real correlation between not spending a lot of money and having fun.”

The relationship between the amount of money spent on a production and the enjoyment factor ties back to the fact that the low-budget model is set up such that everybody involved has very little to lose and almost everything to gain. “Shooting begets shooting,” he said, “and it keeps you out of your office in your head going crazy. You interact with people who are making things, even if it’s at a very rudimentary beginning level.”

5. Don’t chase “what’s hot” — just focus on what you like.

Chasing after the so-called next big thing is similar to when a dog tries to chase its own tail. Just when you think you think you’ve got it, it slips out of your grasp and then you are right back where you started. “We all do it,” Blumhouse Head of Television Jessica Rhoades noted during the discussion, “[try] to anticipate what our boss is going to like.” At Blumhouse, however, Rhoades said that she and her colleagues are encouraged to follow their gut. “Gut check,” she called it — meaning that if a project gets you and the people that you work with excited, then it’s worth pursuing, in spite of what a trend report might say.

Perhaps the most instructive example of this philosophy is Blumhouse’s involvement with Andrew Jarecki’s six-part docuseries, “The Jinx,” which aired on HBO earlier this year. Jarecki, Blum said, came to him with all six episodes ready to go and in search of a provider to put them on the air. After watching the first episode, Blum was so impressed that he didn’t need any more convincing. “I feel like that’s one of the things that I am proudest of our team for — finding things that are really off-beat like that,” said Blum. “It seems, in retrospect, not offbeat, but before there was all this stuff around it, it was very offbeat.”

Although Blum admitted that projects like “The Jinx” and “Whiplash” do not specifically fit under the Blumhouse horror brand per se, he argued they do fit into the bigger picture. “We’re in a position now — a very lucky position now — where we have a certain amount of clout in the business and so, we can get things made that are tricky or hard to get made.”

By Shipra Harbola Gupta | Indiewire | June 2, 2015

Australian filmmakers criss-crossing the country to talk about their films has paid off
twice now this year. First director and star Damon Gameau appeared at more than 70 Q&A sessions on the way to the documentary That Sugar Film becoming a hit.

Now director Jeremy Sims and (mostly) actor Michael Caton have appeared at 48 Q&As leading up to the solid opening for Last Cab To Darwin last weekend. The final one – at least before a couple of industry screenings for AACTA Awards voting – was at a small community hall in Kangaroo Valley, south of Sydney, on Sunday. “It was packed,” Sims says. “People, as usual, laughed and cried and they all stayed to talk about the film.”

But Sims cautions against the idea that grassroots word-of-mouth campaigns are the way to go for Australian films. “It’s only if you’ve got a good film,” he says. “If you’ve got a bad film, it’s the worst way to market a film.”

Last Cab,which has Caton as a Broken Hill taxi driver who heads to Darwin to take advantage of new euthanasia laws, took $1.15 million on the weekend. With previews, it has taken $1.37 million already, adding to a strong year for Australian films that includes the hits The Water Diviner, Paper Planes and Mad Max: Fury Road.

Garry Maddox – SMH – August 12, 2015

Variety critics Scott Foundas, Justin Chang, Peter Debruge, Guy Lodge, Jay Weissberg and Maggie Lee weighed in with their choices for the 21 best films at this year’s Cannes Film Festival (listed in alphabetical order):

1. “Amy.” British director Asif Kapadia followed up his 2010 “Senna” with this even more daring and revealing portrait of the brilliant but tragic jazz diva Amy Winehouse. Drawing on a wealth of professional and user-generated video, Kapadia again eschews the usual talking-heads interview format to keep WInehouse front and center for two harrowing hours, during which we come to understand how thoroughly the troubled singer lived her life under the camera‘s relentless and unforgiving gaze. The result is an unforgettable portrait of the cult of celebrity in the iPhone era. (Scott Foundas)

2. “Arabian Nights.” Even this year’s most impressive competition films couldn’t match Portuguese auteur Miguel Gomes’ magnum opus for brazen ambition and conceptual heft. Screened in three parts across one week in Directors’ Fortnight, this six-hour allegorical meditation on the current European economic crisis bristled with invention, ribald wit and flashes of heated fury. Knotting stories of ghost dogs, mermaids and laid-off shipyard workers into one vast tapestry, Gomes made one of the festival’s most daunting-looking pics into one of its most unpredictably entertaining. (Guy Lodge)

3. “The Assassin.” While viewers were rightly mesmerized by the film’s ravishing visuals and exquisite period details, most have overlooked Hou Hsiao-hsien’s subtle and timely political allegory on the uneasy yet symbiotic relationship between Taiwan and China, obliquely yet poignantly evoking the conflicting loyalties and sense of estrangement felt by Taiwan’s settlers and their homegrown offspring. (Maggie Lee)

4. “Carol.” The jury may have fobbed it off with half a best actress award (for half its exemplary star duo, to add insult to injury), but Todd Haynes’ tender take on Patricia Highsmith’s lesbian romance ranks among the director’s most immaculate achievements: Though it’s composed and constructed with metric precision, a raw, reckless heart beats fast beneath its exquisite wintry surface. It also takes an immediate place in the canon of great melancholy Christmas films; one hopes and expects that American awards bodies will give generously in the holiday season. (G.L.)

5. “Cemetery of Splendor.” As familiar as home and as mysterious as a dream, the lush and hypnotic world of Apichatpong Weerasethakul — let’s call it Joeburg — is a place to which I always long to return. His latest film, a melancholy melding of the personal and the political, is a calmer, gentler thing than his previous films, yet it’s no less remarkable in its ability to find a strange, otherworldly magic in the everyday. (Justin Chang)

6. “Disorder.” A drum-tight home-invasion thriller fiercely anchored by the increasingly ubiquitous Matthias Schoenaerts, Alice Winocour’s sophomore feature isn’t a stunningly original feat, but was still among the most pleasant surprises in Un Certain Regard: Few would have guessed from the French helmer’s costume-drama debut, “Augustine,” that she has such tough, tactile genre-filmmaking chops. Hollywood producers should take note. (G.L.)

7. “Inside Out.” Co-directors Pete Docter and Ronaldo Del Carmen somehow manage to deconstruct emotion while supplying it in generous measure in this deliriously funny, intensely cathartic romp through a young girl’s head space. The result is a wondrous return to form for Pixar, and a welcome reminder that there are still unexplored worlds waiting to be colonized by the imagination — including, perhaps, the imagination itself. (J.C.)

8. “Journey to the Shore.” Not since “Truly, Madly, Deeply” has the communion between the living and dead been depicted with such tenderness and heartache. Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Japan’s maestro of psycho-horror, infuses this hushed, timorous drama of loss, regret and acceptance with his signature haunting mood, employing magical shifts of light and darkness. (M.L.)

9. “The Lobster.” Lonelyhearts who fail to find a suitable partner at a dating boot camp are transformed into animals, or else forced to hide out in the forest where they’re hunted for sport, in “Dogtooth” director Yorgos Lanthimos’ jury prize-winning absurdist social satire. Taking aim at the way modern society imposes a narrow definition of marriage on everyone, the crafty Greek allegorist setsout in the darkly comic Bunuel tradition, before turning its bachelor protagonist (an emasculated Colin Farrell) loose in its unexpectedly tender second half. (Peter Debruge)

10. “Macbeth.”

That Justin Kurzel’s stormy new interpretation of Shakespeare’s punchiest tragedy was left until the very end of the competition led some critics to expect a cautious afterthought. What they got instead was an urgent, visceral update to enthrall the “Game of Thrones” set, unmistakably the work of the same director who electrified festival auds with “The Snowtown Murders” four years ago. With arresting performances by Michael Fassbender and a particularly inspired Marion Cotillard, this spare new adaptation stands worthily alongside Polanski’s 1971 version. (G.L.)

11. “Mad Max: Fury Road.”

Having set the high bar for the modern action movie with “The Road Warrior” in 1981, George Miller surpassed himself (at age 70!) with this years-in-the-making “revisiting” of his iconic post-apocalyptic action hero (Tom Hardy, ably stepping in for Mel Gibson), here paired with a formidable female ally in Charlize Theron’s Imperator Furiosa — arguably the greatest female action hero since Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley. Miller’s dizzyingly kinetic, color-saturated, wall-to-wall chase sequences kicked off Cannes with a bang which it never quite surpassed. (S.F.)

12. “The Measure of a Man.” Veteran French leading man Vincent Lindon won a well-deserved best actor prize from the Cannes jury for this modestly scaled but powerfully affecting social drama from director Stephane Brize. As an unemployed factory worker turned supermarket store detective, Lindon appears in virtually every shot, effortlessly holding the screen with his weary brow and unassailable humanity. (S.F.)

13. “Mon roi.” While it passionately divided critics, Maiwenn’s power-romance should be required viewing for all aspiring American indie directors (especially those of the mumblecore school). The “Polisse” director demonstrates the raw, heartbreaking emotional truth that one can achieve through personal storytelling and collaborative improvisation, eliciting career-best work from Emmanuelle Bercot (who shared best actress honors with “Carol’s” Rooney Mara) and Vincent Cassel. (P.D.)

14. “Mustang.” Five headstrong sisters in rural Turkey are forced to conform to their society’s rigid concept of female self-expression in Deniz Gamze Erguven’s impressive feature debut. Undeniably scripted with Western auds in mind and not averse to exaggeration, the pic nevertheless boasts energetic performances of an intriguing nascent sexuality (think “The Virgin Suicides” by way of Sally Man) and a maturely fluent visual style very much in line with current arthouse aesthetics. (Jay Weissberg)

15. “My Golden Days.” Arnaud Desplechin imagines the childhood and adolescence of his cinematic alter-ego Paul Dedalus (first played by Mathieu Amalric in 1996’s “My Sex Life … “) in this transporting memory film set in the late 1980s, with Roxanne Shante on the soundtrack and a thick, bittersweet air of first loves, fractured friendships and lost youth. Denied a slot in competition, “Golden” was the toast of this year’s Directors’ Fortnight, where it was acquired by Magnolia Pictures for a U.S. release. (S.F.)

16. “One Floor Below.” Champions of new Romanian cinema long ago cottoned on to Radu Muntean’s minimalist storytelling, and while he stays true to his style here, there’s a slightly simmering quality that turns this story of a regular guy unwilling to finger a murderous neighbor into a quietly tense anti-thriller. Wrestling with questions of societal responsibility via a protag used to playing the system, the pic may seem understated, but its themes are weighted with a moral dilemma of quasi-Dostoevskian proportions. (J.W.)

17. “Our Little Sister.” Hirokazu Kore-eda’s portrait of blossoming womanhood is a lightweight yet graceful divertissement that, a few arch Ozu-esque flourishes notwithstanding, reps a companion piece to the hypersensitive feminine sensibilities and visual luxuriance of Kon Ichikawa’s “The Makioka Sisters.” (M.L.)

18. “Sicario.” Emily Blunt, Benicio Del Toro and Josh Brolin are all aces in Denis Villeneuve’s serpentine, pulse-pounding thriller, but the film’s undeniable MVP is the great cinematographer Roger Deakins, in his second visually stunning collaboration with the director of “Prisoners.” After the likes of “Traffic” and “Heli,” Villeneuve tells us little that’s new about the horrific cycle of violence and corruption that has ensnared both the Mexican drug trade and America’s war against it, but there’s no denying he tells it in muscular, bracingly cynical style. (J.C.)

19. “Son of Saul.” The most powerful and provocative Holocaust-themed film since “Fateless” (which coincidentally also hailed from Hungary), Laszlo Nemes’ Grand Prix winner engages directly with the impossibility that any film could possibly do justice to those events, while challenging the notion that consequently none should try. Nemes rejects the melodrama of “Schindler’s List” in favor of a rigidly formalist approach, one that forces audiences to evaluate and consider its artistic choices alongside the already profound moral dilemmas faced by its characters. (P.D.)

20. “Taklub.” Brillante Mendoza’s ode to the decency and dignity of ordinary people afflicted by the worst typhoon disaster in Philippine history thoughtfully reflects on the limits of faith, compassion and hard work. A welcome return to the studied simplicity of his earlier works like “Foster Child” and “Slingshot.” (M.L.)

21. “Youth.” Paolo Sorrentino’s most tender film to date is dividing the critics and took home no prizes, yet its champions are touting the emotional rich way the bravura filmmaker explores aging via two very different figures in the waning years of their lives. Selling points include standout performancess by Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel, a blistering cameo from Jane Fonda, plenty of eccentric humor, expectedly wide-ranging musical choices and a visual banquet courtesy of d.p. Luca Bigazzi. (J.W.)

Variety Staff – May 25, 2015