Pulp Fiction (1994)     The first midnight screening was a sensation, but by the time Tarantino had claimed the fest’s highest prize, a critical backlash was already in force. The director accepted his award to jeers, possibly launched by those who felt that Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colors: Red—the culmination of his trilogy—should […]

  Wild at Heart (1990)   Only a month after the pilot episode for his breakthrough show Twin Peaks aired, director David Lynch captured the Palme d’Or for this lurid crime fantasia. Not all were pleased with the riding-high filmmaker: The ceremony’s announcement was drowned out by boos, the loudest (they say) from critic Roger Ebert. […]

L’Argent (1983)   Robert Bresson is among cinema’s most respected directors, but that didn’t stop Cannes audiences from booing the premiere of what became his final film, an accusatory but incredible ensemble drama about the fallout from a few counterfeit bills. Orson Welles’s jury recognized L’Argent as the real deal, and allowed Bresson to split the […]

Some eagerly awaited premieres are bowing this year, including new films from Steve McQueen, Almodovar, Todd Haynes and Jonathan Glazer.

Before he stepped into the shoes of Louis XV for Jeanne du Barry, the actor played drug-addled gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson to great effect in Terry Gilliam’s 1998 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.