Here's a look at the trailer for "The Day The Earth Stood Still," based on the 1951 classic. 

It seems to me that this is the only sort of role meant for Keanu Reeves. 

The first reviews of "The Dark Knight" are beginning to trickle in, and all I have read so far are glowing. Most of the praise is going to the late Heath Ledger's performance as Batman's nemesis Joker. 

When the young Australian actor passed away earlier this year, rumors of a push for a posthumous Oscar began to circulate. Now that the film has actually been screened, the push seems like less of a rumor and more like an actual plan. Actor Christian Bale praised the actor this past weekend at a press junket for the film, and fellow cast member Gary Oldman spoke in support of Ledger's style and turn as Joker.

"Heath had this frequency none of us could hear," Oldman told E! Online. "The Academy tends to overlook movies like this, but this acting is so good it's going to be very hard for them to avoid it." 

Also praised was Ledger's attention to detail in preparing for the role. According to members of "The Dark Knight"'s cast and crew, Ledger pulled influences from "A Clockwork Orange" to Charlie Chaplin's work to how ventriloquist dummies talk. Gone is the cartoonish Joker played by Nicholson in Tim Burton's 1989 film. 

If Ledger does win an Oscar for his performance as the psychotic and unpredictable Gotham villain, it would be the second posthumous Oscar ever granted. The first went to Peter Finch for "Network" in 1976. 

Finally! The new Bond trailer has arrived! In a departure from past films of the series, Bond has apparently gone rogue (previously explored only in 1989's "License to Kill") and is out for revenge; it's a different mission altogether. 

Corporate sibling relationships have reached a new level with Pixar's upcoming film "WALL-E." When Apple CEO Steve Jobs sold Pixar to Disney, I'll bet he never imagined that the companies would end up collaborating on an animated film. Though WALL-E himself is a clunky little tractor, his sleek black and white love interest EVE recalls all of the minimalist beauty of an iPod. As it turns out, EVE is a design product of Johnny Ive, Apple's design wizard. 

In an interview with Fortune, director Andrew Stanton explained that he wanted EVE to be "high-end technology... and I wanted it to be seamless and for the technology to be sort of hidden and subcutaneous." Sounds like just about anything on the shelves of your local Apple store, doesn't it? 

Thus, in 2005, Stanton made a call to Steve Jobs, who sent Ive to Pixar's headquarters in order to consult on the character design of EVE. However, due to Apple's "tight-lipped" tendencies on the future of technology and design, Ive offered "few specific modifications," according to Stanton. "The most he could do is nod his head to the things we said we wanted to do." 

If you're curious about the design for little WALL-E, the idea came to Stanton while playing with a pair of binoculars at a baseball game. 

It's good to know that at least a few people in the movie business still have a little imagination!

"WALL-E" hits theaters tomorrow, June 27th. 

Here are several clips from "WALL-E" courtesy of Film Addict. I'm trying to resist watching them myself because I don't want to spoil anything! 

Enjoy!

"WALL-E" will be released wide on Friday, June 27. 

Check out this clip of the upcoming "Wanted" from Trailer Addict. The reviews are so far celebrating this film as a no-holds-bar summer action film, but will it be any good? I feel there are three directions in which this film could go: really awesome, really terrible, or not so great but still entertaining. That kind of sums up every film's potential, but for a comic book movie starring Angelina Jolie, the stakes are especially high.

The following red-band clip shows a high-speed train fight between Wesley (James McAvoy) and an unknown enemy. While they battle bullets, the Fox (Angelina Jolie) drives alongside the train aiding in the fight when necessary, right up until the end when she launches her car into the train car to help Wesley.

"Wanted" spirals into theaters next Friday (June 27).  

MSN has posted a link to the first international teaser trailer for the Coen Brothers' upcoming dark comedy "Burn After Reading."

"Burn After Reading" is a spy comedy chronicling what happens when an ousted CIA official's (John Malkovich) memoir accidentally falls into the hands of two goofy gym employees (Brad Pitt and George Clooney) who want to exploit their find. 

As if the synopsis and the pull of the Coen name aren't enough to get you to the theater, this trailer should get you excited about the September release. It's the perfect length and features enough quick editing to keep you entertained and guessing. 

According to a New Zealand film site, Flicks, director Ridley Scott and actor Russell Crowe have released their plans for a new project together. Their next film, "Nottingham," will be a "revisionist" take on the famous tale. 

Crowe will play Sir Robert Tornham, the Sheriff of Nottingham. Though he was appointed by a corrupt king, Tornham must apprehend the famous be-stockinged group of outlaws based in Sherwood Forest. 

Sienna Miller is set to play the third member of a love triangle to include both Robin Hood and Sheriff Tornham, but it is currently unknown whether or not this will be the film's central conflict. 

Check out this adorable featurette from the Disney website about the different kinds of robots featured in the upcoming "WALL-E." The animators at Pixar came up with a bot generator that allowed them to assemble different robots from a series of different parts. 

"WALL-E" zooms into theaters June 27. 

Director Walter Salles ("The Motorcycle Diaries) and his co-directer Daniela Thomas return to the streets of Brazil for their competition entry at Cannes, "Linha de Passe." In realist style, the story follows four brothers in modern San Paulo as they learn how to cope with poverty and daily life in the director's hometown. 

"Linha de Passe" (a soccer term) chronicles one summer in the lives of pregnant housemaid Cleuza (Sandra Corveloni) and her four sons. Dario (Vinicius De Oliveira) is a talented soccer player who wants to go pro, Dinho (José Geraldo Rodrigues) is a motorcycle courier on the dangerous highways of San Paulo with a baby by a previous girlfriend, Denis (Joao Baldasserini) is a born-again Christian looking for some sort of salvation, and young Reginaldo (Kaique de Jesus Santos) rides the city bus all day and night searching for his unknown father. 

With "Linha de Passe," Salles wanted to break away from the typical stories of drugs and crime in Brazil and instead focus on the kids who live there and manage to save themselves. Drugs and crime are not absent from the film, but the actions are shown as pieces of these boys' lives and part of reality in the outskirts of the large Brazilian city. 

Thus, Salles provides viewers with a wandering plot that does not possess much structure. This is an exercise in cinema du realité: since when does real life have a three-act structure? The final sequence shows all four brothers being tested; Salles intercuts between all of the stories, raising the tension and cementing our emotional connection to the boys. The ending is open and left up to interpretation, but that does not mean it is not satisfying. 

Salles uses newcomers to the screen and unknown actors here, allowing the performances to be as close to real as possible. These four boys maintain individuality even as the camera flits from one story to another, following the characters as they go through daily life confronting sex, work, drugs, crime, unknown fathers, and, most dramatic of all, soccer tryouts. This family has no father, but these boys show that their relationship can lead to the salvation they seek. 

One of the biggest running jokes among our group at the Cannes Film Festival was Venice festival regular Jia Zhangke's in-competition debut "24 City." 

A combination documentary and fiction film, "24 City" chronicles the closing of an aeronautic factory in rural China. Once again, I had been duped by the Cannes program, which made the film sound as if it was a fictional story of a small Chinese community. That I could dig. But this combination business creates a disjoint from the viewer and the story: if this is a documentary but some pieces aren't real, how can you understand what truly happened and how people were really affected? 

The story is told by talking heads in front of a stationary camera, and though many critics praised it as a simple but effective personal story, the only positive thing I can say about the film is that it provided me with the opportunity to sneak a much-needed nap. Resting my head against that carpeted column in the back row of the Lumiere Theater, I silently and unconsciously thanked Zhangke for creating a film so boring and quiet that I was able to catch up on days of missed rest. 

If I learned one thing from the Cannes Film Festival schedule and program, it was that the summaries of the films could rarely be trusted. When I received my shiny ticket for Paolo Sorrentino's "Il Divo," I prepared myself for an Italian mafia movie along the lines of "The Godfather." I was surprised, not unpleasantly, to discover only a few minutes into the film that "Il Divo" is in fact a witty, action-packed film that looks as though Quentin Tarantino got his hands on "Smokin' Aces."

It is the beginning of the 1990s, and Guilio Andreotti is ambling towards his seventh term as Prime Minister. He is a strange creature - a short man with floppy ears and a dry sense of humor. Over the years, he has been blamed for nearly everything that has happened in Italy since the Punic Wars. His nicknames include: The Divine Julius, The First Letter of the Alphabet, The Hunchback, The Fox, Moloch, The Salamander, The Black Pope, Eternity, The Man From The Underworld, and Beelzebub. After 47 years in office, nothing scares him and accusations roll over him without leaving a trace. But as this election approaches, Andreotti is implicated in a wide range of illegal activities, most involving the mafia. In "Il Divo," Sorrentino plunges into Andreotti's psyche with original wit and dry humor as the man of many nicknames prepares himself for the "Trial of the Big Mafia." 

"Il Divo" opens with several glossaries of almost laughable length and detail. When these appeared on the screen, I began to worry. My memorization skills are not what they used to be, and I've never been one for politics. However, the following title sequence blew all of my concerns out of the water as Cassius's rocking "Toop Toop" backed a montage of assassinations accompanied by mobile three-dimensional captions telling you the identity of the deceased. Not a native Italian, I did not recognize any of the names (which included Aldo Moro, Roberto Calvi, and Giovanni Falcone), but that didn't detract from the film's entertainment value. It was made instantly clear by the script's clever humor and the wildly mobile camera that "Il Divo" was going to be a fun ride. 

The fast editing style of "Il Divo" is expertly tempered by Sorrentino's handling of his main character. When we first meet Andreotti, he has his head down on his desk while his voice-over explains that he has trouble sleeping and suffers from terrible migraines. Many doctors have told him that he will not live long, but they are dead now. He raises his head, revealing a face full of acupuncture needles. The blank stare on his face will remain there throughout the film, and he maintains the same vocal cadence as he rattles of his list of accusations to journalists, tells his wife of his implications, and finally confesses his sins to the audience. 

With relatively limited dialogue, Servillo's performance is closer to that of a contemporary Buster Keaton. In one scene, he is walking with his hands clasped in front of him and his usual determination through his house. He suddenly stops; a fluffy white cat is in his path. The two have a stare-down worthy of an old Western. Andreotti claps his hands forcefully a few times, and the cat finally backs down. Andreotti charges ahead, continuing on his former path. The real Andreotti is less than pleased with Sorrentino's film; he has made his opinions clear for the public, claiming "Il Divo" highlights a lot of his personal flaws and gives him flaws he doesn't have, but the more likely explanation for his concern is that Sorrentino lays all of Andreotti's sins at his feet.

There is no doubt in my mind that "Il Divo" is intensely political, but its weight is lost on non-Italian audiences. The other members of my group who saw the film at the Festival all confessed to giving up on trying to keep track of who was who early on in the film and decided instead to just enjoy the style and the dryly funny character of Andreotti. The dozens of Italian names are meaningless, but audiences will still understand the assassinations, wave of suicides, and illegal acts linked to Andreotti's name, making the final shot, a title card explaining that Andreotti has been acquitted of all 26 charges, set to Trio's 1982 "Da Da Da" all the more memorable and somehow, perfect. 

The Belgian directorial team of brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne are no strangers to Cannes. The two have taken home two prestigious Palme d'Or awards in the last six years, for "Rosetta" and "L'Enfant." This year, they presented audiences with "La Silence de Lorna (Lorna's Silence)," a moral tale concerning a young Albanian woman and her deal with Russian mobsters to gain Belgian citizenship. "La Silence de Lorna" is a well-paced drama that illustrates the guilt that is forced upon this woman by her powerlessness.

Lorna, an Albanian woman, is living in Belgium and married to junkie Claudy in order to become a citizen. After the Russian mafia carry out their plans for Claudy, Lorna will marry one of their comrades in order to make him a Belgian in turn. Lorna and her boyfriend Sokol plan to use the money to open up a snack shop. This all seems simple enough, until Claudy begs Lorna to help him stay clean and she begins to feel guilty about what the Russians have in store for him.

Lorna asks her handlers about getting a quickie divorce, which would be possible if she could prove that Claudy was an abusive husband, but the Russians are determined to stick with the original plan, even if they tell her otherwise. A sweet little love story between Lorna and the charming but helpless Claudy develops, only adding gravity to Lorna's later guilt. 

"La Silence de Lorna" marks the Dardenne brothers' first film not shot in their hometown of Seraing. The change of scenery to Liege allows for a more realistic vision of the world of immigrants struggling to stay alive by means that aren't always honest, or legal. A technically low-key film that hinges upon Lorna's inability to control her life, "La Silence de Lorna" strongly depends upon the performance by lead actress Dobroshi. With striking short black hair, Dobroshi rises to the challenge in her big screen debut and provides audiences with a hauntingly human portrayal of a trapped woman. 

The film moves slowly but never drags. The viewer learns information as Lorna does; as each piece is revealed, we must decide what the right thing to do is and if how we would react is different than how Lorna does. Her silence ultimately leads to her guilt and eventual madness, showing the Dardennes' ability to create intense drama with quiet pieces. "La Silence de Lorna" isn't a total downer; the film possesses a few moments of humor and idealized romance as Lorna and Claudy grow to like one another and then as Lorna tries to convince him to hit her to get the divorce. 

A large gap in time towards the end creates a jump from the film's former chronological structure to an unknown point in the future, leading to an ending that is certain to split audiences. As Lorna is further consumed by guilt, she begins to lose her mind, and this formerly strong and resolute character degrades into a fragile creature incapable of protecting herself. She escapes, but to what end? 

Taking its title from those famous simians who speak no evil, hear no evil, see no evil, Nuri B. Ceylan's "Three Monkeys" focuses on a family's reaction to tragedy by avoidance. The film, visually stunning in crisp HD, is a exercise in audience patience. With a bit of editing, this emotionally draining piece could be the perfect art house film. 

In the Turkish language "Three Monkeys," diegetic sound is more important than dialogue, just as reactions are more important than actions. The film opens with Servet (Ercan Kesal), an aging politician, falling asleep at the wheel. Instead of displaying the following collision, Ceylan cuts to the aftermath. This quiet and murky scene sets the tone for the rest of the film. 

Not wanting the accident on his record, Servet convinces his driver Eyup (Yavuz Bingol) to take the fall and serve time in prison. Servet promises to repay his friend for his troubles with a large sum of money upon his release. However, Eyup's sentence drags on and his wife Hacer (Itatice Aslan) grows impatient and asks Servet for an advance. The conditions to which Servet agrees are kept quiet from the audience until Hacer's and Eyup's teenage son Ismail (Ahmet Rifat Sungar) uncovers the truth about their more-than-professional relationship.

Upon Eyup's release from prison, Ceylan delivers several films' worth of past tragedies and current tensions, but he does not make understanding easy for the audience. A dead little boy proves that Hacer's indiscretion is not the first event to tear the family apart, but he disappears before the storyline is fully fleshed out. 

Political issues, class tensions, and family tragedies are hinted at but never expressly dealt with, focusing the film on its central three monkeys, er, characters. The amount of important information kept from the audience ensures that the viewer stays as lost as the characters. We never see the tragedies, and the difficulty in discerning exactly which event is the main tragedy that catalyzes this family's self-destruction, creates a barrier that holds the audience from identifying with these people. They are undeniably human, providing the yin to Arnaud Desplechin's yang in his Cannes entry "Un Conte De Noel," in which family members hold back nothing, but there is not enough character development or dialogue to allow the audience to understand motivations. 

"Three Monkeys" attempts to make up for this lack in character psychology and dialogue with detailed sounds and long stretches of silence. No ambient sound goes unnoticed; trains speeding by on nearby tracks and children playing become the soundtrack to the film, along with Hacer's darkly comic cellular phone ring tone, a bitter song about a woman falling in love and losing it. 

The film also succeeds as a triumph in cinematography. The murky hues and sepia tones give "Three Monkeys" a dark and off-putting feeling. Wide angle shots of picturesque scenery and I-can't-believe-those-are-real clouds reinforce the film's grave message but also distract from the depressing view of humanity and offer the most memorable moments of the film. The juxtaposition of tightly-framed close up shots on the characters' eyes or faces as they stare into space with despair, avoiding each other and ignoring each other's presence, with sweeping wide angle shots jars the viewer. Watching Hacer and Servet argue from far away gives the viewer that rush of voyeurism: we shouldn't be watching this private encounter, but we have been given access to it and it's impossible to turn our eyes away.

"Three Monkeys" is nothing if not thought-provoking. Definitely not among my favorite films at the Cannes Film Festival, "Three Monkeys" has managed to stay on my mind and under my skin. Some of the images are breathtaking, and without accompanying dialogue or music, I realized that I would much rather have seen the film as a series of still images in a gallery. At least this way, I could have walked through at my own pace, and I guarantee I would not have taken the film's 1 hour and 49 minute runtime to do so. Trimming the film by thirty minutes would likely result in a tighter and more commercially viable product. 

Overall, the film leaves us with the message the effects of avoidance and lack of communication. But, as we all know, pretending something didn't happen doesn't remove its existence. 

Last year, audiences were both charmed and horrified by Marjane Satrapi's animated autobiography "Persepolis." This year, director Ari Folman mesmerized viewers with his own account of Middle Eastern conflict with "Waltz With Bashir," his fourth film. A critical favorite at this year's Cannes Film Festival, the Israeli language "Waltz With Bashir" takes advantage of the flexibility of animation and the ability to explore memories and the subconscious through vivid imagery and surreal dream sequences. The only animated film in competition at Cannes this year, "Waltz With Bashir" stands out in visuals but not in its message.

One night in a bar, a friend of Ari's tells him about a recurring dream in which the friend is chased by 26 vicious dogs. These are the same dogs that Ari's friend shot during the first Lebanon War in order to keep them from waking up their owners and alerting them of the Israeli Army's presence. Ari then realizes that he cannot remember a single thing about his involvement in the conflict. Memory is a fickle thing, he is told; he may have suppressed these unpleasant memories. Determined to uncover the truth about his time in the Army and the events leading up to the 1982 massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. As he delves deeper into his past and conducts interviews with former comrades, Ari's brain begins to conjure partial memories blended with dreams and surreal imaginings.

"Waltz With Bashir," the only animated film in competition at Cannes this year, is a combination of Flash, hand-drawn 2D animation and 3D rendering recalling the animation of "A Scanner Darkly" and "Waking Life" (Richard Linklater) and blends interviews with subjective memories of the Lebanon War, forcing the viewer to question whether what they are watching is actual footage that has been animated, a recreation of actual events, or a dreamlike memory that exists only in Folman's mind. The film possesses a more detailed and colorful visual style than last year's "Persepolis," giving it the feel of a graphic novel rather than a children's story and making it less instantly accessible than its predecessor. The most memorable image in the film is Ari's own recurring dream of swimming in the sea with two comrades before the massacres at the refugee camps. Bathed in golden yellow with strong black outlines, the scene fills the theater with a warm glow, and the audience is haunted as each man stands and walks to the shore. 

This structuring of memories alongside interviews leads to a disjointed film. This disjoint, though, is perhaps a tool Folman uses to shock the viewer; it is easy to get lost in the striking visuals presented by Folman and his animation team, but the interviews remind audiences that this is a documentary of war horrors and murder. If only he had found a more subtle way to present his anti-war sentiments. As Ari grows closer and closer to remembering the actual events of the massacres, the images become more realistic and less dreamlike. He ends the film with a punch to the stomach (or a beat over the head, depending on how you have taken the film's sentiments): a cut to documentary footage of the aftermath of the massacres. As if we haven't already realized that these horrible events actually happened, Folman feels the need to remind us one final time, and this time, we'd better not forget it. 

Unfortunately, the broken memories of being young and a member of the Israeli Army are often lost amidst the more visually stimulating dream sequences, but comments made by Folman's interviewees do manage to bring to the film several different viewpoints of the conflict. A sharp soundtrack mixing classical pieces with contemporary tracks like a cover of CAKE's "I Bombed Korea Today" provides stark contrasts to the images of death and destruction. The music, another character in the film, forces a feeling of discomfort onto the audience: should we tap our feet and sing along or shrink in horror? 

In Folman's defense, finding a new way to make an anti-war film is a difficult task in contemporary cinema. His decision to tell a personal account in the medium of animation is a step towards individuality and uniqueness, but his final switch over to actual footage plants "Waltz With Bashir" in the tired and over-trodden genre of anti-war films. 

As a student given a marketing assignment surrounding "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" while at the Cannes Film Festival, it is of great interest to me to see how the actual poster and marketing campaign will turn out. 

Here's a first look at the poster for Allen's newest release. The design is very simple, as most posters for Allen's films are, and features a partial portrait of three central characters. Though the title suggests Vicky, Cristina, and the city of Barcelona are the central focus of the film, it is really the three featured here on the poster: Juan Antonio, Cristina, and Marie Elena. 

"Vicky Cristina Barcelona" is set for a September 5 release. Check out our reviews here and here.

The official full-length trailer for "Get Smart" has been released. Check it out here. Directed by Pete Segal, "Get Smart" may not be the funniest movie of the summer, but everyone involved looks like they're having so much fun that it will probably be the ideal fun summer comedy. 

"Get Smart" opens wide June 20. 

Universal has moved Clint Eastwood's new film "Changeling" up from a November release to October. The film is now slated to open in limited release October 24 and wide release the following week, October 31. 

"Changeling" premiered to positive reviews at this year's Cannes Film Festival, just as "Mystic River" did in 2003. 

Viral promotions for the much-anticipated "The Dark Knight" has sort of slowed down, but for anyone interested in the work that goes on behind the scenes on a production like this, check out this video on how the masks for the Joker's gang were created. 

Here, you can learn not only about how the different personalities were designed but also see, in time-lapse photography, how the individual masks were built, created, and painted. 

"The Dark Knight" hits theaters this July. 

On June 5, Collider interviewed "Iron Man" helmer Jon Favreau about the future of the summer's biggest hero. It must be noted that Favreau hasn't officially been hired for the project yet, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have ideas about the sequel.

Though initial claims supported the idea of "Iron Man 2" following the "Demon In A Bottle" storyline, which shows Stark's battles with alcoholism, Favreau now thinks the upcoming "Hancock" has already mined that territory for the time being. "From what I've seen it seems there is a lot of imagery that seems to be shared," he told Collider, "You don't want to feel like you are echoing something that somebody else is doing." 

So what can we expect for Tony Stark in the next installment? "We have a movie that people seem to like and you can't give them less. You have to give them more.... You have got to outdo what you did before." 

Cool. Thanks for not spoiling anything, Jon. Can you give us anything? Anything?

Production on "Iron Man 2" is set to begin in March 2009 for an April 30, 2010 release. 

“This guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, 'Doc, my brother's crazy. He thinks he's a chicken.' And the doctor says, 'Well, why don't you turn him in?' And the guy says, 'I would, but I need the eggs.' Well, I guess that's pretty much now how I feel about relationships. You know, they're totally irrational and crazy and absurd, but I guess we keep going through it, because... most of us need the eggs.” —Woody Allen, "Annie Hall"

Woody Allen ended his Oscar-winning "Annie Hall" with that joke, one of the most unconventional yet appropriate odes to love to ever be committed to film. Since then, he has spent nearly 30 years trying to recapture the mix of humor and pathos that have helped make Annie Hall such an enduring classic, and, with "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," he has finally found it again. If not quite up to the level of "Annie Hall" or his masterpiece "Manhattan," "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" is nonetheless Allen’s strongest, most philosophically and morally profound film since 1989’s "Crimes and Misdemeanors."

If Allen’s last near-great film, 2005’s "Match Point," was the result of a shift in location to London from his beloved New York, then "Vicky Cristina Barcelona’s" success may be partially attributable to yet another move, this one to Barcelona, Spain. While the gloomy English landscape brought out Allen’s pessimistic side in the atheistic "Match Point" and existential "Cassandra’s Dream," Barcelona seems to have rekindled his romantic side. Of course, even romantic Woody Allen comes with a heaping side-order of questions and doubt. The film seems to be intended as a parable on human restlessness and the paradoxes inherent in the desire for both stability and romantic love. It is at times a happy film, but it is also often an uncertain and sad one.

It is told through an omniscient third-person narrator who recounts the actions and thoughts of the protagonists in the deadpan monotone of an author at a book reading. It’s a technique that I usually find insufferable, but it works here, functioning as a representation of the story’s status as a universal moral fable. Vicky and Cristina, played by Rebecca Hall and Scarlett Johansson, are two college friends who take an extended vacation to Barcelona in order to unwind. Vicky is a straight-laced graduate student writing her dissertation on Catalan culture. She is engaged to Doug (Chris Messina), a wealthy lawyer from Manhattan (his goofy name and Messina’s performance make clear that he is intended as a decent but fundamentally unimpressive man). Cristina is the free spirit, the aspiring photographer attracted to the artistic, the romantic, the tragic. She has no real desires or long-term goals; she only knows that stability isn’t part of the plan. The women’s roles in Allen’s fable seem clear. Vicky represents the desire for stability, to have a predictable life, to know that when you wake up your pillows are still stuffed with the softest goose down and that your dull but loving spouse is still sleeping comfortably beside you. Cristina is the desire for excitement, for constant surprise, for passionate romance and tours through the artistic hotspots of Spain.

Such excitement comes in the form of Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), a handsome and charming painter who invites the two girls on a private trip to his home town. Cristina is excited, Vicky is unimpressed, and by the end of the trip both have been successfully seduced by Juan Antonio. Back in Barcelona, Cristina and Juan Antonio begin a love affair. Doug comes to visit Vicky, who has begun having romantic feelings toward Juan Antonio and doubts about her engagement. Vicky’s fears are confirmed by the relationship between her married friends Mark (Kevin Dunn) and Judy (Patricia Clarkson). Judy confides to Vicky that she has not loved Mark for many years and is cheating on him with his work associate. The relationship between Mark and Judy is a secondary but crucial aspect of the story.

It is Allen’s way of showing the possible end result of sacrificing one’s happiness to stability: a comfortably but unsatisfying life from which their may be no escape. There is no such representation of the long-term results of Cristina’s lifestyle, because it is defined by the lack of a predicted destination. Instead, Allen introduces a new ingredient into Cristina’s life. When Juan Antonio’ passionate but unstable wife Maria (Penelope Cruz) attempts suicide, she comes to live with him and Cristina and soon becomes an equal romantic partner in the relationship. Allen presents the unorthodox relationship as a pleasant and exciting but refuses to resort to explicit representations of sex. A sexual encounter between Cristina and Maria would pass for tame on primetime television, and the heavily-touted menage-a-trois amounts to nothing more than a three-way kiss in a red-tinted darkroom. Ultimately, the point seems to be that no amount of happiness is ever enough for someone like Cristina, who eventually grows restless in her relationship and moves out. She is happy in her decision, but Allen is not so sure.

People like Cristina will always be looking for new and more stimulating experiences, and Allen seems to suggest that their lives are no more fulfilling than the alternative. Despite this heady thematic material, the film is frequently very funny and ranks close to Allen’s most successful romantic comedies. Cruz, especially, emerges as true star, harnessing a fiery temper and rapid-fire Spanish dialogue to maximum comedic effect. Among the stars, Hall makes a bigger impression than the effective but uneven Johansson, if only because her character is allowed more complexity, by necessity, than Johansson’s. As in "Annie Hall," however, the humor is always in service of the material, resulting in the most moving film Allen has made in some time. The message, to extend the metaphor, seems to be that although we do need the eggs, once we get them we’re not always satisfied with what we find. It’s a sad truth of human relationships, and "Vicky Cristina Barcelona’s" great strength is in bringing it to light.

Written and directed by Woody Allen; produced by Jaume Roures; cinematography by Javier Aguirresarobe; edited by Alisa Lepselter. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. With: Scarlett Johansson, Rebecca Hall, Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, Patricia Clarkson.

Possibly the most highly-anticipated premiere of the festival, Steven Soderbergh’s epic biopic "Che" is one of the most ambitious, important American films of the past few years. As much an event as a single movie, the still-unfinished version of "Che" that screened at Cannes was split into two individual films separated by a fifteen-minute intermission.

The first film, "The Argentine," covers the successful Cuban rebellion led by Fidel Castro, for whom Che Guevara (Benicio Del Toro) was a crucial lieutenant. The film cuts between the battle for Cuba and Che’s time as an important member of the Castro government. Controversially, Soderbergh neglects to include—or at least ends before—Che’s work as Castro’s brutal prosecutor and executor. As someone who has never been persuaded by the claims of Che’s heroism, this decision strikes me as a mistake. But I am not interested in reviewing the film based on what I wish it were but on what it is, and despite this omission, Soderbergh has little interest in political messages. Rather, "The Argentine" is a rigorous, if somewhat dramatically shapeless, document of a social movement and its impact. Soderbergh intercuts footage of Castro’s soldiers training and fighting with footage of interviews with Che by British and American journalists that allow the man to articulate his political and social message. By blending the two in defiance of traditional narrative structure, Soderbergh foregrounds the political ideology that led to the rebellion.

After a while, the seemingly endless string of similar battle sequences gets repetitive—there doesn’t seem to be much structure to it, no advancement, just stalling before the inevitable conclusion—but Soderbergh’s formal mastery—his preternatural sense of composition, his experimentation with film stocks and other optical tricks—keeps things interesting until the siege of Santa Clara, one of the most thrilling war sequences of recent cinema. The post-war footage of "Che" climaxes in a scene of Che at the United Nations, lashing out at his critics, the United States and the Latin American countries he feels have betrayed the Communist movement. The scene is charged with energy, mostly thanks to Benicio Del Toro’s forceful performance. Less acting than inhabiting, Del Toro is given little chance to delve into Che’s background or motivations (the movie is never interested in those things, thank God; this is not Soderbergh’s version of "Ray" or "Walk the Line").

As an account of a successful war effort, "The Argentine" is structured, both narratively and formally, as a traditional war movie. It is shot in Cinemascope, the images are bright and clear, and its presentation of Che the military leader borders on the heroic. Seen on its own, it could feel like a formally accomplished but somewhat hollow Hollywood movie. When seen in conjunction with the second segment, "Guerrilla," it becomes clear that "The Argentine’s" glossy style is simply a case of Soderbergh’s form matching his content. "Guerrilla" focuses on the failed Bolivian revolutionary campaign that ended in Che’s death, and this tonal difference from "The Argentine" has a noticable effect on its formal aspects. Shot mainly on trembling hand-held camera in 1.85:1, an aspect ratio more suited for intimate dramas