Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy in "Before Midnight"

Credit: Sony Classics

For many of our readers, I know today has been circled on the calendar for a long while. Richard Linklater's "Before Midnight" brings a third look into the lives of Celine (Julie Delpy) and Jesse (Ethan Hawke). It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival where it was very well received and was soon after picked up by Sony Pictures Classics. It featured prominently in our summer movie preview feature here at HitFix and I, of course, am over the moon for the film. I can't wait to give it another look. For now, though, let's hear what you thought of it. Rifle off your thoughts in the comments section and as always, feel free to vote in our poll below.

Marion Cotillard and Joaquin Phoenix in "The Immigrant."

Credit: The Weinstein Company

CANNES - James Gray has always made period films – it’s just that they haven’t always been set in the past. Since arriving on the scene as a precocious 25-year-old with his Venice-laurelled 1994 debut “Little Odessa,” the New Yorker has unobtrusively fostered a reputation as one of the American cinema’s last true classicists, his writing and visual storytelling alike distinguished by an unfashionable emotional sincerity and matte polish – virtues that the French have embraced far more openly over the years than Gray’s compatriots.

Marion Cotillard in "Blood Ties."

Credit: Lionsgate

CANNES - Fans of New York-based writer-director (and lovingly adopted son of France) James Gray are getting a lot of bang for their, well, Euro at this year's Cannes Film Festival. His long-awaited new feature "The Immigrant" may be the main attraction, of course, but he also has a writing credit on Guillaume Canet's thriller "Blood Ties" -- a film that might be described as too James Gray for Gray to have directed himself. Between its elegiac genre qualities, its fuzzily gray visual textures, even its age-old tale of brothers on opposite sides of the law, it's a veritable checklist of attributes from the director's past films; small wonder it took a Frenchman to make it.

Judi Dench at the 2013 BAFTA Awards

Credit: AP Photo

The Weinstein Company came to Cannes ready to show off with films like "Only God Forgives" (via VOD shingle RADiUS), "The Immigrant" and "Fruitvale Station" in tow, not to mention a big presentation of material including peeks at biopics "Grace of Monaco" and "Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom". There were rumblings that footage from Judi Dench starrer "Philomena" at the film market had revved the distributors engines, and indeed, today TWC has announced acquisition of the title in the US, UK and Spain and positioned it in the fall of 2013, obviously aiming for an awards trajectory.

Bruce Dern and Will Forte in "Nebraska."

Credit: Paramount Pictures

CANNES - "Nebraska," Alexander Payne's latest dramedy of American ennui and mislaid family relationships, opens with a vintage monochrome Paramount Pictures ident standing in for the flashier, CGI-enhanced mountain peak of recent years. It's a detail that may strike you either as a cute throwaway (hey, the film's in old-timey black-and-white!) or something rather more calculated. Like so many of his peers, Payne is deeply indebted to the American new wave of the 1970s, and with its Bogdanovich-esque lensing and revival of Bruce Dern, "Nebraska" cops to that debt pretty openly with this badge of cinematic classicism. That's all well and good, but is it stretching to detect a certain smug conservatism there too, a whiff of self-congratulation in its resistance to the new?

Noah Emmerich in FX's critically acclaimed series "The Americans."

Credit: FX

CANNES - This is not Noah Emmerich's first trip to the Croisette. The character actor who has appeared in films such as "Little Children," "Super 8" and who now stars as FBI agent Stan Beeman in FX's hit series "The Americans" journeyed to Cannes for the premiere of Doug Liman's "Fair Game" three years ago.  Now, he's back to support the ensemble of "Blood Ties" where he plays a NYPD police captain caught in the middle of two feuding brothers (Clive Owen, Billy Crudup) in Guillaume Canet's English-language remake of the 2008 French film "Rivals."  It's a nice break for Emmerich whose in the middle of shooting the troubled and controversial Western "Jane's Got A Gun." 

Todd Haynes

Credit: AP Photo

When last we heard from Todd Haynes (save a quick trip to HBO's "Enlightened"), he had brought James M. Cain's "Mildred Pierce" to the small screen via mini-series. Kate Winslet stormed the awards circuit winning every trophy in sight (much like Michael Douglas seems poised to do this year for "Behind the Candelabra") and the event was in general a nice fit in Haynes's oeuvre of female-centric drama. He's set for another as he transitions back to the big screen with "Carol," Screen Daily reports.

"The Big Bang Theory"

Credit: CBS

The Broadcast Television Journalists Association (BTJA) announced today its list of nominees for TV programming. CBS series "The Big Bang Theory" and FX's mini-series "American Horror Story: Asylum" led the way with six nominations apiece. On the drama side, FX's "The Americans," AMC's "Breaking Bad," HBO's "Game of Thrones" and CBS's "The Good Wife" led with four nods each.

Robert Redford in J.C. Chandor's "All Is Lost."

Credit: Roadside Attractions

CANNES - Two years ago, at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival,  J.C. Chandor made his feature film debut with "Margin Call."  The drama about a Wall Street investment bank on the verge of collapse featured a prestige-worthy cast and received solid reviews, but got lost as an out of competition premiere in Park City. Eight months later, however, it became one of the first true direct to VOD success stories and earned Chandor his first Oscar nomination in the best original screenplay category.  Now, he returns with a much different film, "All Is Lost," which debuted today at the 66th Cannes Film Festival.

Ryan Gosling in "Only God Forgives"

Credit: RADiUS-TWC

CANNES - If nothing else -- and like many Cannes folk who entered this morning's screening bleary-eyed, and left it black-eyed, I'm still working out just how much else it is -- "Only God Forgives" may be the single reddest film to grace our screens since "Moulin Rouge!." Just about the only scenes in which blood isn't virtually seeping from the walls in Nicolas Winding Refn's sleek, stunted, undeniably startling revenge thriller are those in which it's quite literally splashing them.