I have lots of respect for the guys at indieWIRE, but they kinda deserve this.

At least it’s funny. I love the caption under Kohn’s photo.

Though best known as the fedora-wearing, bull whip-cracking hero of the Indiana Jones films, Harrison Ford has forged a strong career as an actor, with an impressive filmography that has, in many quarters, gone sadly unnoticed.

One of the downsides to being a movie star — or an actor best known for work in blockbusters, even — is that your skill as an actor is often unappreciated or ignored. In some cases with Ford, that is precisely what has happened. I remember the great Burt Lancaster stating what a great challenge the role of Indiana Jones was, and that it took a great actor to make it work. Lancaster, like Ford, had grown into a fine actor by then, but lest we forget he began his career in swashbuckling B-movies before evolving into the Oscar winner of “Elmer Gantry,” and his finest work, “Atlantic City.”

I first took note of Ford as a true actor in a scary little role he had in the otherwise terrible film “Heroes.”  The actor portrayed a Vietnam vet who loved his time over there, and like buddy Henry Winkler, wanted to go back. Though he had just a few minutes of screen time, he was quietly terrifying, bringing to the part all that was frightening about that war. While the rest of the film was devoted to the mugging of Winkler, it was Ford who left the audience unsettled.

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Well, I’m pleased to report that my initial doubts about Clint Eastwood’s latest, “Changeling,” were obviously unfounded.

His Angelina Jolie-starrer, based on a true story about a child’s kidnapping in 1920s Los Angeles, premiered this morning at Cannes, and, judging from the reviews so far, the man’s impeccable recent run of form hasn’t hit a snag yet. (Incidentally, both Jeff Wells and Screen Daily report that the film has been retitled “The Exchange,” a far less intriguing title, in my opinion. However, some trade papers are still going by the original title in the reviews, so I’m sticking with that for now.)

Clearly, however, the film’s a stunner by any name. Todd McCarthy’s rave for Variety puts it thus:

A thematic companion piece to “Mystic River,” but more complex and far-reaching, “Changeling” impressively continues Clint Eastwood’s great run of ambitious late-career pictures … Graced by a top-notch performance from Angelina Jolie, the Universal release looks poised to do some serious business upon tentatively scheduled opening late in the year.

McCarthy also puts to rest the rumours that film was a foray into hysterical genre territory, which I admit had me concerned for its awards prospects:

Fears that the story is now destined to veer off into “The Snake Pit” or, given Jolie’s presence, “Girl, Interrupted” looney-bin horrors prove largely unfounded, despite a couple of brief electroshock scenes. Rather, this is where the picture really spreads its wings, as ramifications of this tragic but unexceptional case seep through the police department, the legal system, the medical establishment and City Hall in entirely unexpected ways.

The word on the other side of the Atlantic is just as hot. In his Screen Daily review, Mike Goodridge minces no words abouts the film’s quality or its prospects:

Beautifully produced and guided by Eastwood’s elegant, unostentatious hand, it also boasts a career-best performance by Angelina Jolie who has never been this compelling. Like “Mystic River” in 2003, it should go all the way from the Palais to the Academy Awards next March.

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(EDITOR’S NOTE: New Cannes poll in the sidebar as of this morning, FYI.)

We’re at the halfway point now, and this year’s Cannes Festival seems to have been a pretty staid affair so far. With the dust settled, “Blindness” appears to have been labelled an honourable disappointment. Meanwhile, some of the big arthouse names in the competition are widely agreed to be treading water.

Walter Salles’ “Linha de Passe” appears to be worthwhile, but hasn’t generated the critical heat of “Central Station” or “The Motorcycle Diaries.” “Lorna’s Silence,” the latest from Belgium’s hitherto unimpeachable Dardenne brothers, here aiming for a record third Palme d’Or, has garnered respectable notices (and an outright pan from Jeff Wells), but doesn’t seem to be up to the standard of “Rosetta” or “The Son.”

There have been some international successes. “Three Monkeys,” the latest from Turkey’s great Nuri Bilge Ceylan, has gathered predictably excellent reviews, of which The Hollywood Reporter’s take (a “brilliant, gorgeously visual film”) is typical. If I were to bet on a Palme d’Or winner (always a silly thing to do), this would be it - though I fear this will have as much trouble crossing over to the US and UK markets as Ceylan’s previous work.

One of the real breakout films of the festival so far, however, appears to be Italian director Matteo Garrone’s “Gomorra,” an intricate documentary-style look at the Camorra crime empire of Naples, based on a bestselling expose by Roberto Saviano. Amid generally enthusiastic reviews, The Hollywood Reporter states:

Powerful, stripped to its very essence and featuring a spectacular cast (of mostly non-professionals), Matteo Garrone’s sixth feature film “Gomorra” goes beyond Tarantino’s gratuitous violence and even Scorsese’s Hollywood sensibility in depicting the everyday reality of organized crime’s foot soldiers.

In his always-worthwhile Cannes roundup, The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw concurs:

The competition films have been more than a little upstaged by Matteo Garrone’s Gomorra, a gut-wrenchingly brutal film about notorious Naples gangsters, the Camorra. The title’s twist implies the whole area is sunk in a kind of self-created hell, almost literally, since the mobsters are responsible for unsafe nuclear dumping. Perhaps it tells us nothing we don’t already know about gangsters, but there’s no denying the film’s power.

I confess I am not very familiar with Garrone’s work, but I, for one, am intrigued by this. It will be interesting to see how this one plays out. From the sounds of things, if the film finds the right buyer, there could be “City of God”-style crossover potential here. Or nothing. You never can tell at Cannes.

…but the “Tropic Thunder” red band trailer has arrived:

Clive James, in his review of “American Movie Critics” for the New York Times Book Review in 2006 wrote, “…it’s the movie itself that tells you it means business. It does that by telling a story. No story, no movie.”

“Silhouette City,” a new film by Michael Wilson, is a documentary about the rapid rise of religious extremism in America. It’s a haunting account of where the Christian evangelical movement has been and where it’s going, and it is impeccably researched.

The film begins by covering an obscure Christian survivalist group called The Covent, The Sword and the Arm of the Lord. The CSA created a survival camp near Bull Shoals, Arkansas where they trained, stockpiled weapons and preached an apocalyptic end to the world. “We’re storing food,” one of the young girls in the film says. “We can’t tell you where or how much. We’re preparing.”

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First, this item from Jeff Wells is a long, drawn out way of saying the film is just, well — okay. I wonder if this is going to be the norm, a lot of passable opinions but nothing really in the way of a rave.

Next up, Todd McCarthy offers insight, I’d say a little too quickly after the screening for a publication of Variety’s stature. And Eric Kohn (Corrected – Apologies to Eugene Hernandez.) of indieWIRE actually live blogged the screening, which is quite silly and unfortunate, I’d say.

By the way, having not seen one frame and likely irritated by that fact, David Poland takes a piss out of both publications, in addition to badgering the Times of London for its uber-early review. Just so I’m covering all the bases here.

It seems John Harlow of the Times of London has managed a screening of “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” at some point in the last week, sure to rub a number of self-perceived entitled journalists the wrong way. What’s more, he’s gone ahead with a full review, a totally positive assessment of the flick.

Here’s a look:

The good news for Ford fans is that Indy may be older and greyer, but there’s still a spark to his repartee, and he still gets the girl in the end (the girl in question being Marion Ravenwood, played by Karen Allen, who was the love interest in the first Indiana movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark).

Whether Ford’s charm will be enough to earn the film the $400m it is estimated to need to recoup Paramount Pictures’ investment remains to be seen. However, a preview attended by The Sunday Times last week suggested that the internet gossips who have doubted the film’s drawing power may be proved wrong.

And about “it” boy Shia LaBeouf:

Much has been made in internet chatrooms about LaBeouf’s potential impact on the film, and fears that he is merely a sop to lure teen viewers. Yet LaBeouf, who made a striking impact against computerised villains in Transformers, matches Ford quip for quip and leather jacket for leather jacket.

Rounding it out:

The real pleasure for series fans may lie not so much in the madcap action, the carnivorous bugs and the familiar perils of quicksand, but the restored romance between Ford and Allen, and the fatherly relationship that develops between Ford and LaBeouf, who is clearly the new pretender to his whip.

Indy treats Mutt with the same sarcastic disdain that his own father, played by Sean Connery, lavished on him during the Last Crusade. You can probably guess how it all works out.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who heaved a sigh of relief after reading some of the reviews of Woody Allen’s latest, “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” which recently premiered out of competition at Cannes. The consensus appears to be that the film, while unlikely to enter the canon of his greatest, is an attractive, frothy entertainment.

In his Variety review, Todd McCarthy puts it thus:

“Vicky Cristina Barcelona” is a sexy, funny divertissement that passes as enjoyably as an idle summer’s afternoon in the titular Spanish city … pic offers potent romantic fantasy elements for men and women and a cast that should produce the best commercial returns for a Woody Allen film since “Match Point.”

McCarthy is particularly enamoured of Penelope Cruz’s performance, deeming her to be “dynamite” in the film, and extending the Anna Magnani comparisons that we first started hearing when “Volver” emerged two years ago.

Happily, The Hollywood Reporter’s Kirk Honeycutt is equally enthusiastic about the film, and is most impressed by its Spanish stars:

The film belongs to Bardem and Cruz. This is a Spanish version of “Private Lives,” a couple that cannot live apart or together, whose love will always burst into fiery combat. Their scenes are some of the funniest Allen has ever put on film, and the culmination of this love/hate tango is not to be missed.

I had a good feeling about this project from the get-go, but then I admit I’m one of those die-hard Allen supporters who maintains that “Melinda and Melinda” is a misunderstood almost-great, and tried his damnedest to find something - anything - to like about “Hollywood Ending.” So I’m thrilled to learn that this is likely to be one of those Allen treats I can enjoy guilt-free, without having to construct a defence case for it afterwards.

As for awards prospects, after those notices, I’m going to go ahead and put Cruz on the lower rungs of my ladder of Best Supporting Actress contenders. Woody’s films have long been good to women in this category, and while the competition looks crowded this year, a slight but appealing performance from a well-liked star is often the one left standing when the bigger guns misfire. As for Allen himself, any film of his that is generally given at least a B+ by the critics is a contender for a Best Original Screenplay nomination, so I’m going to plunge in and put him on my list. What can I say? The sun’s out (at last) in London, one of my favourite auteurs appears to be back on track, and I’m in a generous mood.