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What Are You Watching? is a weekly space for The A.V Club’s film critics and readers to share their thoughts, observations, and opinions on movies new and old.

I’ll keep it brief this week, as I’m in the middle of a quick drip down to southern Missouri to pick up my kids from their grandparents. (Currently, my son is shouting, “I’m not bothering you, I’m not bothering!”) I haven’t really watched anything substantial since the weekend, when I sat down with a couple of movies I’ve been itching to revisit for years. Both are eccentric exercises in horror atmosphere (was I mentally prepping myself to write on the new M. Night Shyamalan film?), though they couldn’t be more different. The first was the eerie, experimental adaptation of Macbeth that the Hungarian director Béla Tarr made for TV in 1982. It’s ...

Not yet thirty, the Hungarian director Béla Tarr was already making a name for himself both at home and abroad. During the late 1970s and early 1980s his early features earned prizes at film festivals west of the Iron Curtain; in Hungary, however, he remained a marginal figure as the regime did not take kindly to his films’ openly dissenting spirit. This rendered it increasingly difficult for him to make films in his native country and following the independently funded Damnation, he moved to West Berlin, only returning after the dissolution of the Eastern bloc. Upon his return, Tarr got to work on a project that had been gestating for a decade: the 432-minute Satantango, which was released in 1994 and became a cult sensation among cinephiles. The resulting recognition, together with the enthusiastic endorsement of his work by prominent peers such as Susan Sontag and Gus van Sant, turned the forever uncompromising,...

The films competing in the 68th Cannes Film Festival were announced this morning at a press conference in Paris. The festival’s new president Pierre Lescure and Thierry Frémaux kept the suspense going as they unveiled this year’s eclectic and rather art house-y selection. In total, 16 films have been selected in the official competition thus far. Another four films are set to be added in the next couple of weeks. The official competition will be presided by the Coen Brothers. Their short film about cinema, which had screened for the 65th anniversary of the festival in 2007, was once again shown at the press conference. Starring Josh Brolin, it is both funny and poignant. American competitors include Todd Haynes with Carol, starring Cate Blanchett, and Gus Van Sant is marking his return to the Croisette with The Sea of Trees, starring Matthew McConaughey and Naomi Watts. Australian co-production Macbeth, directed by Justin Kurzel,...