The Babyshambles frontman's acting debut as a 19th-century roué has been panned by critics as 'catastrophic'. Not that he seems to mind

A rainy afternoon on the Riviera and Pete Doherty is nursing a beer. The beach is feet away, but he is preternaturally pale, and entirely in black – exactly as he is in Confession of a Child of the Century, an experimental arthouse drama about a world-weary 19th-century roué. "There were parts of his character that I didn't really have to try too hard with," Doherty says with a smile. "The loucheness, wistfulness, arrogance."

If he is aware of the critical response to the film, which competes in Cannes' Un Certain Regard section, Doherty is not letting on. The reviews have been overwhelmingly negative, with Doherty's own performance deemed "catastrophic" and "calamitous". This seems unfair. In his own dreamy, minimalist way, Doherty portrays a flâneur effectively enough. He says he knew the work of Alfred De Musset, the French poet and novelist who wrote Confession. "But his best work has never been translated into English."

He might seem an unlikely choice for a lead role, but director Sylvie Verheyde says she cast Doherty because he "is a symbol of the sacred and damned poet, like De Musset in his time". She didn't want him to take acting or voice lessons, instead letting Doherty ad lib with relative abandon. "She was quite surprised I actually learned the lines!" he says. It's a source of obvious pride that he didn't miss a single day of shooting (he was up at five or six every morning) and that all promotional duties have been fulfilled.

"The producers were quite frank with me," he says. "I was very, very concerned about the film being a bit of a joke and not being good enough."

Shooting wasn't altogether smooth, though. This being a French production, there was wine available to cast and crew every day at lunch. Doherty was required to glug on screen, too. For this, he went method. "I wasn't going to drink coloured water. If I am doing a drunken scene, I am doing a drunken scene. That did cause a few problems. Once I start drinking, I have to carry on."

So far, so good. But it was when the producer binned his drugs that there was a real froideur on set. Making a movie as a "heroin addict" is a challenge, Doherty mentions almost in passing. "It's poison but it's also medicine. When you're in that state, you can't function unless you have your fix."

There was talk of him going away to rehab before shooting began. "But I was so absorbed in the work, there wasn't a chance." As for his director, "I couldn't hide it from her. She didn't really care. It was just a question of how quickly I can find a vein and then let's get on with it."

So is he clean now? "I am struggling, to be honest."

Despite rumours of a relationship, he says he didn't get on especially well with co-star Charlotte Gainsbourg. "You can't not be intimidated. I couldn't have helped but have picked up things about her and her father [Serge] and her whole mythology."

Doherty adds that Gainsbourg wasn't "all that happy" about the production, which, he says he knows because he snuck into her room and looked at her journal.

Doherty had worked on the production for months, but Gainsbourg came in "as someone everyone knew but a complete stranger in the immediate environment. She is used to being treated in a certain way and that's not how these people were working. You couldn't be a star in the environment." It was freezing cold on location. Between takes, assistants would "leap on her with loads of blankets and hot-water bottles and I was stood there in 19th-century cotton with lots of holes in it".

For all that Doherty is matter-of-fact about the difficulties of working with Gainsbourg, and his drug-taking, he only really becomes emotional when he talks about his spell in prison.

"It's horrible, horrible. There are lots of aggressive, money-oriented, very masculine people, but at the same time, there is really nasty homoerotic violence. It's not the place to be if you are a freethinking man."

Other prisoners tried to blackmail him for protection money. The officers treated him without sympathy. "They enjoyed it, seeing me vulnerable. I was getting a lot of mail from kids saying: Pete, I love your songs. I love your poetry. They were having to sit and read this. It was winding them up because they had this idea I was this scumbag drug addict and I am getting these letters saying what a talented songwriter I am. They didn't like it. So they put me in with the nastiest, most horrible bloke you could imagine. But it turned out he was a big music fan and he didn't like bullies."

Doherty's bitterness about his brief sentence is self-evident. So is his anger at the media. He has followed the Leveson inquiry carefully, and was paid £40,000 by News Corp, he says. The real criminals, he thinks, are the dodgy journalists, not someone like him, banged up "for smoking a pipe".

As for music, Doherty is still terrified of performing. He talks of the "enormous anxiety" he feels before going on stage. And if "The Libertines were three reliable, talented musicians and one fuck-up. Babyshambles is like one talented musician … and the rest of us are fucked up."

Right now, the best way to relax, he says, is to sit at home and listen to Radio 4. Happiness is the Shipping Forecast. "I listen to it and I feel a real sense of peace."

What's it like being the voice of the hippo in the Madagascar films and the wife of Will Smith?

Hello! How's Cannes?

It's very busy and very beautiful. Oh my goodness. Usually when I have come it's rainy. The first time here I was 20, for Menace II Society. Oh boy, I didn't know anything then. My outfits were just … woah. (1)

Did you have to sleep on the floor?

No, fortunately not. It was a good time to just be naive and young and know absolutely nothing.

Do you ever feel limited doing cartoons? (2)

You have as much space as you need. If I go into a session and I do something and go: "I wasn't happy with that, I'd like to do that again," they say: "OK, not a problem." Whereas, in live action, I tell ya what: it's best that you figure it out that day. You can go back, but there's a lot more studio executives involved on that call. I always have to come back, anyway. I'm the only one out of all of them (3) that never gives a bunch of different options of line readings. I can only imagine what we'd create if we were in a room together.

Will Smith returns to the screen this week in Men in Black 3 and has been speaking about taking four years out so that your children could pursue their acting and singing. (4)

I really needed him by my side. I'm only one person. I needed Daddy.

Do you ever fear your children's careers are taking off too fast?

I'm not one about trying to slow things down. What I try to do is create an atmosphere for my family where we can pretty much have whatever. Because no one can control life, can we? We like to believe that we can but actually we cannot. So what I try to do is create an atmosphere where my children can have whatever comes. Because that is what life is about. Because we could walk out of this room right now and have our lives completely change. That's just the truth of it. And I surely am not going to try to control the current. Lord knows I tried that in my own life. For me to think that I could ever do that for someone else. Boy! I'm not gonna set myself up in that way. I can barely control my own doggone current! So I'm there in great support and so that they can have whatever the higher power has to offer them.

This latest Madagascar film comes down pretty hard against taxidermy. Have your own views on that, or zoos, or circuses, been affected by making the film?

I'm scared of clowns. (5)

You recently spent four months in China.

It's so raw. What you see is what you get. I love that. And my daughter learned Mandarin and when we were at the Nobel peace prize we were on the stage, speaking Mandarin. So, y'know, yeah! Fantastic. I wish she had kept it up. She has a brain. She's very good with languages. She picks them up like this (6). Her next is Spanish. She's like her father in that way. Jaden and I on the other hand … we're the artists.

Has Madagascar affected your approach to work?

The only thing is that when parents introduce me to their kids they say: "She's Gloria!" And they go: "Oh my God! Gloria?" You get the nursery school crowd.

So you're making music again?

We are. We're called Wicked Evolution (7). It's purely creative. I'm in this whole flow of doing certain art pieces without commerce. It's free, you can just have it. I had to get into a place for myself of thinking what I would create for myself if I didn't have to worry about making money. I make my music strictly passion. I'm tired of limitations.

Madagascar 3 went down a storm in Cannes and is released on 19 October

Foot notes

(1) Pinkett Smith is currently wearing a navy-blue, deep-plunge, hot-panted playsuit.

(2) She is in Cannes to promote the out-of-competition film Madagascar 3, in which she voices Gloria, a forthright hippo.

(3) Ben Stiller is the lion, Chris Rock the zebra, David Schwimmer the giraffe with whom Pinkett-Smith's character is romatically involved. The third instalment introduces Jessica Chastain as a seductive tigeress and Michael Short as an Italian walrus.

(4) Willow, 11, sang Whip my Hair and is about to star in a remake of Annie. Jaden, 13, took the lead in The Karate Kid remake and raps with Justin Bieber.

(5) Schwimmer is a repeat customer of Cirque du Soleil, particularly its show O. He feels that in the last 15 years, clowning has been taken to another level.

(6) Snaps fingers.

(7) The band previously known as Wicked Wisdom are a metal outfit that opened for Britney Spears in 2004 and played Ozzfest the following year.

Matthew McConaughey and Zac Efron meet a human wall of autograph-seekers

Ronan Keating talks to Henry Barnes about his role as a marine biologist in the film Goddess

This futuristic Nazi space movie takes off with some well-researched historical references, but soon veers off the rails into student improvisation

Entertainment grade: D
History grade: Fail

The Soviet and American space programmes of the mid-20th century had their roots in German rocket research of the 1930s, which was partly carried out under the Nazi regime.

Technology

Eagle-eyed readers will notice that Iron Sky is not technically history. It's set in 2018, a date currently in the future. Furthermore, this is a future in which the Nazis, after losing the second world war, escaped to the moon, whence they are now returning in flying saucers to conquer Earth. On the face of it, this film wouldn't appear to concern itself too much with historical accuracy. On the other hand, it does have a tenuous factual basis. Late in the second world war, German rocket scientist Wernher von Braun considered that he was "but a step" from setting up a space satellite. Extrapolating from his 1945 A-9 rocket, he envisaged a system that "would permit the hauling of crews and substantial amounts of materials into space. A number of such ships, maintaining a regular shuttle service to the orbit, would permit the building of a space station there." There's just the teensy problem that this didn't actually happen.

Space

The film begins on the moon – or, rather, on a cheap moon set. If you're a conspiracy theorist, you'll probably find this about as convincing as the Apollo landings of 1969-1972. Two American astronauts are one-small-stepping when they happen across a concealed lunar city in the shape of a swastika. It's a secret Nazi base! On the moon! Full of Nazis! On the moon! You can just imagine the pitch meeting. Adolf Hitler is dead (the film wins half a point for getting that right) but, otherwise, Nazi culture seems to have progressed little since 1945. Children called Siegfried and Brünnhilde learn about Charlie Chaplin's famous celebration of Hitler, The Great Dictator (running length: 10 minutes). Meanwhile, scientists build a massive space battleship called Götterdämmerung. None of this is what you might call accurate, but at least the references are quite well researched.

Politics

An American president (who is unnamed in the film, but bears a striking resemblance to Sarah Palin) is facing a second-term election. There will be an American presidential election in 2018, though for Sarah Palin to be a second-term president by then would require more or less every other Republican in the United States to be abducted by aliens over the next four years. Still, in the context of this movie, that's relatively plausible. Her desperate campaign manager parodies the already much-parodied bunker scene from Downfall, which film buffs may note is a better movie than Iron Sky.

War

What President Palin-a-like needs to win the election is a war – and she gets one, in the form of an invasion by space Nazis. "I thought I was going to have to bomb Australia or something," she gloats. Absurd, yes, but this could be a funny setup. After all, Wernher von Braun partly inspired Dr Strangelove (1964), which film buffs may also note is a better movie than Iron Sky. Unfortunately, Iron Sky is so ineptly plotted and paced that it feels like a student improvisation. The occasional good line pops out of the torpid quagmire that passes for a screenplay, but not often enough. Its politics soon veer off the rails, too, as it nonchalantly equates Nazism with American culture in a way that seems unlikely to endear it to the world's most lucrative film market.

Design

Iron Sky's Nazi moon base and ships are standard-issue steampunk, though there are some nice space zeppelins. It's a pity the production designers didn't take more cues from Hermann Oberth. Oberth worked alongside Wernher von Braun at the German Peenemünde rocket research centre. His cult 1923 book Rakete zu den Planetenräumen (By Rocket into Interplanetary Space) described a spaceship, spacesuits, space hammocks, and shoes with hooks to help astronauts walk in zero-gravity. He consulted on Fritz Lang's Frau im Mond (1929), which film buffs may yet again note is a better movie than Iron Sky.

Verdict

Almost all movies are better than Iron Sky.

Xan Brooks, Peter Bradshaw and Andrew Pulver on yesterday's big releases

The rapper's 30-minute short film, which premiered across seven screens in a Cannes car park near the Palm beach, is a wobbly, wandering showcase of West's taste for the grandiose

Kanye West can say that his directorial debut played at Cannes. In a tent, in a car park, 40 minutes walk from the Palais, but it played here. The red carpet at the premiere for Cruel Summer – a 30-minute short presented across seven 20ft square screens – ran directly past a cluster of photographers before stretching towards the sea on its way to the screening room. West (and guests including Kim Kardashian and Jay-Z) walked the important part. The cameras clicked and registered the moment. Kanye cut across the bays to his seat.

Made in association with the Doha Film Institute, Cruel Summer stars West's GOOD Music protege Kid Cudi as a bloke of bad stock. Dad was a car thief – Kid's desperate not to follow in his footsteps, so instead he walks through a sparkly purple door into the middle of the desert. Men on horseback arrest him. He's taken to a palace full of fruit. A blind girl plucks a giant guitar string. Cudi's wrapped in bandages. A hawk flies. In, ultra, slow, motion. Cudi resolves to cure his love of her blindness. The cure for blindness is a remix of a song by Coldplay.

It's as much a short film as a long music video can be. Big, loud and expensive. A wobbly, wandering showcase of West's taste for the grandiose that flirts with the potential of the five across, one up, one down screen setup, but never really commits. The screens expand out of the peripheral, so should invite the audience to stretch to see new details, but for the most part the action in the centre is the action all around. Like a jigsaw of an IMAX screen with pieces missing. The soundtrack (bar the Coldplay) is all from the GOOD Music stable – polished, swaggering hip-hop from Pusha T, Big Sean and Cudi that drives the film in place of plot or pacing.

This, said West after the screening, is a film for the "post-Steve Jobs era, when we have seven screens around us and are nothing if we're not online". It's also, he says, a visual realisation of the rapper's synesthesia ("I've been trying to capture it since I was a kid with a crayon") and a re-invention of cinema ("Maybe one day this will be the way we watch movies"). It's sort of all of these and none of them. It's an advert for the music. An advert for West. He tells us he wants "to build cities, to build amusement parks, to change entertainment" and that this vibrant, cliched showcase of talent buoyed by technology is the start.

Cruel Summer makes a statement. The statement is business as usual. The film, the screening, the car park-bound semi-premiere. This is Kanye selling Kanye, through the latest method that's grabbed his fancy.

Ben Wheatley's third movie is an at-times uneasy combination of British naturalism, comedy and total gore on a caravan holiday

Ben Wheatley is the outstanding young British film-maker who got himself talked about with his smart debut Down Terrace; then he scared the daylights out of everyone, as well as amusing and baffling them, with his inspired and ambiguous chiller Kill List. His talent and signature are vividly present in every frame of this new movie, Sightseers, a grisly and Ortonesque black comedy about a lonely couple who go on a caravanning holiday in Yorkshire: Chris and Tina, played by co-writers Steve Oram and Alice Lowe.

Sightseers is funny and well made, but Wheatley could be suffering from difficult third album syndrome: this is not as mysterious and interesting as Kill List; its effects are more obvious and the encounters between the naturalistically conceived antiheroes and the incidental, sketch-comedy posh characters is a little uneasy. By the end, I got the sense that in terms of character and narrative the film was running out of ideas – just a bit.

That isn't to say there aren't brilliant touches, especially at the beginning. The relationship between the pair and Tina's ferociously needy and disapproving mother is a bit like Victoria Wood, Duncan Preston and Thora Hird in the classic TV play Pat & Margaret. In fact, if Wood or Alan Bennett wanted to make a serial-killer gorefest with some readers'-wives porn, it might look an awful lot like this.

It is clear that the holiday marks a decisive break between Tina and her cantankerous mother. The older woman is in mourning for the loss of her pet dog and resents Tina leaving her at this stressful time. She particularly and very candidly dislikes Tina's new boyfriend Chris, a cheery bloke with ginger hair and a beard. As they drive off with the caravan in tow, Wheatley shows how the mother is literally fuming with displeasure at the window, breathing heavily, her nostrils producing twin flumes of condensation.

The trip unlocks Tina's sensuality and the couple enjoy vibrant lovemaking in the caravan and Wheatley creates a bizarre atmosphere of misjudged daring in their erotic life: at a restaurant, Tina's naughty whispered confession that she is not wearing knickers is somewhat spoiled by the admission that she is nonetheless wearing tights.

But it is gradually clear that something is amiss with easygoing Chris, as he rhapsodises about the innocence of the countryside: "That tree won't involve itself in low-level bullying so you'll have to leave work," he says, thoughtfully. Chris is highly displeased by the antisocial behaviour of people he meets along the way; he converts his displeasure into action and Tina is supportive.

Again, Wheatley is adept at summoning an eerie atmosphere of Wicker Man disquiet; the glorious natural surroundings are endowed with a golden sunlit glow and the trips to quaint venues of local interest are well observed: particularly Tina's heartbroken solo excursion to the Pencil Museum, and her heartwrenching attempt to express herself with a big novelty pencil. All this makes an ineffably strange combination with the fear and the violence and the bizarre sociopathy. The problem is that the combination can only go so far: it doesn't seem to develop into anything else.

These reservations are offset by the absolute confidence and visual style that Wheatley always shows. From the very first, as Tina's mother keens and growls with grief and despair at the departure of her beloved Puppy, he creates a weird world, entirely of itself.

Rating: 3/5

On day nine, the red carpet belongs to Nicole Kidman and the premiere of her new film The Paperboy

This documentary follows four sprinters preparing for the London Olympics – and makes it look like very hard work

If British sport is looking to encourage young athletes, it should probably ban this documentary. Shot over four years, it follows four London sprinters aiming for a place at the 2012 Olympics, and it's clearly very hard work. We get few personal details; it's mostly about the gruelling physical preparation, its toll on the body, the pocket and the mind. It's a life of punishing discipline, all of which could be undone by random injury. But it's also a life of bludgeoning repetitiveness, which somewhat diminishes this film's power. There are only so many super slo-mo shots of bodies in motion you can take, and the athletes' observations drift into cliche ("Once the gun goes, there's no turning back," etc). And until the Olympics happen, the final chapters to these athletes' stories is missing. So we get the pain, but little of the gain.

Rating: 2/5

Michel Ocelot uses the darkening properties of digital 3D to make his animated silhouetted characters come alive and enact sad, strange and funky stories

France's Michel Ocelot made a striking case for the revival of traditional animation techniques with his Kirikou films and Azur & Asmar. His latest is a technological leap of sorts, using the darkening properties of digital 3D to make its silhouetted characters – an old man and two youngsters, enacting global legends on an abandoned cinema stage – pop out even further from vividly shaded backgrounds. The tales, sad, strange and funky, are a riot of wandering accents, nipples, morals and monsters, underpinned by a love of storytelling and pretty things, whether melancholy princesses or illustrations ripped from art history books. The pick-and-mix approach is limiting, but there's no denying these are gorgeous amuse-bouches, likely to be devoured by older, more discerning children and dyed-in-the-wool stoners alike.

Rating: 3/5

Paul Duane has created an enthralling documentary portrait of former criminal and tournament chess player John Healy

In 1986, Faber published The Grass Arena, a stunning memoir of life on the streets by John Healy, a former vagrant, violent criminal and tournament chess player who'd been taught the game in prison: it was a bestseller that became a film. Healy was unprepared for the whirl of celebrity, and for the letdown afterwards when Faber didn't want any more books. He began showing up at the publisher's offices and in an explosion of temper, threatened to attack everyone with an axe. Terrified executives severed relations, and Healy remained out in the cold until The Grass Arena was re-issued as a Penguin Classic in 2008. To mark that occasion, Healy gave a reading for his fans, and I can be glimpsed among them in this enthralling documentary movie-portrait by Paul Duane. Healy is a lonely, haunted, brilliant man, for whom chess and literature were not simply aspirational alternatives to his former life: there is assertion and even aggression in chess and in the act of writing. The film skirts around his emotional life, but it's a gripping study.

Rating: 4/5

Free Men takes the form of a semi-fictionalised thriller about the role of North Africans in the French Resistance

There are gaps to be filled in second-world-war history, and this is one: the role of North Africans in the French Resistance. Free Men takes the form of a semi-fictionalised thriller, headed by Tahar Rahim (pictured), who so impressed in A Prophet. He's more profiteer here: an immigrant wheeler-dealer in occupied Paris, forced by the authorities to spy on the city's mosque. Headed by a magnificently hangdog Lonsdale, the mosque is suspected of issuing false papers identifying Jews as Muslims. The realities of war and his own ethnic identity induce a change of heart in Rahim, though it's often difficult to remember there's a war on, the period is so sketchily evoked. The tension doesn't grip as it should, but it's a worthwhile reminder of a moment of Muslim-Jewish co-operation.

Rating: 3/5

Brit director Kirk Jones keeps this on the sunnier, dopier side of offensive, but this is insight-deficient fluff

Someday Hollywood will think of women as more than fallopian tubes in heels; until then, we're stuck with this kind of project. It's based on a self-help bestseller, of course, and set in that bitty, crapestry format Valentine's Day made regrettably profitable. The labour pains extend from white-bread reality celebs Cameron Diaz (right) and Matthew Morrison's disproportionate squabbling about infant circumcision, to an unpersuasively penniless J-Lo's struggles with adopting from Ethiopia. Brit director Kirk Jones (Waking Ned) keeps it on the sunnier, dopier side of offensive, but it's the sort of insight-deficient fluff that thinks the misery of a miscarriage lasts only so long as a sad song, and assumes what women want – beyond babies – are reality show callbacks, a Cheryl Cole cameo and male TV stars with their tops off.

Rating: 2/5

Men in Black return for a third outing or is it the 13th?

For reasons probably best explained with legal files and financial spreadsheets, Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones are back in black, doing what they always did: battling illegal aliens, saving the planet in an enormous special-effects splurge, then erasing everyone's memory, us included. Does anyone really recall Men in Black II, after all? Perhaps this is actually part 12 – how would we know? Still, the flatlining franchise is revived with some pretty strong jolts here. First, the agents-vs-aliens shtick is transposed to a different era; secondly, for much of the running time, it replaces tired-looking Lee Jones with Josh Brolin, playing his younger self. Brolin does a better rendition of Jones' drawled, Texan deadpan than Jones himself, and he brings the movie to life after a sluggish set-up.

Jones' Agent K, you see, is tracked down by a growly, one-armed alien fugitive named Boris the Animal, played with cartoonish gusto by Flight of the Conchords' Jemaine Clement. Boris has a score to settle with Agent K from 40 years ago, and he settles it in a way that erases K from history to all but Smith's Agent J, and, of course, threatens the fate of the planet. Like a reverse Terminator, therefore, J must travel back to 1969 and alter fate, with the help of the young K – Brolin.

You'd think a black man from the future visiting the golden age of conspiracy theories, flower power and civil rights strife would offer a wealth of comic opportunities, but the movie is too set on racing through its mission to really have fun with its retro setting. The period recreation is lavish but feels synthetic – populated with stock 1960s caricatures who barely interact with the main characters. One welcome exception is an alien innocent, played by Michael Stuhlbarg, who can see alternate versions of reality simultaneously. His perceptions on fate and miracles are a joy, and help rescue the plot every time it ties itself in knots trying to be too clever.

It's by no means a triumph, but one of the enjoyable things about Men in Black has always been the malleable nature of its reality. At any stage, someone could rip off their face and reveal themselves to be giant caterpillar, a living room wall could flip up to expose a top-secret weapons arsenal, or Emma Thompson could burst into alien screeches, as she does here (though that's just about all she does). It's like a cross between Looney Tunes and The Naked Lunch – a hallucinogenic popcorn movie you can safely forget the moment it's over. So bring on Men in Black 13!

Rating: 3/5

From ruthless debate-team captain to corporate axe-wielder, Anna Kendrick tells how strident character choices allow her to live out a personal fantasy of assertiveness

It's a shock to find Anna Kendrick curled up in a bathrobe when I enter her hotel suite. On closer inspection, though, the 26-year-old turns out to be beneath the robe, rather than inside it. "I do have clothes on under here," she squeaks. "It's just so cold." She is perky, with subtly Manga-esque features – wide-open eyes and a tiny, expressive mouth – but she hasn't had the most relaxing morning. Whisked to Salford at bleary o'clock to appear on breakfast TV, she got stuck in traffic on the way back to London and hasn't eaten all day, hence the pizza that she begins nibbling on while we talk.

Not that Kendrick would bemoan her lot. "I'm the person who wouldn't send back my food even if I got steak when I'd ordered fish," she sighs. This could be why she is often drawn to the tenacious or hyper-confident characters in her work – the "bad asses," as she puts it. Through them she can live out fantasies of assertiveness. "It's sort of a wish-fulfilment thing, to have those moments where you can yell at people, or say 'Fuck you!' to an ex-boyfriend."

Think of her as a censorious busybody in Scott Pilgrim vs the World, or the ruthlessly ambitious debate-team captain in Rocket Science, or the corporate axe-wielder opposite George Clooney in Up in the Air, a performance which brought her nominations from every awards body from the Oscars down. She is a crisp dramatic actor with a facility for screwball, as well as a knack, best exhibited in last year's "cancer comedy" 50/50, for being adorable without lapsing into kookiness.

She has reached her largest audience in the Twilight films, where she provides zesty and necessary comic relief. But her career trademark has become that moment when her characters undergo a revelatory or disorienting change – let's call it the Kendrick kink. "Are we coining that term?" she asks. "I'm nervous about this." It's visible in much of her work, right from her first film, Camp, a proto-Glee musical in which she plays a mousey introvert who poisons another cast member before announcing: "She's fucked, I'm ready and the goddamn show must go on!" The US critic Roger Ebert captured her appeal when he said: "Kendrick can make you like her even when you shouldn't."

She resists taking too much credit. "I guess the Kendrick kink is actually a character's fatal flaw. It's really all about being very well written." Still, it is she who says "yes" to these unconventional roles when there are other, more homogenous parts she could presumably take instead. "Sure. Especially recently. God, yeah." She gives a roll of the eyes and an audible "ugh".

So what exactly is she doing in a kink-free comedy-drama based on a best-selling pregnancy manual? What to Expect When You're Expecting is a largely white'n'wealthy perspective on motherhood; Cameron Diaz is the star, but the film only comes to life when Kendrick is on screen as a chef who has a bun in the oven biologically as well as professionally. Her story, darker-hued than the rest, brings fibre to a sugar-based movie.

She seems thrown momentarily when I ask her honest opinion of What to Expect. "What did I think? I actually liked it." The telling word here is "actually," which seems to acknowledge the incongruity of her involvement. "I was pleasantly surprised that the script was willing to deal with slightly darker emotions that come up." Although, as I point out, there is one subject that isn't broached: abortion. "Even though it isn't mentioned, I felt like it was behind that conversation the characters have – 'What do you wanna do?' 'I dunno, what do you wanna do?' Each of them is scared to bring it up." Not unlike the movie itself.

Kendrick was raised in Portland, Maine, the sort of place, she claims, where "people were literally walking around saying: 'I'm gonna get out of this town one day!'" As a child, she was distinguished by seriousness and integrity. She preferred hanging around with older people and developed an early interest in acting, persuading her parents to drive her to auditions hundreds of miles away. At one casting call for a shampoo commercial, she began to understand how different she was from her fellow pre-pubescents.

"There was a roomful of kids and they taught us this jingle which we all had to sing. I remember looking around: everyone seemed so thrilled to be singing it. Then the casting director stopped us and said, 'Anna, can you smile more please? You don't seem like you're very happy.' I wasn't so good at doing that cheesy little kid thing. At least now when I go on David Letterman, they don't have some embarrassing clip of me singing a shampoo jingle."

Musical theatre was a more natural home for her, and she found success on Broadway playing Dinah in High Society: at 12 years old, she became the third-youngest performer ever nominated for a Tony award. Todd Graff, who directed Camp, has described her as "an old soul". "I suppose it's a compliment so I should take it at face value," she says, with the rattled air of someone who intends to do no such thing. "I just never know what people mean when they say that." Wise beyond your years? "Well, there you go," she laughs. "I'd feel weird saying, 'Oh, I guess Todd means I'm wise beyond my years and I'm pretty damn great!'"

Her unease may come from a dislike of being singled out. At school, the other children called her "Broadway" when they saw her in the halls. It can't have helped that the local press went cock-a-hoop over her; one magazine included her in its list of the 10 Most Intriguing People in Maine when she was barely in her teens. She hoots at the memory of this. "Oh, I was very intriguing as a 13-year-old. You have no idea. I was an old soul. Did I mention that?" These days she finds it baffling when the press in her hometown want to talk to her. "They ask the same questions I've been asked 3,000 times. 'What's George Clooney like?' 'What's it like being in Twilight?' Maybe I was more intriguing when I was a kid."

I doubt she's changed much. She certainly didn't have her head turned when she decamped to Los Angeles in her late teens to pursue her career. "Humility was an important part of the way I grew up. And I found that to be less common when I moved to California. That's not to say humble people don't exist there, but ambition seems really important. I heard people saying they were going to become millionaires by the time they were 25 – that's gross and obnoxious, but in California it's looked on as an asset." Socialising brought its own pressures. "You start to think it's important to go to nightclubs. It's urgent, almost, that you do it, because there's magic inside! Then you get in and there isn't. But you don't learn your lesson. I found it all so weird. You know, someone would tell the door guy that I was Ashley Olsen's best friend, just so we could get into some club I didn't want to go to anyway."

Her revulsion at superficiality in general, and celebrity culture in particular, is comprehensive. She has witnessed the effect fame has had on her Twilight co-stars ("Sure, they're wealthy, but they're basically in a prison"). And she has experienced the shock of seeing paparazzi photographs of herself and her partner, the British film-maker Edgar Wright (who directed her in Scott Pilgrim), taken without their knowledge: "I started crying immediately. It was like someone emailing a picture of you sleeping. It felt scary and dangerous. It still does. I try to ignore it."

Fortunately, there is one small upside to fame. "People send you stuff if you say you're interested in something," she says. "I have a tonne of body lotion. So I could mention I was interested in, you know, surfing, and some company would send me a surfboard." Forget surfboards. Let's put the word out that she is into intelligent, unorthodox screenplays. Yes, that's it. Someone send Anna Kendrick some decent scripts pronto.

• What to Expect When You're Expecting is on general release.

Kelly's attempts to promote her latest film at Cannes are undone by a love-struck French millionaire

You want to sleep with Kelly Brook. Lost in Showbiz wants to sleep with Kelly Brook. Everyone wants to sleep with Kelly Brook! Even Kelly Brook wants to sleep with Kelly Brook. There's no point in denying it. If everyone in the world didn't want to sleep with Kelly Brook, then she wouldn't remain so prominent in the public consciousness.

Since her days on The Big Breakfast, Kelly has been cruelly ridiculed for her acting roles (from "Beautiful Woman in Painting" in Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo, to "Lyle's Girlfriend" in 2003's reimagining of The Italian Job). Perhaps it's her beauty that has undermined her ability to land roles that have actual names rather than vague character descriptions. People are sometimes sceptical about the artistic credibility of people born with uncannily symmetrical features. But probably it's just because she really is a bit rubbish at acting.

Brook is crazy-pretty and seems quite nice and that's why she stays famous. And if you can't get away with being famous just for being pretty at the Cannes film festival, then where can you get away with it? Anyway, that's where Kelly was this week, promoting her new film, Keith Lemon: the Movie (in which she plays the character "Kelly Brook", which – as a named part – does at least represent some progress). During a publicity shoot for the movie, a French millionaire, known only as "Frédéric", is reported to have stormed on to the set and made Kelly an Indecent Proposal: €1m in return for a single night "in her company".

And they say Frenchmen are the world's greatest lovers. Surely the most indecent part of his proposal was that it was made in units of the world's most crisis-stricken currency. Even had she considered the offer – which she did not – Kelly's busy Cannes diary would probably have prevented her from completing her side of the deal until the end of the week. By which time €1m would be unlikely to afford her so much as a can of Sprite down La Croisette.

I'll tell you what. If an eccentric French millionaire had the temerity to offer Lost in Showbiz €1m for a night in our company, we would slap him round his rotten face (then quietly accept when nobody was looking – not everyone can afford to be as dignified as Kelly Brook).

Oscar winner draws on direct family experience to put civil rights movement at centre of adaptation of Pete Dexter novel

Directors draw on many sources to draw truthful performances from their actors. But in depicting a prisoner on death row, not everyone has a brother serving a jail sentence for murder to tap for research.

But Lee Daniels, speaking before the Cannes premiere of his latest film, said he had personal experience of every one of the characters in his 1960s-set, Florida-noir story.

In The Paperboy, an adaptation of Pete Dexter's novel, two investigative reporters, played by David Oyelowo and Matthew McConaughey, are enlisted by Charlotte (Nicole Kidman) to investigate the conviction of a murderer, played by John Cusack, with whom she has fallen in love by letter.

"I know John's character because my brother's in jail for murder. And he has women that write [to] him. Whenever John gave me something that wasn't true, I knew," said Daniels.

Of McConaughey's character, who is secretly gay, he said, "I can't tell you how many men I've been with in the 1980s, 1990s, that were white men I could be intimate with but would publicly shun me, that would not be seen with a black man in public. And they hated themselves for it."

Of Kidman's character, he said: "I know this woman too: the woman that plays [the non-speaking role of Nicole's] best friend in the movie is my sister. She wrote to many men in prison."

Singer Macy Gray plays Anita, the home help of the Jansen brothers Ward and Jack – played by McConaughey and Zac Efron. Gray's character "was my family," said the director.

Daniels is something of a Cannes favourite: when his film Precious premiered here in 2009, before winning two Oscars, he was greeted with a standing ovation for his unblinking portrayal of an African American girl's struggles to find her own path amid a tough Harlem background.

For his next film – his first to play in competition for the Palme d'Or – he has also tackled race politics. His adaptation takes the civil rights movement of the 1960s – a struggle that lurks deep in the background of the original novel – and brings it centre stage.

It was partly, he said, because the issue of race relations had been "festering in me". And it was partly because "there aren't enough roles for black actors in the world". Daniels had planned to make a film called Selma, about the civil liberties march in 1965, but that project fell through at the last moment.

"That is part of the reason why I brought the race relations into this piece right here because it was festering in me. I kept going back to race because I couldn't shake Selma," said Daniels, who made his name as a producer of such titles as the Oscar-winning Monster's Ball before moving towards directing.

He made the radical decision to make one of the lead characters – Oyelowo's Yardley Acheman – black. He also expanded the role played by Gray, transforming the shadowy figure of the novel into a crucial narrating voice.

"I watched a movie called The Help," said Daniels. "Though I liked it, all my family was help, 90% of them. They … told me stories about working with very wealthy or rich white people.

"They loved the people they worked for, and there was a truth to Anita that I wanted to portray. And that's why I expanded [Gray's] role."

Gray added: "There are a lot less roles around for African Americans. But it's not always about race for [Daniels]. He's just so out of the box and so ready to try anything – to take a white character and make him black and see what happens, or vice versa."

Daniels' next project is The Butler, about long-serving White House butler Eugene Allen. Speaking at Cannes, he confirmed that Cusack would play Richard Nixon and McConaughey John F Kennedy.

We're delivering the headlines direct (via London) from the Croisette on the day The Paperboy premieres

9.24am: Good morning and welcome to day nine of the Cannes liveblog. Without further ado, let's see what the Cannesettes are tweeting as they come out of this morning's big screening, Lee Daniels's The Paperboy …

Hearty boos for The Paperboy

— Damon Wise (@yo_damo) May 24, 2012

I tell you what, Carax has NOTHING on Lee Daniels. Cinema does not get much weirder than Nicole Kidman pissing on Zac Efron. #cannes

— Robbie Collin (@robbiereviews) May 24, 2012

THE PAPERBOY screens at Cannes. Calamitous Florida noir, buggers fine source novel with abandon. Kidman pisses on Zac Efron (literally)

— Xan Brooks (@XanBrooks) May 24, 2012

THE PAPERBOY: a right old Southern gumbo but weirdly enjoyable. Right now Lee Daniels could well be the world's best bad director. #cannes

— Jonathan Romney (@JonathanRomney) May 24, 2012

THE PAPERBOY is the first bona fide fiasco of the festival. So bad it has to be seen to be believed. Transcendentally shambolic. #cannes

— Robbie Collin (@robbiereviews) May 24, 2012

9.33am: So: pretty exciting stuff. AND The Paperboy has a voiceover by Macy Gray. A little more Twitter reaction.

Fans of Zac Efron's body may care to know he is bare chested nine times in The Paperboy. And Nicole Kidman pees on his jellyfish sting

— Charles Gant (@charlesgant) May 24, 2012

Want to see Matt McConaughey face down on carpet, butt naked in handcuffs after kinky sex session? The Paperboy is the film for you

— Charles Gant (@charlesgant) May 24, 2012

THE PAPERBOY makes A TIME TO KILL look like TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD..

— James Rocchi (@jamesrocchi) May 24, 2012

9.40am: Not sufficiently sated by the Kidman/Efron wee news? Here's some Cannes content that went live overnight that you might have missed:

• A red carpet gallery of last night's premieres

• A lovely Cannes diary by Katrine Boorman about going to the festival, again, with her father, John, for the premiere of documentary Me and Me Dad

• The latest clapometer

9.46am: Our own Peter Bradshaw seems the keenest on The Paperboy so far

The Paperboy (dir. Lee Daniels) is a swampy, nasty, gator-filled treat and Nicole Kidman is really good #Cannes2012

— Peter Bradshaw (@PeterBradshaw1) May 24, 2012

9.53am: So what else have we got coming up today? Well, Peter will deliver his full verdict on The Paperboy, plus Xan Brooks gives us the skinny on Post Tenebras Lux, Henry Barnes reports on the Kayne West experimental short film Cruel Summer, Andrew Pulver rounds up The Central Park Five, and Peter then weighs in on The Dream and the Silence and In the Fog. Plus Charlotte Higgins will be reporting on that Nicole Kidman press conference, we'll have video reviews of all yesterday's big films, a couple of galleries, Xan's daily diary and much more. (Well, a bit more, perhaps, let's see how it goes.)

10.08am: As Cannes progresses, so the films get gradually weirder. Here's Xan Brooks on Post Tenebras Lux, the latest from the idiosyncratic Mexican behind Japon and Battle in Heaven and the surprisingly brilliant Silent Light. This one – not so much … 

10.11am: What with the excitement of hearing about the Paperboy's special delivery, I clean forgot that we've also got today Peter Bradshaw's verdict on Sightseers, the new one from Ben Wheatley, who made Down Terrace and Kill List and who we interviewed last week (I'm sure for him, too, these things are of equal importance).

10.30am: Those who love Cannes traditionally also have a soft spot for Boyzone, so there will much excitement when I reveal: this afternoon we will also have a video interview with Ronan Keating, who is in town promoting a new romcom called Goddess.

10.53am: Breaking news from the Paperboy press conference:

Macy Gray is at the Cannes press conference, looking like a gorgeous seven-foot voodoo doll of herself circa 1999. I'm so happy I could cry.

— Guy Lodge (@GuyLodge) May 24, 2012

11.17am: Four stars from Peter for both The Paperboy and The Dream and the Silence. Reviews live shortly.

11.31am: Some mazin quotes in tomorrow's Pete Doherty interview to promote Confession of a Child of the Century.

11.37am: Visual confirmation of what @GuyLodge suggested earlier.

Gray is on the left, alongside Kidman, McConaughey, Cusack and Efron.

11.53am: A bumper update. Here's Peter's full The Paperboy review.

Plus newbie Andrew Pulver joins Xan and Peter to review Holy Motors and On the Road.

11.55am: Some exciting casting news from the Paperboy press conference.

At Cannes,director Lee Daniels said his "Paperboy" stars Cusack + McConnaughey will play Nixon + JFK, respectively, in PG-13 "The Butler."

— Anne Thompson (@akstanwyck) May 24, 2012

1.03pm: Here's that Sightseers review we spoke of earlier.

1.48pm: Here's Peter giving four stars to The Dream and the Silence, Xan Brooks's tether-end diary and Henry Barnes's verdict on Kanye West's experimental short film Cruel Summer.

2.28pm: Steven Spielberg introduced the restored Jaws last night in Cannes. Here's what he said. You might like to grow a beard (unless you're there already), become a man (ditto) and try reading it aloud.

Well, let me start by saying thank you for accepting "Jaws" in the Cannes Classic programme which is a great honour. It occurs to me that I really have not introduced Jaws in maybe 35 years so it's been a long time since my last introduction to a picture that was actually being shot 38 years ago. A lot of water under the bridge, a lot of blood in the water, but a lot of careers changed for the better, a lot of people perhaps being affected for the worst about the water. I want to be able to clarify, now that I have you as my captured audience, that I have never had any animosity toward sharks. I love sharks, they've been very, very good to me and at the same time, Jaws was a very atavistic, primal story that came from the genius of Peter Benchley and the great book he wrote. And I just think that this is a movie that doesn't seem to have aged as, as perhaps as much as some of my other directed pictures. And for many reasons, I'm very, very proud of this film.

The experience one was a terrible one as you've all heard but those stories are not all apocryphal but by the same token, in a sense, I feel like my struggle with the ocean to bring Jaws to you was a bit like a divorce from the sea and at the same time I feel that the alimony settlement was all in my favour and all in your favor. So for all of the growing pains and labour pains of bringing Jaws to movie theaters, now it re-arrives in Cannes for the 100th Anniversary of Universal Studios. And also I think that the digital print that has been struck from the negative which can be certainly enjoyed, you know, on Blu-ray, looks as good if not better than the original print I remember seeing right out of the lab in 1974, '75. So thank you again for coming and enjoy it and I hope the picture, after all these years holds up for you. Thank you.

3.24pm: Is this the pinnacle of our coverage so far? I reckon so. Ronan Keating on playing a marine biologist in Goddess.

4.57pm: Here's a little gallery of the day so far. In other exciting news, I can confirm that Xan Brooks has interviewed Kylie.

5.21pm: Nice Paperboy pun here.

6.07pm: Okeydoke - I'm off for the evening now – see you in the morning for more Cannes japes, plus all the early word on David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis.

Knitted bathing costumes and weird 1960s fashions in trigger lively debate among those whose minds are winding down

Yorkshire's exceptional collection of home movies has found a new use, in the treatment of elderly people whose minds are not what they were.

Working with the Alzheimer's Society, Methodist Homes for the Aged and Age UK, the Yorkshire Film Archive has created a 'memory bank' of clips collated according to subjects which stimulated most enthusiasm in trials.

At 62, you begin to take an increasing interest in such bright ideas, and there is much fun to be had in speculating about my generation's likely choice of films to stave off the worst effects of dementia. The current ones, which feature in the first package from the bank, include knitted bathing costumes, free school milk, 1960s fashion mistakes, favourite fireworks and clocking on at work.

Sue Howard, director of the archive says:

They became the immediate hot topics for conversations after test audiences watched the films. As one Memory Bank user involved in the pilot told us: 'It's like the years peeling back – the memories are all still there; they just need a trigger.'

The bank has been divided into themed sections on Holidays, Schooldays, Sporting Fun, Working Life and Domestic Life after the trials at St Leonard's hospice in York, care homes across the region and lively get-together organisations such as the Dementia Cafe Group in Penistone. Howard says:

Memory Bank is about opening up our collections to a huge range of older people, many of whom face a number of age-related challenges, and who often have very few opportunities to see and enjoy films such as these.

Reminiscence therapy and memory work play an invaluable role in improving a sense of personal identity and wellbeing, and stimulating communication and sociability. We're fortunate to have a fantastic visual record of everyday life over the decades – just the sort of films that trigger all of our collective memories.

The gerontologist Prof Dianne Willcocks calls the bank:

a compelling and fun way for people to reclaim their lived past – and to share it with family, friends and carers alike. It works both for those living with dementia and for those simply living with rich memories.

It may also contain me. We gave our family's home movies to the archive some years ago. They go back to the 1920s and I think that they do indeed contain at least one knitted bathing costume.

And talking of those, check out this film from 1926 in which they feature, kindly provided on YouTube by the British Film Institute.

Catch up with the last seven days in the world of film

The big story

Cannes 2012 rumbles on this week, as you surely can't have failed to notice. Xan Brooks and Peter Bradshaw have been providing regular updates on the Guardian Film Show, with video reviews of On the Road and Holy Motors, Killing Them Softly and The Angels' Share, Amour and The Hunt, as well as interviews with Michel Gondry and Michael Haneke.

Meanwhile, news reaches us that some journalists at the festival are being charged to interview stars, that Ken Loach has some stern words for the BBFC, and that some folks have had a look at footage from Quentin Tarantino's forthcoming Django Unchained.

There's much more news besides - to stand any chance of keeping up with it all, and with the latest reviews from the festival, keep an eye on our daily live blog. Or, for an unbeatably snappy précis of the key going-on, here's a brief guide to what's hot and what's not at Cannes.

In the news

Tom Cruise set for Magnificent Seven remake

Johnny Depp made honorary member of Comanche nation

John Wayne's True Grit eyepatch for sale in online auction

Duncan Jones to direct Ian Fleming biopic

Pinewood Shepperton suffers loss after 'Hollywood' project was blocked

Tajikistan bans The Dictator

Blade Runner sequel will reunite Ridley Scott with original screenplay writer

On the blog

Girls on film: how Tim Burton finally got his vamp right

Iron Sky doesn't stand out from the crowdsourcing

Cine-files: Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry

Clip joint: Shopping malls

What's the first film you remember watching?

Watch and listen

Josh Brolin on Men in Black III: 'I laugh and cry at everything'

Skyfall trailer lands: James Bond channels Timmy Mallett

Ronan Keating on Goddess: 'I am nervous about the critics'

Anchorman 2: watch the trailer

All our Cannes 2012 picture galleries

Further reading

Wes Anderson interview: 'I don't think any of us are normal people'

Danny Glover: the good cop

Tim Roth interview: Who's the daddy?

Reel history: Iron Sky loses the Nazi plot on a cheap moon set

Michael Fassbender: the man to take on Brando's mantle

In the paper

In tomorrow's G2 Film & Music Ryan Gilbey interviews Anna Kendrick, star of What to Expect When You're Expecting, there's a look at Pete Doherty's debut film appearance in Confession of a Child of the Century, and reviews of this week's new releases.

The Guide on Saturday looks at how Prometheus came to life and John Patterson writes on Hungarian director Béla Tarr, while in Sunday's Observer New Review Mark Kermode writes on cinema's 10 best aliens, and Tynchy Stryder, David Lammy, Fraser Nelson, Goldie and Penny Woodcock give their views on Ill Manors, Plan B's directorial debut.

And finally

• Follow @guardianfilm on Twitter

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Oscar-winning actor will also take producing credit for project currently at centre of Cannes bidding war

Nine long years separated Lynne Ramsay's second feature film, Morvern Callar, from last year's critically acclaimed We Need to Talk About Kevin, but the Scottish director can perhaps look forward to a faster turnaround for her next project, after Natalie Portman has signed up for western Jane Got a Gun.

Portman's star has rarely been higher in the Hollywood firmament after winning a best actress Oscar for 2010's Black Swan and it was recently revealed that users of IMDb view her profile more than any other actor. Jane Got a Gun also benefits from a screenplay by Brian Duffield, which made the 2011 Black List of the best unproduced scripts in Hollywood. Portman is down to play the lead, a farmer's wife whose outlaw husband returns home bloodied and near death after his gang turn on him. When the miscreants reappear to finish the job, Jane must enlist the help of an old flame to defend her life and home. Portman will also take a producer's credit.

The film is currently at the centre of a bidding war in Cannes, where it is being touted to investors. Ramsay is also planning an ambitious (though low-budget) science fiction-themed adaptation of Moby-Dick, though it must be said the Portman project looks like it may stand a better chance of reaching cinemas.

Portman is also due to appear in the next two films by Terrence Malick, another maverick director previously known for taking his time with film projects. These are currently titled Lawless and Knight of Cups.

Wes Anderson is on form with a charming tale about two unpopular kids who fall in love and run away

Wes Anderson's film-making style is now as singular and familiar as Japanese noh theatre, and he has been around long enough for audiences to know whether this style rubs them the wrong or the right way. For me, it is the latter, although I became disenchanted with Anderson with the release of The Darjeeling Limited in 2007, a film in which the qualities of gentleness and charm had disastrously gone missing from his habitual mannerisms: the result was self-indulgent. But his Americanised, animated version of Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr Fox two years later was an amiable step back in the right direction, and now there is Moonrise Kingdom, another sprightly confection of oddities, attractively eccentric, witty and strangely clothed in the manner of his The Royal Tenenbaums, and like Rushmore, specifically about young people.

This is an evocation of young love in a more innocent America: a charming, beautifully wrought, if somehow depthless film; heartfelt and thought through to the tiniest, quirkiest detail in classic Anderson style. There are the familiar rectilinear shots and compositions with letters and drawings suddenly filling the screen like courtroom exhibits.

Anderson's movies often mark out their own weirdly regressive, faintly dysfunctional space, from which the modern world has been politely excluded, and whose occupants communicate in a kind of modified private language. In Moonrise Kingdom he takes us back to 1965, in a little coastal town in New England called New Penzance. Perhaps, in its quaintness, it is more truthful to the homely values of a small town America, which often looked the same in the 1960s as it did in the 50s and 40s, though this is Anderson-America in the Anderson-60s, a knight's-move away from the actual time and place.

Where David Lynch finds a dark horror beneath the wholesome exterior, Anderson sees something exotic but practical and self-possessed; a world that ticks along like an antique toy, much treasured by a precocious child. The homes and buildings often look like giant dolls' houses.

Teenage newcomers Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward play Sam and Suzy, two smart, unpopular kids who fall in love. Sam is a member of the local scout troop; an orphan, clever if not wise beyond his years, and affecting a corn-cob pipe, he resembles a young Douglas MacArthur. Suzy likes sci-fi novels and the music of Françoise Hardy, which she plays on a portable record player. She often spies on her parents and their friends using binoculars, and the movie in many ways shares her deadpan detachment.

When they run away together, Anderson shows how the ensuing crisis discloses the older generation's unhappiness. Bill Murray and Frances McDormand are Suzy's parents; their marriage is in crisis and they are sunk in anxiety and self-pity, sleeping in single beds, hardly ever meeting each other's eye and addressing each other as "counsellor", an affectionate in-joke that has calcified into something almost as formal as courtroom style. Bruce Willis is the police chief: lonely and depressed for reasons of his own, and Edward Norton is the scout troop leader, preposterous yet dignified in his absurd shorts and long socks. Grownups and kids are united in their fear and loathing of the social services officer, keen to put Sam away in an orphanage, played by Tilda Swinton in an electric-blue outfit, like an hostile insurgent from another planet.

The movie takes its odd but attractive keynote of high-mindedness from the music of Benjamin Britten. Suzy and her siblings listen to Britten's Young Persons' Guide to the Orchestra and Suzy performs in a church production of Noye's Fludde, a work whose resonance reveals itself in the movie's tempestuous final act. The music is an interesting assertion of the uncool, stolidly Anglo-Saxon character of this parochial, islanded corner of America – evoked not with conventional nostalgia, rather with a connoisseurship of how strange and different it seems. In fact, the production design of Anderson's film is, as ever, a remarkable achievement. The little kitchenette in which Willis's police chief cooks a hamfisted breakfast for Sam perfectly reflects his cramped, uncared-for loneliness.

Anderson's movies are vulnerable to the charge of being supercilious oddities, but there is elegance and formal brilliance in Moonrise Kingdom, as well as a lot of gentle, winning comedy. No one but Anderson could have contrived the scene in which the two young lovers are told to stand "over there – by the trampoline" and then we see them, waiting unself-consciously while another boy demonstrates some athletic bouncing moves on the trampoline, quite heedless of the unfolding drama. Anderson's homemade aesthetic is placed at the service of a counter-digital, almost hand-drawn cinema, and he has an extraordinary ability to conjure a distinctive universe, entire of itself. To some, Moonrise Kingdom may be nothing more than a souffle of strangeness, but it rises superbly.

Rating: 4/5

Josh Brolin, who plays the young Tommy Lee Jones in Men in Black III, talks to Paul MacInnes

While director Jaime Rosales doesn't make things easy for his audience, this rewarding and cerebral film lingers in the mind

The Spanish director Jaime Rosales is one of the most interesting and valuable film-makers at this year's Cannes. He's a director who first came to notice here with his deeply disturbing 2003 film The Hours of the Day, and then his Solitary Fragments, about the Madrid bombings, in 2007, a movie that sadly never found its way to the UK. His work has become steadily more experimental and demanding. Bullet in the Head, in 2008, was a mysterious, almost wordless movie in which the characters were filmed from afar, as if under surveillance. Now The Dream and the Silence arrives in Cannes, and in many ways it is his most difficult, and yet rewarding film: a work that lingers in the mind.

Rosales sure doesn't make things easy for his audience. The Dream and the Silence is shot in a grainy black-and-white, apart from two moments filmed in colour. The reason? That is elusive. A succession of scenes are filmed largely from fixed camera positions, a fly-on-the-wall set-up which records the speech and actions of non-professional performers who sometimes wander out of shot.

It is the story of a Spanish family: a construction engineer who is married to a teacher of French; they have two daughters. A terrible accident – though one which is never shown on screen, and never wholly explained – causes a tragedy, although the irony is that the father now suffers from memory loss, so that he cannot fully feel the anguish and grief he should be going through. The film's procedure intuits his numbness to some degree, but partly operates as a kind of alienation effect. There is an extraordinary moment in which the grieving woman is shown speaking to someone off-camera about the toys of her childhood. When we realise what's been happening in that scene, the effect is very powerful; were it not for Rosales's distancing methods, that power would perhaps have been diminished.

Jaime Rosales is a film-maker to be compared with Lucrecia Martel, particularly her film The Headless Woman, which has the same opaque, mysterious and yet realist quality. Yet it is utterly distinctive. The Dream and the Silence is the work of someone with enormous intelligence and a need to see the world afresh.

Rating: 4/5

The Paperboy definitely doesn't deliver. It's much the worst in show, making other ordinary fare look masterful. Cannes is winding down and I think I've seen enough

The Cannes film festival rolls clear through the weekend: it's not over until the fat lady sings. This morning, with the sun out and the sea brightly lapping, the guests down to watch Nicole Kidman piss on Zac Efron's face. I'm seeing this as a warm-up of sorts.

My but The Paperboy is calamitous, a howling-yowling dog of a movie; far and away the worst in show. Lee Daniels does not so much direct as distract, grabbing hold of Pete Dexter's splendidly lean and lethal source novel and gorging it on so much junk-food that the plot plays out as a series of cardiac arrests. We get slow-motion, split-screen and no end of needless expository voiceover from Macy Gray's sassy Florida housemaid, on hand to tell us all about wicked Hillary van Wetter (John Cusack) and the fading belle who loves him.

Efron plays younger brother to Matthew McConaughey's closeted investigative reporter, on a mission to uncover a miscarriage of justice yet surely destined to lose his way in the swamps, where the alligators are massing. The performances are rich, ripe and tangy, just right for this southern gothic pantomine. But the handling and delivery are a terrible mess. "Anyhoo," drawls Gray, as Kidman prepares to yank off her transvestite trucker wig and climb up aboard the Efron, "I think y'all have seen enough."

Where Daniels tells us too much, Carlos Reygadas risks saying too little. His Post Tenebras Lux needs more light and less shadow as it bobs and drifts around a priapic middle-class Mexican couple, from misty rainforest to sweaty bath-house, from squabbling dogs to a CGI Satan. While Reygadas is a maestro of the bewitching tableaux, on this occasion he seems to have bewitched even himself. He's directing in a trance, with his back to the audience. Even so, compared to The Paperboy, this looks like a masterpiece.

Slowly, slyly, under our very noses, the festival is winding down. Down in the marche, many stalls are still open for business. But the place is not as bustling as it has been and everywhere you look, you see signs of imminent abandonment: packing crates and waste-paper bins and the Arctic blankness of the abandoned office. One by one, the buyers are sellers are shipping out. And one by one, it seems that Cannes' other inhabitants are coming back. The ratio has shifted out on the Croisette, where there are now at least as many locals as visitors, while the homeless (reputedly cleared out before the festival began) have magically reappeared down in the underpass. They snore quietly as I hurry by, trying not to disturb them. I've stayed too long, it's time to go. I think y'all have seen enough.

The biggest problem with 3D is its disrespect towards viewers' intelligence. People know when they're being ripped off

There was a time – let's call it "2009" – when 3D looked like it could be the future of cinema. At that point, it was a technology long thought of as the last refuge of theme park gimmickry. James Cameron's Avatar, despite having a script written by Ralph Wiggum, changed all of that. It used 3D as a cinematographic tool – specifically built into the production and integral to its execution. It was impressive. What's followed since, isn't.

For Avatar made money – a lot of it. And what started as a risky revival of a 1950s 3D craze has now become the saturated embodiment of Hollywood laziness and cynicism – a "we'll stick any old shit in 3D" attitude that shows nothing but contempt towards its audience. And it's safe to assume, they agree: despite initial interest (mainly due to Avatar and Toy Story 3), 3D audience figures are falling, with ticket sales down 4% last year despite a record number of 47 films released in the format. Not only that, but with a YouGov poll last year showing interest waning, complaints mounting about headaches and, with the release of Men In Black 3 this week, a row between studios and cinemas over just who pays for 3D glasses, the cracks are beginning to grow larger.

You may have guessed, but I am not a fan of 3D cinema. I've tried. Honestly, I have. I've put in the time. I've spent the money. I even thought, at one point, there might be a future for us. But no. The main problem, beyond the expense, is that cinema is an immersive medium – one that stands or falls on the suspension of belief and its ability to rip you out of your surroundings. Some berk talking, another eating popcorn too loud, an Adam Sandler film – those are things that snap that suspension to remind you that, yes, you are sitting in a room gawping at a screen. 3D has the same effect: it's a distraction from what is actually on show; a vandalism of vibrant imagery.

The greatest uses of 3D – Martin Scorsese's Hugo being a prime example, and the recently released Hara-Kari: Death Of A Samurai being another – have been those with a sense of purpose behind it. Technology has been woven into the film process as an actual story-telling device, rather than just slapped on top for the sake of it. And there lies its biggest problem: a disrespect towards the audience's intelligence. Did The Avengers (or "Avengers Assemble", if you want to be an arse about it) really need to be converted to 3D? Does Baz Luhrmann's take on The Great Gatsby, out later this year, really need to be in 3D? People are not stupid. And they know when they're being ripped off.

With general cinema attendance falling and the film industry in flux, focus has shifted towards the "cinema experience" in order to get people away from their TV. It's happened before. In 1951, US film attendance fell to 46 million from 90 million in 1948. The very first 3D film, Bwana Devil, tried to fix that in 1952 to modest success. In 1953, widescreen colour images and stereo sound did considerably better. But what now? No matter how much James Cameron pushes it (with, as this blog interestingly points out, dubious reasons), 3D is dying a slow, painful death.

An obvious, reactionary answer would be: "Make better films." After all, it was the character-led stuff such as The King's Speech and Bridesmaids that did well last year – not 3D. Yet in terms of the cinema experience itself, quality over quantity seems to be the key. For instance, in a recent interview, Christopher Nolan revealed that he refused Warner Bros' request to film The Dark Knight Rises in 3D ("films are 3D. The whole point of photography is that it's three-dimensional… if you're looking for an audience experience, [3D] is hard to embrace"), opting to shoot nearly an hour of it on Imax cameras instead – the operatic, larger-than-life "gold standard" of cinema, as Nolan dubbed it.

Even on a smaller scale, cinemas such as the Prince Charles in London – with its sing-along showings and Labyrinth balls – are showing that you can do a lot more with the cinema experience than simply whacking some 3D glasses on it. That's not to say Hollywood should adapt that approach directly, of course, but it could certainly do with learning a thing or two about fun, thought and imagination. Or else, they'll just release, re-release and re-package until film eats itself. And no one wants that – especially if it's in 3D.

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Nicole Kidman's performance is To Die For in Lee Daniels's gripping, scary and queasily funny Florida noir

A heady, humid swamp fever rises from Lee Daniels's violent and black-comic Florida noir The Paperboy, based on the thriller by Pete Dexter: a lazy, funny tone co-exists with menace, and Nicole Kidman gives her best performance since To Die For. Race, sex, journalism, publishing and 60s America are all part of the mix – The Help was never like this – and Daniels keeps it bubbling. This gripping, scary and queasily funny picture nurtures a dark threat which lurks like one of its gators just below the surface.

Apart from everything else, The Paperboy is about family dysfunction: Scott Glenn plays WW, a smalltown Florida newspaper publisher whose louche son Ward (Matthew McConaughey), having gone into the family business, has just come in from Miami on a mission to write a massive story about a miscarriage of justice on their doorstep. Convicted felon Hillary Van Wetter, played by a horribly sleazy and bloated John Cusack, faces the electric chair for a crime he didn't commit. Ward and his colleague Yardley (David Oyelowo) – a black man whose smooth British accent cows the racist locals – figure they can crack this case wide open, and Ward's excitable kid brother Jack, played by Zac Efron, has offered to be their driver.

Their ace in the hole is Charlotte Bless (Kidman), a blowsy, sexy and very unstable woman who has been writing to Hillary in jail, and is now his fiancée. The boys are allowed to come along on her prison visits to Hillary, and ask him questions after the engaged couple have finished getting each other off with the no-hands dirty talk permitted by the prison authorities. Inevitably, Jack begins to fall for her.

Nicole Kidman really is terrifically good as Charlotte: funny, sexy, poignantly vulnerable. In her own way, she is a romantic, though the romanticism resides very greatly in the sheer auto-erotic potency of that sweaty, dangerous criminal who is behind bars. Charlotte is like Blanche DuBois, but with no illusions, and part of her is tickled pink by poor moony Jack's infatuation with her. Zac Efron is very good as the sad, motherless boy, whose only friend is the family's stoical maid Anita, nicely played by Macy Gray. Jack is sick of being treated like a kid brother or a puppy dog by Charlotte, but holding out the hope that their intimacy can be converted into an opportunity for sex. Their scene together at the beach, where Charlotte primly confiscates Jack's copy of Lolita, is smart, and then tense, and then hilarious.

Matthew McConaughey is marginally less successful; as an actor, his mannerisms can be intrusive: though Daniels keeps them under check here, and his opaque, snappy relationship with the testy Yardley creates a counter-current of tension, complicating the atmosphere created by Charlotte and her frustrated young courtier Jack. And, of course, under all this is the sinister, malign presence of Hillary – a very nasty performance from Cusack. Daniels cleverly creates a situation in which the group have almost forgotten about him, but they are gradually sensing that they could be releasing into the community a very nasty piece of work. The Paperboy doesn't aspire to any great commentary on America: but it's a smart, entertaining thriller with an excellent performance from Kidman.

Rating: 4/5

Lawyers claim extra on Transformers: Dark of the Moon was hit by snapped cable during previously aborted action sequence

An extra on the latest Transformers film who suffered significant brain damage when a stunt went badly wrong has been rewarded $18.5m in compensation by a Chicago judge as part of a settlement.

Gabriella Cedillo, then 24, was one of 80 extras brought in to appear in the background of an action sequence shooting in the city of Hammond, near Chicago, on 1 September 2010 for Transformers: Dark of the Moon, the third film in Michael Bay's series. At the time of the accident, she was driving her own car, a 2006 Toyota.

In their suit, Cedillo's lawyers claimed the aspiring actor was hit by a snapped cable which had been pulling another vehicle involved in the stunt. It crashed through her windscreen and struck her in the head. Neither Paramount Pictures nor DreamWorks Studios, the film's production partners, had a permit for fireworks or explosive devices on the day, and lawyers argued that a "completely inadequate superficial weld had been applied in a failed effort to secure the bracket to the [stunt] car", according to NBC Chicago. It has also been revealed that the same stunt had failed the previous day, resulting in its abandonment.

"I think they were well aware of what was going on out there," said Cedillo's lawyer, Todd Smith. "They were actually announcing on the radio, that, watch out for the debris. The people were driving around, apparently, trying to dodge debris as they drove along."

He added: "She will be taken care of. I wouldn't have resolved this case if I didn't think so."

After the accident, Cedillo was airlifted to a nearby hospital where she underwent emergency brain surgery. She had lost "about a third of the top of her head," according to her lawyer. The injured woman's legal team launched multiple lawsuits against the two studios, but allege both organisations did everything they could to avoid a payout, though they did initially offer to cover the victim's medical bills. These totalled $350,000 alone in 2010 but no payment was received, resulting in Cedillo being forced to cover her bills through the US public aid system. Transformers: Dark of the Moon went on to take more than $1bn at the global box office.

Cedillo is now undergoing therapy at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and reportedly remembers nothing of the incident. "We're hoping for the best, for her to continue her education, maybe some day get married and so on. But, you know, we'll just have to wait and see," her brother, Rudy Romo, told NBC.

The film industry blog Deadline reported on Wednesday that the settlement would have been delayed even further had Cedillo's lawyers not attempted to pull Transformers' high-profile director Michael Bay and his Platinum Dunes company into the suit. A Paramount spokesman told Deadline: "We are pleased that the Cedillo family has agreed to move forward with the settlement. This was a tragic accident and our thoughts and prayers remain with Gabriella."

Patch Wayne wore as Rooster Cogburn in classic western expected to sell for more than £20,000

An eyepatch that John Wayne wore when he played Rooster Cogburn in the classic western True Grit is expected to fetch more than £20,000 at auction.

Wayne wore the patch in the 1969 film and in the sequel, called simply Rooster Cogburn, six years later.

He won an Oscar for True Grit and acknowledged the significance of the patch in his acceptance speech, joking: "Wow! If I'd known I'd have put the patch on 35 years earlier."

In November 1975, Wayne donated this patch to the Southern California Symphony Society to be auctioned off to raise funds, together with a letter in which he certified that it was authentic.

He wrote: "Dear Friend: Please let this certify that the enclosed 'eyepatch' is one which I wore during the filming of True Grit and Rooster Cogburn. Now that my eye is better I'm happy to donate it to such a worthy cause – the Southern California Chamber Symphony Society auction.

"Wear it in good health! Sincerely, John Wayne."

The patch is being auctioned online by Los Angeles-based Nate D Sanders.

The auction house's owner, Nate Sanders, said: "This is the ultimate piece for fans of the western movie, a uniquely American genre. John Wayne is the iconic actor for westerns and this eyepatch is the iconic prop in his most famous role."

The lot is estimated at $35,000. The auction ends on 29 May.