I just saw my last Cannes film: "La Mujer Sin Cabeza" ("The Headless Woman"), from director Lucrecia Martel (2004's "The Holy Girl"). It's a minor but effective "Blow-Up" about an upper-class Argentine woman (Maria Onetto) whose life becomes unmoored after she possibly kills a young boy while driving on a country road. Onetto's quite special as bourgeoisette who drifts into and then out of a state of heightened clarity, and you can feel the anger burning away under the movie's cool glass surface. Perhaps Martel should have let more of it erupt onto the screen. There may be a cultural disconnect on my part, since the Argentine guys I sat next to during the screening roundly booed it. But movies are a blood sport here; that's part of the sadistic fun.

I leave tomorrow morning and head back to Boston -- believe me, I haven't built up the necessary physical endurance yet to do this festival from beginning to end. So I'll miss Steven Soderbergh's two-part "Che" biopic starring Benicio del Toro, as well as Charlie Kaufman's "Synecdoche, New York" and "Wendy and Lucy," the new film by Kelly Reichardt ("Old Joy"). Plus all the good movies I won't even know that I'm missing. (II'll also miss walking the kilometer down the Rue D'Antibes from my rabbit hole to the Palais every morning while swifts circle overhead and emit piercing calls easily mistaken for the cries of rabid Italian journalists.)

Eastwood's "The Exchange" (see post below) continues to divide audiences, which is always a good thing. I'm still sorting my negative response to the film out -- I might have responded more favorably with a lead actress who didn't pack so much star baggage. That's arguably my problem more than Jolie's or Eastwood's, but, still: As dowdy as this star gets, it's impossible to deglamorize her, and that cuts into the sense of realism the filmmaker is purporting to create. Glenn Kenny begs to differ, and he's always a good read. He taps into something, though, when he points out that this may be Clint's angriest film since "Unforgiven". That anger results in portrayals of the villainous LAPD higher-ups (I'm giving nothing away here) that are as nuanced as Victorian stage heavies. In other words, if Jeffrey Donovan as Capt. J.J. Jones had a moustache, he'd twirl it.

Glenn points out something else I'd neglected to mention: James Gray's "Two Lovers" (see post below) is in fact based on Fyodor Dostoevsky's "White Nights," and in it's clammy Brooklyn way, manages to honor the source. Until the ending. I still say that ending's spinach.

Some housecleaning: "Los Bastardos," from Mexico's Amat Escalanto is "Funny Games" with an illegal immigrant political gloss: Two migrant laborers (Jesus Moises Rodriguez and Ruben Sosa) are hired by an unseen L.A. man to kill his wife (Nina Zavarin). Interesting, well-done, wholly painful to sit through, and not as intellectually savvy as it thinks.

"The Silence of Lorna," the latest from the beloved Dardenne brothers, Jean-Pierre et Luc, is pretty rock-solid, with the young actress Arta Dobroshi (a less porcelain Juliette Binoche; see photo up top) heartbreakingly effective as an Albanian illegal caught up in a complex green-card scheme in Belgium that forces her to recalibrate her morals. It's not top-drawer Dardenne -- the necessary tending to plot seems to have dulled their focus a bit -- but it's quite good.

"Liverpool" -- I walked into this one thinking it might be an unexpected companion piece to "Of Time and the City" (see post below). Silly me: it's a Lisandro Alonso movie, which means a total of 11 camera shots lasting seemingly 10 minutes each and a dead-end narrative about a prodigal son's dead-end return to a small snowbound village. It's my first encounter with Alonso, and I'm told his earlier movies, "La Libertad" in particular, are quite good. This one struck me as a Bela Tarr movie left to die in a snowbank.

Lastly, "The Pleasure of Being Robbed," one of the few SxSW/Sundance-y sort of American indies to unspool here. Low-fi in the extreme, with Eleanore Hendricks endearing in a completely maddening way as a New York City klepto-chick who drifts through life and other women's handbags, it's directed by Josh Safdie, part of the Red Bucket Films collective of depressingly recent B.U. graduates. Pretty much the whole gang's in Cannes and I'll be writing a piece on them for the newspaper, but here's a photo I took of them in a park, and, yes, they're as young and spilling over with beautiful cinema ideals as they appear. Oh, to be 23 and in love with the films of Robert Bresson.

Clint Eastwood's "The Exchanged" had its title unceremoniously changed from "The Changeling" two days ago. Maybe the studio was afraid the teen crowd would think it was a horror movie, but having watched it at 8:30 a.m. Croisette time, I'm not sure who the audience for this even is. Angelina Jolie completists who want to watch her express maternal panic with newfound insights? Los Angeles history buffs looking for a precision recreation of the City of Angels in 1928? Folks wanting a grueling tale of kidnapping, serial child killing, and the venality of the LAPD?

Jolie plays Christine Collins, a single mother whose 9-year-old boy goes missing one day. After two months, the LAPD -- embattled by charges of corruption at all levels -- produces a child. Problem is, Collins maintains it's not her child. Before the movie's over, she'll have been railroaded into a mental institution straight out of "The Snake Pit," befriended a helpful whore (Amy Ryan), been abetted by a fire-breathing local minister (John Malkovich!), and taken on the entire civic structure of greater Los Angeles. There's also a subplot about a creepy mass murderer out in the desert (Jason Butler Harner channeling Peter Lorre in "M").

This is based closely on real events, although "The Exchanged" doesn't mention that anywhere in the movie - I hear Eastwood wants the story to stand on its own. The problem is that it doesn't; without that admission of actuality, it's a grim tour through heartbreaking loss, madness, bureaucratic fascism, and the torture of innocents. Even with the knowledge that "it actually happened," you never feel a compelling reason for sitting through the film: it's trying to be too many things at once. Jolie is very good in some scenes and too carefully overwrought in others, and the ultimate open-endedness of the story is frustrating after 140 minutes of uneven drama. "The Exchanged" is a "Zodiac" that also wants to tell a tale of gutsy heroism in the classic Hollywood tradition, and the two aspects don't square.

The production design is pitch perfect though, even without Eastwood's longstanding PD aboard -- the late Henry Bumstead. (There's a diner in the film named "Bummy's" in his honor.) There are some defenders of the film to be heard in the hallways of the press section -- Scott Foundas of the L.A. Weekly, notably -- but most people seemed to come out feeling that Clint has aimed for another "Mystic River" and missed.

Another lumpy American film played last night: James Gray's "Two Lovers," with Joaquin Phoenix as a Brooklyn schlub torn between a nice Jewish girl (Vinessa Shaw) and a crazy blond neighbor (Gwyneth Paltrow). The moral's pretty simple: shiksas are trouble. They love Gray in France, perhaps because his dour crime-inflected dramas ("The Yards," "We Own the Night") feature dialogue that sounds ponderous in English but archetypal with French subtitles. "Two Lovers" shows him loosening up a little, and I enjoyed the movie reasonably as a enjoyable romantic/fatalistic genre wallow. Couple of points, though: the cast are about ten years too old for their roles, Shaw is too chicly gorgeous to be believable as a Brighton Beach lonelyhearts (Betsy Blair in "Marty" would have been about right), and the final scenes provide a feel-good closure that the rest of the movie just hasn't earned. Phoenix's Leonard should have wound up like Edward G. Robinson in an old Fritz Lang film -- totally hosed. But as they say in "The Exchanged," "People like happy endings."

As the Guvernator might say, I interrupt Ty's "Cannes-age" with some thoughts from Mark Feeney about that new Indiana Jones movie we watched together yesterday. The movie put my central processing unit to sleep. Fortunately not Mark's.

The most bizarre plot element in ?Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? doesn?t have anything to do with extraterrestrials or the existence of El Dorado or even Shia LaBeouf?s comb-wielding hommage a Marlene Dietrich in ?Dishonored? _ all of which do figure in the movie. No, it?s a thankfully short-lived subplot about the FBI suspecting Indy of being a security threat.

How can such a thing be, an all-American hero like Indy, a subversive? Well, this is 1957, and his miraculous escape from a squad of tommy-gun-wielding Soviet soldiers in Area 51 (their presence is the movie?s second most bizarre plot element) raises suspicions. A pair of feds, one of whom bears a curious resemblance to Red-baiter
Roy Cohn, give Indy a grilling and clearly have doubts about where his loyalties lie.

Back in the classroom -- yes, that is New Haven, but Yale wasn?t coed back then, so maybe it?s the Connecticut campus of Hollywood High -- Indy finds himself put on administrative leave because of the government accusations. His dean (Jim Broadbent) resigns in protest. It?s a simple, if clunky, way to balance the hoary Red-menace aspect of the plot with an equally hoary jab at McCarthyism. Not to mention give the movie a slight but unmistakable homeland-security vibe.

The problem is, on the evidence of Indy?s own words, he is a communist. He?s packing his bags to leave when the dean asks him what he?s going to do. First, Indy says, he?s going to London, then there?s a job offer from the University of Leipzig he might well take. Leipzig is in what was then East Germany. Indy wants to defect!

Of course, this may account for Indy?s ability to hold up so well at such a ripe old age through all his physically demanding adventures _ he had access to those drugs the East Germans were using on their Olympic athletes. Not only is Indy a commie, he?s a juiced commie.

The British filmmaker Terence Davies doesn't come out with new work very often -- he's only made five features in 24 years -- so "Of Time and the City" is something of an event. And even though it runs a brief 72 minutes, this documentary memory play about Davies' hometown of Liverpool is so rich with emotion, nostalgia, clarity, and love that it feels epic. Davies himself narrates over the inspired onrush of historical and archival footage, and his hoarse, whispered cadences have the urgency of the confessional and the scornful humor of the outsider. Hear him sneer delightedly at the ascension of Queen Elizabeth II, aka "the Betty Windsor Show," or mock "the British genius for creating the dismal" over images of post-war housing projects and their awful decay.

"Of Time and the City" (here's the offical website) uses music brilliantly, especially in a section that stitches together a day in post-WWII Liverpool from archival footage and sets to achingly beautiful medieval polyphony (Perotin's "Beata Viscera," to be particular). Note to rockers: Davies could care less about the Beatles. No idea if the film will get picked up for U.S. release, but it's easily the most haunting work I've seen at Cannes. "We love the place we hate, we hate the place we love," Davies narrates. "Come closer now and see your dreams. Come closer now, and see mine."

What does a 100-year-old working filmmaker do? Anything he wants, obviously. Today Portugal's Manoel de Oliveira received a Golden Palm at Cannes for his body of work -- 46 features and short films that are challenging, frustrating, mystical, and very much alive. Clint Eastwood was a few rows behind me (that's him above shaking hands with de Oliveira), and Cannes jury foreman Sean Penn was in the hall along with other jury members. It isn't often you get to stand up for a living legend.

A short tribute video was screened (in which de Oliveira casually mentioned that the first films he saw, "hand-in-hand with my father," were the earliest of silent films), as well as the director's first work: the 1931 "Labor on the River Douro," a poetic and playful aquatic example of the "city symphony" documentary genre then in vogue. In between, de Oliveira hopped up the steps to the stage -- really, we should all be this spry at 100 -- and spoke to the crowd about how he much preferred receiving an award this way because he doesn't like competition.

Here's some video of the standing O and the director's beaming response, with a quick climpse of Clint in the audience. The man on stage in white is the great French actor Michel Piccoli, the bald gentleman is Cannes festival founder Gilles Jacob, and the compartive kid is current festival director Thierry Fermaux.

By the way, de Oliveira's currently at work on his 47th movie.

I didn't spend yesterday just watching the new "Indiana Jones" movie and filing copy -- in the morning I caught "Gomorra," a very good Italian film about the Mafia in daily life (based on a non-fiction book that's a sensation in-country, telling tales and exposing how deeply rooted corruption is at every level of Italy). With dozens of characters bulleting around (most of them male, most of them not terribly bright, many of them dead before too long), it's not an action or crime movie so much as a pesudo-documentary on interspecies aggression. With rich, real characters. Sort of like if Robert Altman had directed "The Godfather." (And I mean sort of). I haven't read the book, but Glenn Kenny has, and he says the scene in the film where the exploited tailor (Salvatore Cantalupo, weary and terrific) sees the dress he made being worn by Scarlett Johansson on TV was in reality the Dolce & Gabbana dress Angelina Jolie wore to the Oscars.

After Indy, I schlepped to "Ashes of Time Redux," Wong Kar-wai's remix (photo, above) of one of his earliest films and certainly his only martial arts movie. The original 1994 "Ashes," which I haven't seen (it's available in a poorly done DVD version) apparently didn't make much sense, and it certainly doesn't now, but, lord, is it a vision to behold -- a wu xia film turned into an abstract expressionist action painting. I believe the only redux-ing that has been done is a digital clean up, some trimming, and a new score with cello solos by Yo-yo Ma. In that case, what Wong and cinematographer Cristopher Doyle (who were present at the screening, along with the cast) created 14 years ago is either a masterpiece of in-camera wizardry or a triumph of lab work. After all the Indiana Jones madness, I felt like I was tripping. Ended up sleeping through my morning screening, too.

By Ty Burr
Globe staff

*** (three stars)

No, it?s not as good as ?Raiders of the Lost Ark.? Don?t be silly. Lightning can?t be bottled twice, no matter how skilled the vintners.

Instead, Steven Spielberg's ?Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? is merely grand old-school fun ? a rollicking class reunion that stands as the second best entry in the venerable series. Premiering Sunday at the Cannes Film Festival and opening worldwide on Thursday, the new movie is leagues better than 1984?s nasty ?Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom? and blessed with more snap and heart ? more fun ? than 1989?s pro forma ?Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.? All that's lacking is a genuine sense of surprise. It's very possible that was left out on purpose.

The emphasis in ?Crystal Skull? is on old-fashioned stuntwork rather than the shiny chimeras of modern digital effects. When Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) catapults from the back of a motorcycle through the window of a speeding car, out the opposite window and back onto the motorcycle ? his feet nervously skitching along the roadbed ? at least half the excitement is knowing that motorcycle, car, Ford, and road are real.

Thankfully, the approach goes only so far. Character and star may have aged two decades since the last installment, but bullets still miss the good guys with astonishing regularity, and Indiana Jones may be the only person who could escape a desert nuclear test site with an A-bomb due to land in ten seconds. How he manages this makes no blessed sense, but it?s a hoot anyway.

That scene occurs in the movie?s first fifteen minutes, in the sort of fast-charging prologue Spielberg and producer George Lucas know we?re expecting. The sequence also establishes the time (1957), the enemy (Russian Communists), and the stakes (power over all of mankind ? the usual).

Better, it reintroduces Indy as a believably older but still absurdly capable figure out of a Saturday matinee serial, and it brings on Cate Blanchett as Irina Spalko, a Red menace with a sword, a Louise Brooks bob, and a nifty accent by way of Natasha in the old ?Rocky and Bullwinkle? cartoons. ?Drop dead, comrade,? the hero sneers at Irina, and that?s a good description of the best ?Indiana Jones? villain yet: She?s a drop-dead comrade.

To sum up the plot of ?Crystal Skull? requires dancing around a number of spoilers, so stop reading now if you want to go in with a clean slate. What Spalko and her KGB minions are after is a rare and very strange crystal skull that legends say was stolen from El Dorado, the lost city of gold in Peru. One of Indiana?s colleagues, Professor Oxley (John Hurt), has set out to find it and disappeared, and a young man named Mutt (Shia LeBeouf) arrives to beg Jones to rescue his old friend.

This being the 50s, Mutt is first seen riding a motorcycle with his cap akimbo just like Marlon Brando in ?The Wild One.? He?s a preppie who has dropped out to become a greaser instead of a beatnik, and the sequence in which he and Indiana careen through the college campus (inside the library and out) with Russians in high-speed pursuit is an early high point.

It?s bookended later in the film by a delirious action set piece involving multiple jeeps, a sheer cliff face, monkeys, vines, and a ravenous army of giant ants. (This last leads to one of the few gross-out scenes in ?Skull,? which is noticeably less gruesome than the other sequels. It?s still a bit too spooky in places for young children.)

The basic structure of these action scenes hasn?t change in 20 years, but camera technology and Spielberg?s skill at deploying it have. There?s an organic smoothness to the mayhem that can take your breath away, so much so that the less inspired aspects of ?Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? stick out more clearly.

It?s wonderful, for instance, to see Karen Allen reprise her role as Marion Ravenwood from ?Raiders,? since her warmth was precisely what was missing from the first two sequels. (Let us now officially forget all about Kate Capshaw and the unfortunate Alison Doody.) The script doesn?t give Allen quite enough to do, though, and the family dynamics that take over the last third of the movie feel overly familiar.

Indeed, a number of Spielberg career threads are woven into ?Skull,? including a climactic shot that blatantly rehashes the finale of one of the director?s best-loved early films. While Ford wears the fedora with believably weathered panache, on some level this Indy seems smaller, less archetypal than his younger incarnation. Where the character once towered over these movies, now he?s just the leader of the pack.

The rest of the cast keeps pace ? Ray Winstone as an accomplice who may or may not be a betrayer, Jim Broadbent taking over for the late Denholm Elliott as Indy?s college friend. LeBoeuf has an interesting alertness that he still hasn?t figured out how to use as an actor, but he throws himself into the stuntwork like a proper student at the feet of the masters.

It bears asking, though: What do we want from an ?Indiana Jones? movie in 2008? Engaged nostalgia, I think, and on that level ?Crystal Skull? delivers. Some may be disappointed that Spielberg and company haven?t invested the series with the latest in computer boffinry or that the new movie treads comfortably (sometimes too comfortably) in the footsteps of its forebears. This isn?t a reinvention but a reunion, of characters, creators, even techniques. ?Same old same old,? Jones says at one point, and that?s what we get. The action may have been updated to the 1950s, but in ways both inspired and unexamined, ?Indiana Jones? remains happily stuck in the 80s.

So. "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull." Maybe you've heard of it? The 800-lb Hollywood gorilla of this year's Cannes showed at the Palais at 1 pm today to a jammed house and cheers for the opening credits. By the end credits, the applause was noticeably less enthusiastic and I heard some sniping from the more jaded media folk -- how easy and how much fun to dismiss something so hyped as irrelevant. Me, I had a very good time with the movie, divining early on that whatever was on the menu, surprise wasn't going to be part of it. My review's running in tomorrow's paper and it's posted here, too; the gist is that it stands, for me anyway, as easily the second best in the series.

The jaded media folk of course swamped the ensuing press conference to shout "Steeeven!" and "'Arrison!" Here's a video clip of Cate Blanchett and Harrison Ford responding to a few questions about their roles: