When Lars von Trier claimed to be suffering from depression two years ago, I assumed the illness was caused by his (then) most recent film, The Boss of it All. Not only did the office comedy fail to make as much noise as his prior features, but it actually earned a lot of favorable reviews. Some even called it (gasp!) enjoyable. For a guy used to polarizing critics with his often controversial and groundbreaking movies, that reception had to be tremendously dissatisfying.

But the filmmaker is back at Cannes this year, and I mean back. His latest movie, Antichrist, is apparently as audacious, shocking and misogynistic as everyone expects von Trier’s work to be. And even though it’s getting a lot of negative reviews, it’s still the talk of the festival this year. No wonder the filmmaker is looking so jolly in photos from Cannes; the attention, both good and bad, must be doing wonders for his mental health.

Nobody from Spout has seen Antichrist yet, unfortunately, but don’t doubt we’re trying. Desperately. And we know you’re looking forward to Karina’s take as much as The Brothers Bloom director Rian Johnson is. Today he Tweeted: “Waiting for @KarinaLongworth to see & review Antichrist the way a drunk man waits for a hint of blessed equilibrium.” She responded that she hopes to prove male reporters wrong in their belief that no woman will like it.

While we wait for her anticipated response, we’ll just have to settle on reading other reviews from around the blogosphere. I’ve highlighted some of my favorites, both positive and negative after the jump:

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Now that we know, courtesy of Stu at Defamer, that Werner Herzog’s remake of Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant is not so much a remake as it is like a new entry into a franchise, a la the James Bond movies, we at SpoutBlog wonder what other ’90s indie favorites could be continued with similar yet “completely different” installments.

I remember back in the day thinking that Clerks should be a franchise, each film focusing on a different crappy job experience, but now that Clerks II has come and gone, that idea will likely never be realized. Of course, the concept of sequels unrelated to the original aren’t new — just look at any sequel title substituting the number 2 (or II) with the word Too. But nevertheless, here’s a few suggestions for other crazy foreign auteurs to take into consideration:

1. Kids - Looking back, Larry Clark’s then-shocking debut is pretty tame. Nowadays you see teens doing worse things on commercial television. So, how about someone makes another Kids movie every decade or so to expose us to the latest generation of teenagers and how appallingly different they are from the previous generation. It would be like Apted’s Up documentaries, except it wouldn’t follow the same people.
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