{"id":2428476,"date":"2026-05-22T19:22:31","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T19:22:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2428476"},"modified":"2026-05-22T19:22:31","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T19:22:31","slug":"10-cannes-movies-worth-looking-out-for-in-a-year-of-disappointments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/10-cannes-movies-worth-looking-out-for-in-a-year-of-disappointments\/","title":{"rendered":"10 Cannes movies worth looking out for in a year of disappointments"},"content":{"rendered":"

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After 10 days of crazed moviegoing at the <\/i>Cannes Film Festival<\/i><\/a>, Times film critic Amy Nicholson and Times film editor Joshua Rothkopf are all but spent. They leave with 10 recommendations (listed below in alphabetical order), including several titles you\u2019ll be hearing about during awards season, but also, admittedly, more reservations than usual.<\/i><\/p>\n

Amy Nicholson:<\/b> There are worse ways to spend your life than watching four movies a day in the south of France. For a week and half, we ran in and out of the dark theaters, blinking at the shock of the sun and bickering about what we just saw with the highest concentration of film lovers anywhere \u2014 most of us jacked up on espresso or ros\u00e9. Yet, we\u2019re flying home miffed that the movies themselves were mediocre. Cannes is meant to launch ambitious, prickly works by grandmasters and next-generation talents. This year, the programming looked like a party with an impressive invite list \u2014 Nicolas Winding Refn, Asghar Farhadi, Hirokazu Kore-eda \u2014 but upon arrival, all the guests felt like old acquaintances tapped out of anything interesting to say.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m being harsh. Cannes had good movies, too. But I needed this year\u2019s Cannes to be great. Audiences trickling back into theaters deserve to see something fantastic. Instead, too many filmmakers took the crowd\u2019s attention span for granted; even the strongest films in competition could delete a half-hour of dead air. Fittingly, the majority of my favorites came from Cannes\u2019 kookier programming sections, Directors\u2019 Fortnight and Un Certain Regard \u2014 and I suspect many of yours did, too, oui<\/i>?<\/p>\n

Joshua Rothkopf:<\/b> I did find a handful of films from the main competition that impressed me, but point taken: Nobody is served if we can\u2019t admit that this year\u2019s edition was weaker than others. We could blame screenwriting or pacing (though paradoxically I was impressed by both the longest and<\/i> the shortest movies in competition). Maybe it\u2019s an overall lack of boldness. When a restored version of Ken Russell\u2019s salacious 55-year-old \u201cThe Devils\u201d eclipses virtually everything else shown at the festival, a certain timidity is hard to deny. There were too many \u201cnice\u201d films: perfectly respectable but not what I want Cannes to be.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, we saw enough to sharpen up a list of favorites. Here\u2019s what stirred us.<\/p>\n

\u2018All of a Sudden\u2019<\/h2>\n
\n
<\/picture> <\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

I\u2019m not convinced that the utopian vision of end-of-life care presented in Ryusuke Hamaguchi\u2019s drama has a fighting chance in America, but we deserve the opportunity to grapple with its compassionate turns and have that discussion. The director of \u201cDrive My Car\u201d<\/a> continues his process-centric exploration of workplace relationships in this quietly revelatory movie, one with a centerpiece conversation that merits comparison to the long walks of Richard Linklater\u2019s \u201cBefore\u201d movies. Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto let a day\u2019s stroll linger into profundity, the twilight dimming and human connection brewing in all its possibilities. Is it too late for them? It doesn\u2019t need to be. \u2014 Joshua Rothkopf<\/i><\/p>\n

\u2018The Beloved\u2019<\/h2>\n
\n
\""The <\/picture> <\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Esteban (Javier Bardem), a renowned bad boy Spanish filmmaker, returns to his homeland from New York to shoot a period picture in the desert. Off-screen, he\u2019s gifted one of the four leading roles to his estranged daughter (Victoria Luengo), an aspiring actor who hasn\u2019t seen her father in 13 years. Esteban failed as Emilia\u2019s dad. Can he succeed as her director, especially when her big break packs this much pressure? Not likely, especially as Emilia has inherited his disastrous boozing habits. \u201cThe Beloved\u2019s\u201d actual director, Rodrigo Sorogoyen, unleashes his leads to become a tag team of destruction, each blaming the other for what\u2019s going wrong on set. They\u2019re both mired in clashing narratives of their relationship. Sorogoyen shows us the truth, as well as the visible frustrations of the film-within-a-film\u2019s cast and crew that risk shutting down this too-passionate passion project. \u2014 Amy Nicholson<\/i><\/p>\n

\u2018Bitter Christmas\u2019<\/h2>\n
\n
\"Barbara <\/picture>\n
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(Iglesias Mas \/ Sony Pictures Classics)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n

Pedro Almod\u00f3var<\/a>\u2019s self-flagellating film about his artistic process has a Charlie Kaufman-lite structure that I\u2019d rather let audiences discover on their own. In brief: Almodovar\u2019s avatar, a filmmaker named Ra\u00fal (Leonardo Sbaraglia), gets dragged over the artistic coals by the dramatic female characters he\u2019s been writing for decades, one of whom dares him to simply coast on his legacy. Too many veteran filmmakers in his year\u2019s Cannes competition seem to have accepted that bargain, so when Ra\u00fal got to the end of a new script and decided it wasn\u2019t up to his standards, I nearly shouted \u201cBravo!\u201d Navel-gazing cinema about the creative process isn\u2019t usually my bag, but Almod\u00f3var doesn\u2019t take his own misery that seriously, even inserting a manic pixie dream hunk, a male stripper-slash-firefighter played by Patrick Criado, for a little bump and grind. \u2014 Amy Nicholson<\/i><\/p>\n

\u2018Clarissa\u2019<\/h2>\n
\n
\""Clarissa"\" <\/picture> <\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

It\u2019s been 101 years since Virginia Woolf first published \u201cMrs Dalloway,\u201d a novel about persnickety party hostess Clarissa Dalloway colliding with her former lovers, one male and one female. The plot seems simple, but every glare and sigh tells a whole story about modernization, capitulation, cynicism and violence. Twin brothers Arie and Chuko Esiri have transplanted the tale to present-day Nigeria and stacked the cast with Sophie Okonedo, Ayo Edebiri, Nikki Amuka-Bird, David Oyelowo and the staggeringly talented India Amarteifio as the diva in her captivating youth before she married a tedious oilman and started bullying the help. \u201cClarissa\u201d makes several smart adjustments, swapping in a traumatized Boko Haram soldier for a shell-shocked veteran of the Great War, and cocking an eyebrow at the shiny new yoga studios and coffee shops littering Lagos\u2019 once-lush waterfront. Better still, it\u2019s sexy as heck \u2014 the flashbacks are one swimsuit party after another. \u2014 Amy Nicholson<\/i><\/p>\n

\u2018Club Kid\u2019<\/h2>\n
\n
\""Club <\/picture> <\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

The one-sentence pitch of Jordan Firstman<\/a>\u2019s debut dramedy \u2014 a gay nightclub promoter sobers up when he discovers he has a 10-year-old boy \u2014 sounded as fun as snorting a line of aspartame. I stand corrected. \u201cClub Kid\u201d is a blast: a spicy, surprising and irreverent comedy that rarely peddles the audience anything artificially sweet. Firstman stars as Peter, a debauched millennial aging out of a New York scene that never cared about him as a person in the first place. His business partner Sophie (Cara Delevingne) is a horror; his selfish squatter-roommate Nicky (Eldar Isgandarov) is even worse and so hilarious I\u2019d watch a spin-off sequel just about him. Peter\u2019s shock son Arlo (Reggie Absolom) has a casual charm that pickpockets your heart, but it\u2019s the script\u2019s sour quips that will have you urging people to get past the treacly set-up and go see \u201cClub Kid\u201d themselves. \u2014 Amy Nicholson<\/i><\/p>\n

\u2018The Diary of a Chambermaid\u2019<\/h2>\n
\n
\""The <\/picture> <\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Art punk Radu Jude<\/a>\u2019s latest satire is about a Romanian immigrant with a burlesque double life. By day, Gianina (Ana Dumitra\u0219cu, fantastic) is the live-in housemaid of a daft Parisian family; by night, she\u2019s an actress in a turn-of-the-20th century slapstick farce about a housemaid whose master suckles her patent leather boots. In neither world can she openly say what she thinks (although in her native tongue, she curses her employers and their young son plenty). Fast, crisp and snide, \u201cThe Diary of a Chambermaid\u201d gives equal weight to the monotony and the absurdity of Gianina\u2019s grind. And Jude isn\u2019t above including a mocking slow-motion shot of a spoiled French boy totally whiffing a soccer kick. \u2014 Amy Nicholson<\/i><\/p>\n

\u2018Fatherland\u2019<\/h2>\n
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\""Fatherland"\" <\/picture> <\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

The tension at the heart of Pawe\u0142 Pawlikowski<\/a>\u2019s period piece, set in a ravaged, fallen Germany after the end of World War II, is one that goes unresolved. All that\u2019s left are defensive denials, evasions of Nazi collaboration and the faint hope that something higher has survived. I could watch this kind of guilt-ridden post-apocalyptic movie for hours; instead, this lasts a scant 82 minutes. The conclusion, a wordless moment between father and daughter set to the strains of Bach played on a broken pipe organ, was the most devastating passage of the entire festival. \u201cFatherland\u201d shows off Pawlikowski\u2019s exquisite way with black-and-white evocations of European tragedy, but he\u2019s never summed them up as poetically. \u2014 Joshua Rothkopf<\/i><\/p>\n

\u2018Fjord\u2019<\/h2>\n
\n
\"A <\/picture> <\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

People at the festival called this one complex; I found myself disagreeing. It\u2019s actually a fairly straightforward story about a religious but mostly level-headed family flung into conflict with an overly sensitive branch of child protection services \u2014 and maybe with the whole of agnostic Norwegian progressivism. As reactionary as that sounds, I was totally rapt. Partly that\u2019s due to a beautifully plotted courtroom scenario and the immersive performances of Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve, reuniting after \u201cA Different Man,\u201d<\/a> as parents increasingly out of their depths. But mainly, I credit Romanian director Cristian Mungiu, who knows a good story when he sees one, crystallizing its potency with every camera choice. \u2014 Joshua Rothkopf<\/i><\/p>\n

\u2018Minotaur\u2019<\/h2>\n
\n
\""Minotaur"\" <\/picture> <\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

The ice-chilled return of Russian filmmaker Andrey Zvyagintsev (after a multiyear battle with long COVID) is worth the wait: a condensation of everything he does well into something so purely distilled, it should come with a proof warning. The movie kicks off as a casual portrait of the vacant nouveau riche lifestyles of the mini-oligarchs: fancy dinners, divorces, bathroom gossip. Then it becomes an erotic thriller (it\u2019s based on Claude Chabrol\u2019s 1969 \u201cThe Unfaithful Wife,\u201d as was Diane Lane\u2019s \u201cUnfaithful\u201d<\/a>). But the best comes last, as the situation gets fixed in broad daylight with breathtaking brutality. The war in Ukraine? Someone else\u2019s problem. \u201cMinotaur\u201d takes on the whole of Putin\u2019s dissociative society and puts its winners above the blackened clouds, looking down at the rest of us. \u2014 Joshua Rothkopf<\/i><\/p>\n

\u2018Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma\u2019<\/h2>\n
\n
\"A <\/picture> <\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

I am growing to love Jane Schoenbrun\u2019s exfoliation of \u201980s horror obsessions, especially for the movie\u2019s nonjudgmental embrace: Let these movies be free in all their \u201cproblematic\u201d badness and let them work on you. The fact that \u201cTeenage Sex\u201d sometimes plays like a bottle episode of \u201cHacks\u201d doesn\u2019t hurt. Hannah Einbinder<\/a> brings vulnerability to a project that needs her brand of self-excoriating fearlessness. Points, too, for not turning this into yet another celebration of some forgotten male director reclaimed as a genius. Rather, the opposite: It\u2019s about an abused scream queen (Gillian Anderson, gamely campy), a liminal, wintry campground and the exhilaration of running in the woods in your pajamas. \u2014 Joshua Rothkopf<\/i><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.latimes.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After 10 days of crazed moviegoing at the Cannes Film Festival, Times film critic Amy Nicholson and Times film editor Joshua Rothkopf are all but spent. They leave with 10 recommendations (listed below in alphabetical order), including several titles you\u2019ll be hearing about during awards season, but also, admittedly, more reservations than usual. Amy Nicholson: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2428477,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2428476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/10-Cannes-movies-worth-looking-out-for-in-a-year.com2Fdc2F3f2F535594e14f668e235cf47c4d.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2428476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2428476"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2428476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2428478,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2428476\/revisions\/2428478"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2428477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2428476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2428476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2428476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}