From Kinds of Kindess to Megalopolis, We’re Ranking All The Movies We Saw At Cannes Film Festival 2024!
From snagging tickets at 1am for films screening just hours later to a deep download of actors, storylines, and conversation, Cannes Film Festival was a whirlwind. Here is the definitive ranking of the films I saw at Cannes — and the ones you don’t want to miss.
The Scenario Of My Life, François Truffaut
A true Cannes classic! The Scenario Of My Life, François Truffaut is a unique story that explores the autobiographical powerhouse films that François Truffaut created and his journey of being mentally and spiritually saved by films. It’s great for a rainy morning, or to fill your time between screenings, but would I run to Cannes for this? No.
The Second Act
While Netflix has backed the The Second Act, this meta film about A.I. didn’t exactly hit the nail on the head. Scenes weren’t clear from the beginning on what was real and what wasn’t, which in fairness, was exactly the point. Dialogue ran long, monologues were often forced, and it ultimately felt like they weren’t thought out all the way through. This was especially evident in the closing conversation about what can be claimed as reality and what isn’t. While there are intriguing perspectives to be analyzed around this topic, the final conversation didn’t land. I don’t want to have to work that hard at the end of a movie.
Ghost Trail
Ghost Trail opens on Hamid (Adam Bessa) being taken as a prisoner in Syria. What follows is a powerful and intimate manhunt. He joins a team to track Syrian regime leaders on the run in an intense and focused quest for justice for his missing wife and daughter. Bessa proves he’s an actor to watch through high tension, quiet observations, and confrontations of the man he’s tracking down.
Everybody Loves Touda
Touda, the strong son of a bitch. In all the films I saw, I never wanted to know more about what happens after the film as much as in Everybody Loves Touda. Set first in the mountains of Morocco, Touda sings for a party because it’s all she wants to do. What follows is dark and full of hope. Her attitude and persona carry the film to a degree that I couldn’t leave her after I left the theater.
Three Kilometres To The End of the World
Three Kilometres To The End Of The World was cinematically the most beautiful I saw all week. Without a doubt. There was light, empathetic storytelling covering a dark topic and done so with such care.
I got to sit down for an interview with the director and lead actors for Pop Culture Planet to speak about their filming experience and the intentionality in each frame.
Simon of the Mountain
One of the hallmarks of a great Cannes film is divisiveness, which we see in the Argentinian film Simon of the Mountain. This is unique coming-of-age film won the Grand Prize at Cannes Critics' Week as it explores what it means to have mental and physical disabilities. It is a film that has moments of humor in a sometimes provocative and often profound world we’re not often walked into.
Megalopolis
There’s so much to talk about when it comes to Megalopolis. It is truly a feature that needs to be seen to be believed… and not always in the best ways. Suspending disbelief between the base dialogue, random Shakespearean speeches, the two (if not more) New York City signs that were not edited out, and the clear usage of green screen in multiple scenes, I am baffled and pleasantly surprised I got a first look at this passion project, which is what it was. I am still not convinced this is a finished product. It felt like a college student’s first pass at a project at 3am rushing to get done in time for finals. And I say that in the most supportive way. There are bones. But it needs someone to tell Francis Ford Coppola when enough is enough. The cast, including Adam Driver, Shia Lebouf, Aubrey Plaza, Chloe Fineman, Giancarlo Esposito, Jon Voight, and even Grace VanderWaal, is outstanding. I’m sure they had a lot of fun making this movie and isn’t that the most important part?
Bird
Bird is a beautiful, strange, sad story of a girl growing up in extreme poverty in Gravesend, England. It’s dark from start to finish with genuine moments of hope as Bug (Barry Keoghan), a young father of two, is about to get married to a woman he’s known for only three months. When his daughter Bailey meets a strange man who seems to have come from nowhere looking for his family, Bailey and Bird team up to find a better life for the both of them. The film was shot on a handheld camera with a lot of movement.
Kinds of Kindness
The three-part anthology has Yorgos Lanthimos’ typical fever dream take on a reality not too far from our own, which made it feel more like a mini-series of capsule episodes rather than a film. The cast is the same in each short film including familiar faces from Lanthimos’ past films like Emma Stone, Margaret Qualley, and Willem Dafoe, as well as Joe Alwyn, Hunter Schafer, and Jesse Plemons, who took home Best Actor. I admire a director who can take a strange and grotesque approach to activate on whatever point he wants to make. For the record, my favorite is the third film.