Pre-Cannes Check-In

An Exhaustive Compendium of Hot Takes On Movies I Have Not Even Seen

Treating movies like sports sucks. There’s the drive to watch a movie first, to talk loudly about loving movies before others have seen it, to involve oneself in hype cycles and discourse. This practice is at best, gauche, and at worst, anti-intellectual. I have seen thousands proudly taking a collector’s mentality to watching film, parroting advertisements like they’re opinions. Even professional critics do it at some point or another, myself included. In a vacuum, it’s not really a bad thing; we’re just excited to talk about new work from the artists we adore. But the Letterboxd-ification of general cinephilia has definitely proven a net negative on the medium’s culture. I have no investment in Cannes beyond noting what sounds neat, so I may cover it or related works in conjunction with local fall festivals and proper theatrical distribution down the line. Trying to predict the quality of arthouse films is not just a stupid practice but an irrelevant one, as Trump seems content to kill the entire industry on the advice of Jon Voigt.

Anyway, now I’m going to spend several paragraphs talking about the Cannes line-up like it’s the NFL draft.

Really, I’m just highlighting some stuff I’m looking forward to, and letting random directors catch strays along the way. At the end I’ll mention some stuff that’s already premiered elsewhere, or might show up at festivals in September, that I’m also excited about. Consider this a temp check for my tastes heading into the filmgoing year (which, as we all know, hard launches in May after a five-month soft opening). Also, if you want to know how I talk about movies with my friends, this is kind of what it sounds like.