Please do not listen to the naysayers in the Hollywood Reporter and other venues, who claim that the 2016 edition of the world’s premier and most prestigious film festival was “very disappointing.”
Au contraire: At least half of the 21 films in the Main Competition were excellent or very good.
In the next couple of days, we are going to rank all 21 features, from the very best to the very worst.
There were also very good movies out of competition, in the three sidebars, Un Certain Regard, Directors Fortnight, and Critics Week.
By and large, the American movies, in and out of competition, were rather weak or below mediocre, beginning with Woody Allen’s Café Society (minor trifle), which served as opening night, Spielberg’s BFG, which played out of competition and was deemed as boring and too dominated by CGI, and Jodie Foster’s misfire financial thriller, Monster Money, which was only slightly elevated by the charming presence of George Clooney and Julia Roberts.
I personally saw 40 movies in 12 days, and two of our writers saw about 25 features. As our readers know by now, we don’t write short reviews, and so it may take a week or so until we post the reviews of all the pictures that the three of us have seen in what was a spectacular edition–the very best since 2001.
The worst film in the Main Competition was Sean Penn’s The Last Face (our review will appear later).
