Schmear's Definitive Cannes 2024 Rankings
19 movies watched. How do they stack up?
The new Neon film Anora, from director Sean Baker, won Cannes’ top prize, the Palme D’Or. But did it win the Palme D’Schmear?
How did Coralie Fargeat’s buzzy new body horror thriller The Substance fare? Where did Francis Ford Coppola’s mega-expensive Megalopolis end up?
Read on for The Schmear Hunter’s definitive 2024 Cannes rankings:
19. Megalopolis
Francis Ford Coppola’s dream project is a hot mess. I went in with an open mind, but lame title cards and a disjointed narrative immediately signaled trouble. The film’s breakneck pace, overstuffed story, and unnatural dialogue leave the audience with whiplash. The film is so dizzyingly shot as to induce vertigo. Despite a star-studded cast, performances plummet, with only Aubrey Plaza seeming to have fun. Unlike recent works by aging auteurs like Miyazaki and Scorsese, Megalopolis is frustrating and incoherent, more likely to become an ironic midnight cult classic than an Oscar contender.
18. The Second Act
Quentin Dupieux’s The Second Act is an amusing but ultimately forgettable sketch. The film features a French All-Star cast, including Lea Seydoux and Vincent Lindon, in a meta, reality-blurring exercise about filmmaking and stardom. It starts with a screwball walk-and-talk that breaks the third wall, revealing the characters as actors. The performers mix and match in a French restaurant, blurring fiction and reality. The Second Act winds up being an amusing yet forgettable farce lacking depth.
17. Rumours
Rumours, a horror-tinged political satire produced by Ari Aster, disappoints. Directed by the Canadian trio Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson, the film is set at the G7 conference on an ancient German estate, hosted by Chancellor Hilda Ortmann (Cate Blanchett). The leaders, including a moody Canadian PM (Roy Dupuis) and a sleepy American president (Charles Dance), draft a nebulous joint statement, resulting in a feckless word salad. Despite the formalist flair and cheeky Hallmark-esque music cues, the plot isn't compelling, and the humor isn’t sharp or funny enough. Rumours, despite its promising premise and spectacular cast, ends up being more of a test than a treat.
16. Kinds of Kindness
Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinds of Kindness left me alienated by its abrasive and austere nature. This follow-up to Poor Things aligns more with his earlier works like Dogtooth and The Killing of a Sacred Deer. Opening with The Eurythmics' “Sweet Dreams,” the film feels like Lanthimos is dumping his dark, provocative dream journal onto the screen. 165 minutes are split into three acerbic chapters, starring Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, and Hong Chau…
To read on, please subscribe!
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Schmear Hunter to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.