Those who predicted that this year's Cannes Film Festival was going to be underwhelming can stuff it. If it wasn't my all-time favorite -- this is my fifth -- it was filled with highlights, including a pretty strong Competition slate.
Before I get into my rankings, here's a piece I wrote at the halfway point for MEL, in which I talk about the experience of seeing nothing but subtitled films for a week, and what I learned in the process. If nothing else, this year's Cannes reaffirmed my appreciation for the idea that cinema is actually a global phenomenon -- and I don't mean "global" in terms of how much Deadpool 2 earns in China.
With that said, here's how I'd evaluate the festival. Links lead to individual reviews/articles...
37. Knife + Heart
36. The Man Who Killed Don Quixote
35. The Great Mystical Circus
34. Treat Me Like Fire
33. Fahrenheit 451
32. Pope Francis - A Man of His Word
31. Ayka
30. The House That Jack Built
29. Rafiki
28. The Trouble With You
27. Sorry Angel
26. Whitney
25. Birds of Passage
24. Climax
23. Yomeddine
22. Everybody Knows
21. Happy as Lazzaro
20. Dogman
19. Wildlife
18. The Image Book
17. BlacKkKlansman
16. 3 Faces
15. The Spy Gone North
14. The Wild Pear Tree
13. Solo: A Star Wars Story
12. Capernaum
11. Summer
10. Donbass
9. Long Day's Journey Into Night
8. Mandy
7. Leave No Trace
6. Ash Is Purest White
5. Shoplifters
4. Under the Silver Lake
3. At War
2. Cold War
1. Burning
I was sad Burning walked away with no awards, although it was the clear winner of Screen's critics jury. (It also won the Fipresci prize.) As for Hirokazu Kore-eda's Shoplifters, which took home the Palme d'Or, it's probably my favorite film of his since Nobody Knows, so I'm not going to complain too loudly.
I'm looking over my rankings right now; there's a lot of happy memories attached to those films, even the ones I didn't like that much. A Cannes with very little "Oscar buzz" is a perfectly good Cannes to me.
