CANNES 2009

indieWIRE's Best of Cannes Winners and RT's Top 10 Films

by Alex Billington
May 27, 2009
Source: indieWIRE, Rotten Tomatoes

As part of my wrap-up on the Cannes Film Festival, I wanted to feature two great articles found around the web today. The first is indieWIRE's Best of Cannes, a list of the best films, best actors, best directors, and worst films from this year, as ranked by critics and bloggers. A group of sixteen people (including me) were polled by indieWIRE and they've comprised the three films in each category with the most votes. The big winner is Un Prophete, which is still my favorite film of the fest. Additionally, Rotten Tomatoes has a great feature looking at the 10 Must-See Movies coming out of the fest. Both lists have some great picks.

If you weren't in attendance at Cannes, it's hard to really care about some of the films that showed there, especially when most of you know nothing about them. Which is why I'm hoping these two lists can help give a few of you some direction and insight into what the best films from the fest are and which films you should be keeping your eye on. There's a lot of foreign features that won't ever come to America, but there are also a lot of great films just waiting to be discovered by American audiences, so read on for the details!

Here is indieWIRE's top lists as chosen by critics and bloggers (myself included) who were at Cannes:

BEST FILM:
1. Jacques Audiard's A Prophet (My Review)
2. Lars von Trier's Antichrist (My Review)
3. Corneliu Porumboiu's Police, Adjective
4. Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon

BEST DIRECTOR:
1. Jacques Audiard (A Prophet)
2. Gaspar Noe (Enter the Void)
3. Lars von Trier (Antichrist)

BEST ACTING PERFORMANCE:
1. Tahar Rahim in A Prophet
2. Giovanni Mezzogiorno in Vincere
3. Ronnie Bronstein in Go Get Some Rosemary
4. Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds

WORST FILM:
1. Brillante Mendoza's Kinatay
2. Lars von Trier's Antichrist
3. Isabel Coixet's Map of the Sounds of Tokyo
4. Francis Ford Coppola's Tetro

As for the Rotten Tomatoes feature, they've chosen 10 films from Cannes that are a bit more mainstream than a few of those on indieWIRE's lists. Overall, it's pretty much the same deal - a good list of films you should keep your eye on if you have an appreciation for independent or foreign cinema. Here they are:

1. Pedro Almodóvar's Broken Embraces
2. Sam Raimi's Drag Me to Hell
3. Andrea Arnold's Fish Tank (My Review)
4. Jim Carrey's I Love You Phillip Morris (My Review)
5. Ken Loach's Looking for Eric
6. Lee Daniels's Precious
7. Jacques Audiard's A Prophet (My Review)
8. Pete Docter's Up
9. Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon
10. Lars von Trier's Antichrist (My Review)

I suggest heading over to indieWIRE and/or Rotten Tomatoes to get a good look at both features in closer detail. My three picks for best film were actually A Prophet, Adrift, and Inglourious Basterds, though I might add Fish Tank to that, as well. As for actors, I chose Christoph Waltz from Inglourious Basterds, Vincent Cassel from Adrift, and Louis-Do de Lencquesaing from a French film called Father of My Children, but I had forgotten about Tahar Rahim in A Prophet, who deserves that #1 spot anyway. If you haven't seen it yet, be sure to watch my final Cannes video blog with guest Eric Lavallee from IONCinema.com here.

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