TAGGED AS: Awards, Cannes, Film, Film Festival, movies
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Cannes 2023 Movie Scorecard: Best Movies at the Film Festival
The 76th Cannes Film Festival is underway, running from May 16 through 27, and we’re tracking the best of the fest right here in our guide to the best (and worst) movies premiering in Cannes. Check back as we update this list with the latest from the French Riviera, including Harrison Ford returning for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Pixar animated film Elemental, Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City with (of course) an all-star cast, Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon with Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore in Todd Haynes’ May December, Pedro Pascal and Ethan Hawke in Pedro Almodóvar’s Strange Way of Life, and much more. –Debbie Day
Here’s where the films stand so far:
Read also: The 2023 Summer Movie Scorecard
#1
Adjusted Score: 112713%
Critics Consensus: Dispassionately examining the ordinary existence of people complicit in horrific crimes, The Zone of Interest forces us to take a cold look at the mundanity behind an unforgivable brutality.
Synopsis: The commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, and his wife Hedwig, strive to build a dream life for their family in...
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#2
Adjusted Score: 104995%
Critics Consensus: Gently devastating in its compassion, Monster is a masterpiece of shifting perspectives that surprises to the end.
Synopsis: When her young son Minato starts to behave strangely, his mother feels that there is something wrong. Discovering that a...
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#3
Adjusted Score: 112161%
Critics Consensus: A smart, solidly crafted procedural that's anchored in family drama, Anatomy of a Fall finds star Sandra Hüller and director/co-writer Justine Triet operating at peak power.
Synopsis: For the past year, Sandra, her husband Samuel, and their eleven-year-old son Daniel have lived a secluded life in a...
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#4
Adjusted Score: 106055%
Critics Consensus: A quirky tale of star-crossed lovers, Fallen Leaves is a life-affirming gem from Finnish filmmaker Kaurismäki.
Synopsis: In modern-day Helsinki, two lonely souls in search of love meet by chance in a local karaoke bar. However, the...
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#5
Adjusted Score: 106019%
Critics Consensus: An absorbing slice-of-life drama led by a remarkable Kôji Yakusho performance, Perfect Days adds a quietly soaring gem to director/co-writer Wim Wenders' estimable filmography.
Synopsis: Hirayama seems utterly content with his simple life as a cleaner of toilets in Tokyo. Outside of his very structured...
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#6
Adjusted Score: 101550%
Critics Consensus: If La Chimera is a wild, improbable pursuit, this marvelous and magical tale by Alice Rochrwacher is the pie in the sky to behold.
Synopsis: Everyone has their own Chimera, something they try to achieve but never manage to find. For the band of tombaroli,...
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#7
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#8
Adjusted Score: 96152%
Critics Consensus: A near-masterpiece for director/co-writer Victor Erice, Close Your Eyes ends his long gap between films with a moving meditation on memory, identity, and cinema itself.
Synopsis: Set in contemporary Madrid, an aging filmmaker named Miguel Garay is called upon to recount his memories of working on...
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#9
Adjusted Score: 99650%
Critics Consensus: Capturing a historical moment in the claustrophobic confines of a courtroom, The Goldman Case is a riveting drama with a superb Arieh Worthalter at its center.
Synopsis: November 1975, Paris. The appeal hearing of Jewish far-left activist Pierre Goldman is set to begin. Sentenced to life imprisonment...
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#10
Adjusted Score: 99673%
Critics Consensus: A clever and stylish riff on the body horror that is puberty, Tiger Stripes is an exuberant allegory for personal agency as well as an impressive debut for writer-director Amanda Nell Eu.
Synopsis: The first amongst her friends to hit puberty, Zaffan, 12, discovers a terrifying secret about her body. Ostracized by her...
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#11
Adjusted Score: 87949%
Critics Consensus: Joanna Arnow finds bleak humor in the struggle to connect with The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed, a deadpan comedy that discomfits as confidently as it amuses.
Synopsis: Ann, a morose New Yorker in her 30's, feels stuck in all areas of her life. To her dismay, the...
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#12
Adjusted Score: 63960%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Synopsis: Through her child’s eyes, Patpro will go through three periods of the history of her indigenous people, in the heart...
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#13
Adjusted Score: 100685%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Synopsis: A widow pretends to be pregnant with a son in order to save her daughter and home from a relative...
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#14
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#15
Adjusted Score: 120420%
Critics Consensus: Enormous in runtime, theme, and achievement, Killers of the Flower Moon is a sobering appraisal of America's relationship with Indigenous peoples and yet another artistic zenith for Martin Scorsese and his collaborators.
Synopsis: Based on David Grann's broadly lauded best-selling book, "Killers of the Flower Moon" is set in 1920s Oklahoma and depicts...
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#16
Adjusted Score: 103550%
Critics Consensus: A powerful debut for Molly Manning Walker, How to Have Sex authentically captures female adolescence and friendship with sobering effervescence.
Synopsis: Three British teenage girls go on a rites-of-passage holiday -- drinking, clubbing and hooking up, in what should be the...
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#17
Adjusted Score: 84156%
Critics Consensus: A consistently amusing satire of modern American life, The Sweet East is so engaging from moment to moment that it's easy to forgive its somewhat hazy thesis.
Synopsis: The Sweet East is a picaresque journey through the cities and woods of the Eastern seaboard of the United States...
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#18
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#19
Adjusted Score: 89336%
Critics Consensus: Breaking through the genre wall, The Delinquents is an astute existential heist movie that will reward patient viewers with a humorous fable about freedom.
Synopsis: Buenos Aires bank employee Morán dreams up a scheme to liberate himself from corporate monotony: he'll steal enough money to...
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#20
Adjusted Score: 99877%
Critics Consensus: Four Daughters' unique approach to documenting real-life horror is a formal gamble that only underscores the bravery and resilience of its subjects.
Synopsis: This riveting exploration of rebellion, memory, and sisterhood reconstructs the story of Olfa Hamrouni and her four daughters, unpacking a...
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#21
Adjusted Score: 83964%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Synopsis: After moving in with her boyfriend to their new home, Mila begins to realize her loss of desire lies deep...
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#22
Adjusted Score: 109509%
Critics Consensus: Swaddling its difficult fact-based story in a blanket of campy humor, May December is a seductively discomfiting watch.
Synopsis: Twenty years after their notorious tabloid romance gripped the nation, Gracie Atherton-Yu and her husband Joe (twenty-three years her junior)...
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#23
Adjusted Score: 94215%
Critics Consensus: About Dry Grasses keeps us warm with dark humor through its unhurried and verbose wintry meditation on the human condition.
Synopsis: Nestled away in wintry East Anatolia, public-school art teacher Samet (Deniz Celiloğlu) yearns to leave the sleepy village for cosmopolitan...
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#24
Adjusted Score: 92108%
Critics Consensus: A beautifully filmed portrait of twentysomething ennui, The Breaking Ice explores interpersonal connections with a subtle, delicate touch.
Synopsis: Young urbanite Haofeng feels lost and adrift on China's northern border. By chance, he goes on a tour led by...
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#25
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#26
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#27
Adjusted Score: 100192%
Critics Consensus: Visually thrilling and refreshingly unconventional, Anselm pays mesmerizing tribute to a brilliant artist's life and legacy.
Synopsis: In Anselm, Wim Wenders creates a portrait of Anselm Kiefer, one of the most innovative and important painters and sculptors...
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#28
Adjusted Score: 84407%
Critics Consensus: Undeniably impressive in its ambition, Eureka makes some thought-provoking statements about colonialism, although they'll likely be lost on less patient viewers.
Synopsis: Traversing time, space and genre, Argentinian filmmaker Lisandro Alonso (Jauja) presents an elliptical meditation on the experiences of indigenous communities...
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#29
Adjusted Score: 96797%
Critics Consensus: Asteroid City is unlikely to win Wes Anderson many new converts, but those who respond to his signature style will find this a return to immaculately arranged form.
Synopsis: The itinerary of a Junior Stargazer/Space Cadet convention (organized to bring together students and parents from across the country for...
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#30
Adjusted Score: 76024%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Synopsis: Khédidja works for a wealthy Parisian family who offered her to mind their children for a summer in Corsica. Bringing...
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#31
Adjusted Score: 89214%
Critics Consensus: Based on indefensible truths,Kidnapped tackles institutional abuse with cinematic pomp and political circumstance.
Synopsis: In 1858, in the Jewish quarter of Bologna, the Pope's soldiers burst into the home of the Mortara family. By...
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#32
Adjusted Score: 86600%
Critics Consensus: Imbued with the fiercely humanistic spirit that has defined Ken Loach's filmography, The Old Oak serves as a fitting -- albeit somewhat sentimental -- finale to a remarkable career.
Synopsis: The Old Oak is the last pub standing in a once thriving mining village in northern England, a gathering space...
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#33
Adjusted Score: 81841%
Critics Consensus: A tantalizing glimpse of the bond between two people, the well-acted Strange Way of Life adds a brief but still rewarding chapter to Pedro Almodóvar's filmography.
Synopsis: A man rides a horse across the desert that separates him from Bitter Creek. He comes to visit Sheriff Jake....
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#34
Adjusted Score: 53699%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
#35
Adjusted Score: 74854%
Critics Consensus: Occupied City is an impressively ambitious attempt to connect the past with the present, although its repetitive approach and overwhelming length will be too much for many viewers.
Synopsis: The past collides with our precarious present in Steve McQueen's bravura documentary Occupied City, informed by the book Atlas of...
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#36
Adjusted Score: 73770%
Critics Consensus: The New Boy bites off more than it can comfortably chew, but this heady exploration of faith and cultural tensions has an ethereal allure.
Synopsis: In the 1940s, during the dead of night, a nine-year-old Aboriginal orphan arrives at a remote monastery run by a...
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#37
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#38
Adjusted Score: 81566%
Critics Consensus: If not the most memorable tome in Michel Gondry's surreal repertory, Book of Solutions still delivers visual flair to casual fans and is a touching ode to creativity.
#39
Adjusted Score: 60205%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Synopsis: In a small mining town in Mexico, Emiliano searches for those responsible for the disappearance of his activist mother. Receiving...
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#40
Adjusted Score: 88017%
Critics Consensus: Elemental may not satisfy as fully as the greatest Pixar pictures, but it remains a solid story told with dazzling visual flair.
Synopsis: Disney and Pixar's "Elemental," an all-new, original feature film set in Element City, where fire-, water-, land- and air-residents live...
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#41
Adjusted Score: 52817%
Critics Consensus: Heavily coiffed and perfumed as to cover up its plebeian status, Jeanne Du Barry waltzes aimlessly through a noble attempt at vindicating its eponymous femme.
Synopsis: Jeanne du Barry follows Jeanne Vaubernier (Maïwenn), a working-class woman determined to climb the social ladder, using her charms to...
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#42
Adjusted Score: 61359%
Critics Consensus: Divorced from the historical record with little to show for it, Firebrand is a period piece whose revisionist aims are at odds with its stultifying approach.
Synopsis: In blood-soaked Tudor England, twice married, accomplished, and educated Katherine Parr (Alicia Vikander), reluctantly agrees to become the sixth wife...
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#43
Adjusted Score: 94891%
Critics Consensus: It isn't as thrilling as earlier adventures, but the nostalgic rush of seeing Harrison Ford back in action helps Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny find a few final bits of cinematic treasure.
Synopsis: Daredevil archaeologist Indiana Jones races against time to retrieve a legendary dial that can change the course of history. Accompanied...
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#44
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#45
Adjusted Score: 37804%
Critics Consensus: Although Hypnotic isn't without glimmers of inspiration, the ultimate effect of this often clunky crime caper will be to leave you feeling rather sleepy.
Synopsis: Determined to find his missing daughter, Austin detective Danny Rourke finds himself spiraling down a rabbit hole investigating a series...
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#46
Adjusted Score: 67033%
Critics Consensus: With Club Zero, writer-director Jessica Hausner uses satire to explore an array of ambitious ideas, and the results are fitfully striking even if they don't consistently cohere.
Synopsis: At an international boarding school, an unassuming, yet rigorous, Miss Novak (Mia Wasikowska) joins the teaching staff to instruct a...
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#47
Adjusted Score: 47071%
Critics Consensus: Asphalt City can be commended for trying to highlight the unforgiving nature of EMT work, but the unrelentingly grim end results prove a punishing watch.
Synopsis: Asphalt City follows Ollie Cross (Tye Sheridan), a young paramedic assigned to the NYC night shift with an uncompromising and...
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