Peter Bradshaw at The Guardian has a nice recap of this year's Cannes Film Festival, saying "This was a very good year for Cannes in its 60th anniversary, only just short of vintage level. There were no real disasters (excepting perhaps the clunker My Blueberry Nights by Wong Kar-Wai) and plenty of outstanding films." Bradshaw was thrilled to see The Palme d'Or -- the fest's highest honor -- go to a low-budget Romanian film about abortion called 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days.
Sounds like a fun one, no? Bradshaw, like most, loved the film, and calls the award "a magnificently insouciant gesture showing that Cannes is still capable of being unimpressed by established reputations, even the reputations of its own stalwarts. Decisions like these make Cannes look, in the best possible way, like a heavily besieged city state, stubbornly holding out for world cinema against the mighty forces of Hollywood-globalization."

Not making Bradshaw happy is that the Coen Brothers were snubbed at Cannes this year. Many are saying the Coens' new movie, No Country for Old Men, ranks among their best, which is extremely high praise indeed. Says Bradshaw, "the big disappointment was that no gongs of any shape or size were handed to the Coens - especially exasperating, given that Gus Van Sant won an award for his disappointing slacker movie Paranoid Park, a real cut below his previous movies, Last Days and the Palme d'Or-winning Elephant. When the Coens' No Country for Old Men is released here in the UK, I'm confident that it will be regarded as one of their best films. It's weird that Cannes, which has so greatly sponsored the Coens' reputation over the years, should be so obtuse as to pass over such an excellent film." Read Ryan's Cannes recap here and for more on these movies, be sure to check out James' Cannes reviews of No Country for Old Men, Paranoid Park, and 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days.