Festival Circuit 2026

[Never Cursed]

Surprised there's been no posts about Cannes drama now that it's underway & that there hasn't been enough interest for its own thread since 2014.
The Guardian trots out its (annual?) article on Cannes Controversies for the occasion again this year.

The first big international titles (the Schoenbrun and the Farhadi) only screened yesterday and today, and I assume everyone there is on tenterhooks for the Hamaguchi, which premieres tomorrow. The Schoenbrun seems to have been received very well, which is nice to hear, even if my recurring nemesis David Ehrlich left a despicable review on Letterboxd for it

[Mr Sausage]

Surprised there's been no posts about Cannes drama now that it's underway & that there hasn't been enough interest for its own thread since 2014.
The Guardian trots out its (annual?) article on Cannes Controversies for the occasion again this year.

The first big international titles (the Schoenbrun and the Farhadi) only screened yesterday and today, and I assume everyone there is on tenterhooks for the Hamaguchi, which premieres tomorrow. The Schoenbrun seems to have been received very well, which is nice to hear, even if my recurring nemesis David Ehrlich left a despicable review on Letterboxd for it

Ehrlich’s letterboxd review now just reads “this review has been removed by the moderators, and its author sentenced to 100 consecutive lifetimes in horny jail. great movie tho”

What did it say before being taken down?

[therewillbeblus]

That's the review that popped up immediately when he logged it yesterday, so I think it's just his own joke

[Mr Sausage]

Oh. So what’s despicable about it?

[Never Cursed]

It's a cloying, sarcastic, fanboyish performance of sexual excitement from a straight guy at what I presume to be expressions of queer sexuality in a movie. It is beneath a professional critic, let alone one of the most famous ones on the internet, to be posting the equivalent of the 10,000 "Hannah Einbinder step on me" reviews that this will get once it appears in theaters from the croisette. Like shut the fuck up.

[Mr Sausage]

But what if this is a very sexy movie?

[Never Cursed]

It could be the sexiest movie of all time, and I would still not want to read David Ehrlich, or anyone paid to write about movies for that matter, post wink-wink tee-hee tongue-in-cheek bullshit where you admit to finding it hot but issue yourself plausible deniability for a proposition you introduced (and again, in the internet-brain-poisoned lingo of Twitter/Letterboxd). Gene Siskel just straightforwardly saying that whatever movie turned him on is 1000 times more respectable than whatever this is.

[Mr Sausage]

Ok, sure. I’m not a fan of it either—I don’t even think I understand it. But if this counts as despicable, what am I suppose to call genuinely bad behaviour?

[Never Cursed]

True it is despicable in the context of a Letterboxd review (i.e., by the standards of a Letterboxd review, I found it worthy of being despised/contempt), rather than a war crime. Maybe I should have said gross/uncomfortable/undignified/below what remains of the standards of cultural journalism/whatever.

[Mr Sausage]

Sorry to belabour the point, but why are we according it so much importance even in a letterboxd context? Isn’t the worst sin here that it’s trivial and dumb? I feel like an eyeroll is the most his review deserves.

[Never Cursed]

I took it to be (a). a little gross and (b). below the standards of how a professional film critic should be publicly writing about film. At the same time, I also called said critic my "recurring nemesis," which I had hoped was a reasonable tone marker

[therewillbeblus]

I like Ehrlich despite conceding that he can be obtuse at times, but this one definitely made me shake my head

[Sloper]

I guess Ehrlich (from his point of view) is celebrating the film's laudably sex-positive intent.

But this does make me think of his Letterboxd reviews for Lovelace ('virulently sex-negative [...] but hey, boobs. but be warned, they only lead to despair') and Hot Girls Wanted ('the people behind this embarrassingly specious, sex-negative, and truly inept portrait of the amateur porn world she be ashamed [sic].')

Clearly, neither of those films is beyond criticism, and there's a conversation to be had about how such true-life experiences are represented and exploited in films, even films with ostensibly 'good' intentions.

Ehrlich replaced the Hot Girls Wanted review with:

a LOT of what this movie depicts is very problematic and exploitative. HOW this movie depicts it is also very problematic and exploitative (I think, it's been years since I've seen it). A judgement on a film is not a judgement on its subject. apologies if the glib "review" that used to be in this space suggested otherwise.

But it's the 'sex-negative' comment - for which Ehrlich does not apologise - that really sticks with me. I do think it's important to have more sex-positivity in media in general, and to be able to talk frankly about how audiences engage with this stuff. However, if the film is based on Linda Lovelace's own account of abuse, or the film is a documentary in which adult performers give such accounts directly, I think it's very strange to call this 'sex-negative' without any explanation or qualification, and I think this does constitute a 'judgmement on the subject', not just the film. I mean...what would the sex-positive versions of those films have looked like? And by the same token, this kind of thing makes me a little wary when I see certain critics celebrating a film for its sex-positivity.

[Omensetter]

If the Hamaguchi is even remotely good, I hope it takes the Palme. His track record is immaculate, so I'm quite confident. I think it's screening right now. Elsewhere within Competition, Fukada and Bourgeois-Tacquet received polite shrugs, Farhadi received negative notices, and the Pawlikowski received positive reviews without much passion ala the Loznitsa from last year. A precise, black-and-white road movie through a divided Germany featuring Thomas Mann frankly seems like a good time to me, though.

I've been a bit slow following this year's edition, but consider this my pre-festival predictions all the same:

Palme: Hamaguchi
Grand Prix: Mungiu
Director: Zvyagintsev
Screenplay: Grisebach
Jury: Pawlikowski
Actor: Adam Driver
Actress: Seydoux

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

I dislike Ehrlich very much especially as he’s part of this wave of critics who simultaneously want to be serious critics, but then rush to make glib, ironic comments online to immediately engage in quickly irrlevant discourse. Maybe I’m being too dogmatic, but it’s unbecoming of a critic to engage with your field of art like that and is representative of why I distrust the majority of critics today. They’re more interested in social media engagement instead of creating something with perspective and value for the art. And c’mon, to be middle-aged with a kid and posting “horny jail” meme jokes online is embarassing.

[knives]

Eh, there’s a long history of film critics being glib and horny. I mean that was half of Ebert’s thing.

[ryannichols7]

Eh, there’s a long history of film critics being glib and horny. I mean that was half of Ebert’s thing.

every few months on Twitter people dig up Ebert talking about boobs and make the "this is why he was the GOAT" tweets. critics have always been this way for sure, I think it's a bit silly to hold them in higher standards in every context. even Jonathan Rosenbaum and Adrian Martin, two of this forum's most beloved critics/scholars make joke-y commentary on social media all the time. it's one thing if Ehrlich had published that review in an official publication, but in the context of Letterboxd I think that's totally fine. I've never had an issue with him like many others have

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

Eh, there’s a long history of film critics being glib and horny. I mean that was half of Ebert’s thing.

I have no issue with glib and horny!! Been regularly picking up the collected writings of Manny Farber, and every other page has a wild comment, often very mean or crazy, and it’s funny. There’s something about the online version that bothers me, with Ehrlich in particular. A. S. Hamrah is a good example of someone who can be mean, glib and it’s funny who’s a contemporary writer.

[The Narrator Returns]

Ebert’s Russ Meyer background I think helped to crouch his horniness in genuine respect and awe for big breasts, and he always sounded like an adult. This new model of film-writer (even film-watcher) horniness, which is far from just Ehrlich, reads grossly adolescent or even infantilized, like they’ve been permitted to remain boys wagging their tongues. Something needed to happen before professionals felt no shame over tweeting about Sydney Sweeney’s “mammaries”.

[beamish14]

Eh, there’s a long history of film critics being glib and horny. I mean that was half of Ebert’s thing.

Did Ebert ever NOT enjoy a film with two women having sex?

Conversely, he seemed really disgusted and confused with some films with gay men, such as Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy

[Brian C]

That’s not something I remember noticing about Ebert. Do you have a better example than Brain Candy? That seems like a movie that wouldn’t have been on his wavelength regardless of any gay content.

[Never Cursed]

Anyway, shame to hear that the Hamaguchi mostly garnered polite positive notices rather than outright enthusiasm. A couple reviews I saw essentially called it preachy, which surprises me.

[The Narrator Returns]

Not to keep bringing it back to him but Ehrlich called it Hamaguchi’s weakest since Asako I & II, which I like better than all but one of his following movies (and Drive My Car isn’t the one). He still liked it but I’ll believe even that level of tepid positivity when I see it.

[domino harvey]

That’s not something I remember noticing about Ebert. Do you have a better example than Brain Candy? That seems like a movie that wouldn’t have been on his wavelength regardless of any gay content.

Ebert’s objections were 100% that he didn’t get the humor (he also notoriously missed everything Wet Hot American Summer was doing too. I think he just prefers schticky Mel Brooks style Catskills comedy). There’s a spirited segment of his TV show where Siskel tries very hard to get him to agree to see it again because Siskel loved it and recognized that Ebert completely missed the boat

[dadaistnun]

Regarding the Hamaguchi, Jessica Kiang gives it a full-on rave in Variety.