I really did like Ken Loach's "I, Daniel Blake this past May at Cannes, but "like" is not enough for a film that won the Palme D'or. It's not like there weren't great films for the choosing at this year's festival: Paul Verhoeven's "Elle," Jim Jarmusch's "Paterson, Maren Ade's "Toni Erdmann," Andrea Arnold's "American Honey" and Kleber Mendonca Filho's "Aquarius" were all indisputably brilliant movies that deserved the honor. The four of them won zero prizes during the awards ceremony. The jury instead opted to give Xavier Dolan's terrible new film a Grand Jury Prize as well. The Cannes jury, which included George Miller, Kiefer Sutherland, Mads Mikkelson and Kate Hudson, might go down in infamy as the worst one since, quite possibly, 1987 when "Under the Sun of Satan" won the Palme D'or.
An Excerpt from my 5.12.16 Review of "I, Daniel Blake"
"The story is a little too familiar to be saved by its impeccable direction and harrowingly effective acting. What we get instead is a competent, watchable, but nevertheless problematic Ken Loach film which only reaffirms the fact that this kind of palpably, sentimental film would have not been chosen for the festival if it weren’t for the director’s name."
The ‘Smile’ franchise has a new director. David Bruckner, who made “The Night House” and the 2022 “Hellraiser” reboot, has been hired to direct “Smile 3” for Paramount.