- 10 of Roger Ebert’s Favorite Movies About America (July 3, 2026)
Roger Ebert loved movies for the stories they tell about people and also for the world they reflect and sometimes shape. In his later years, he wrote the Great Movies books to inspire audiences to look beyond current releases to better understand what led us to where we are in the world of movies and in our culture, politics, and history. And then, in his last years, his column “Roger Ebert’s Journal” included his views on politics and the essential American values, along with very personal stories.
The movies that mattered most to Roger showed us the lives of people outside our experience and illuminated a new perspective on our own. Movies love stories about outsiders, underdogs, and rebels, all central to the American character. In honor of the 250th anniversary of the document that led to the founding of the United States of America with a new, if flawed declaration of the inalienable rights of all individuals, here are some of the movies he loved most for what they showed us about our country, the best and worst, the failures and the resilience, and beauty of our aspirations and the mistakes we make in trying to achieve them.
“Citizen Kane“
Roger’s audio commentary on what many consider the greatest American film of all time is one of the most erudite, fascinating discussions of filmmaking ever recorded. Kane is a boy taken from his family to be given all the advantages of wealth, who becomes a man, careless yet optimistic and public-spirited, but then bitter and selfish. And it is a masterpiece of cinematic storytelling, visual, dramatic narrative, acting, cinematography, and performance, with its 25-year-old writer-director in the title role.
In his “Great Movies” essay about “Citizen Kane,” Roger wrote about the “bravura visual moments,” the insightful depiction of history and progress, the circular storytelling that adds more context and nuance with every return to an incident, the impulse to try to understand, and the ultimate unsolvable mystery of any human being.
“The Best Years of Our Lives“
Roger praised this film about the difficulties faced by ordinary American men in returning home after WWII for not trying to paint them as extraordinary. They are good, decent men, but they are not especially heroic, and their struggles to adjust to “normal” life and to process how their experiences have changed them remain relatable even eight decades later.
Twenty years ago, Roger wrote: “Seen more than six decades later, it feels surprisingly modern: lean, direct, honest about issues that Hollywood then studiously avoided. After the war years of patriotism and heroism in the movies, this was a sobering look at the problems veterans faced when they returned home.”
“The Godfather“
Roger noticed something unusual about this Best Picture Oscar winner that explains our fascination with, and even sympathy for, its characters. We may see a lot of brutal, graphic violence, but all of it takes place within the limited world of the crime syndicates. He called it “a brilliant conjuring act, inviting us to consider the Mafia entirely on its own terms.” The audience hears about threats outside of that world, notably a story about a gun held to a man’s brow, and we see the severed head of a man’s beloved horse. But we do not see any violence against people who are not part of the syndicate.
Roger said that, within his own world, Marlon Brando’s Don Corleone has a sense of morality in how he grants favors and insists on staying out of the drug business. And yet, the story is about the corruption of his son, Michael, who at first insists he is not part of the criminal world but, in this movie and its sequel, becomes increasingly ruthless.
“Nashville“
Roger called Robert Altman’s film about country music performers a musical that is also a political parable and “a tender poem to the wounded and the sad.” He wrote: “The buried message may be that life doesn’t proceed in a linear fashion to the neat ending of a story. It’s messy and we bump up against others, and we’re all in this together. That’s the message I get at the end of “Nashville,” and it has never failed to move me.”
“All the President’s Men“
The “third-rate burglary” break-in to the Democratic office at the Watergate building turned out to be the thread that unraveled crimes at the highest levels of the United States government. The people who pulled on that thread were two young reporters at the Washington Post, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.
Roger, a journalist himself who loved his profession and adhered to its highest principles of integrity, appreciated the authenticity in this depiction of reporters who challenged the most powerful people in the country. “Who’d have thought you could build tension with scenes where Bernstein walks over to Woodward’s desk and listens in on the extension phone? But you can. And the movie’s so well paced, acted, and edited that it develops the illusion of momentum even in the scenes where Woodward and Bernstein are getting doors slammed in their faces.”
“Killer of Sheep“
I deeply appreciate how Roger was always willing to reconsider a film’s value. When this movie was first released, Roger wrote, “Instead of making a larger statement about his characters, [director Charles Burnett] chooses to show them engaged in a series of daily routines, in the striving and succeeding and failing that make up a life in which, because of poverty, there is little freedom of choice.”
Thirty years later, Roger admitted he had made a mistake in his view of the story about a Black man who works in a slaughterhouse and his family. The daily routines and the absence of freedom are the larger statement. “In this poetic film about a family in Watts, [Burnett] observes the quiet nobility of lives lived with values but without opportunities. The lives go nowhere, the movie goes nowhere, and in staying where they are, they evoke a sense of sadness and loss.”
“The Right Stuff“
Philip Kaufman’s film is based on Tom Wolfe’s book about the US space program, from the breaking of the sound barrier to the selection of the Mercury 7 astronauts.
Writing about it in 2002, Roger wrote that its lukewarm reception at the box office was because “audiences were not ready for a movie that approached the program with skepticism, comedy and irony.“ The larger story of the film goes beyond the achievements and colorful characters of the space program to a meditation on a classic American story, the uneasy transition from the character and skills of the lone cowboy to the more “civilized” established community, as we also see in “My Darling Clementine,” “Lonely Are the Brave,” and “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.”
“Hoop Dreams“
There’s no better example of Roger’s perspective—and his influence—than his four-star review of this documentary about two Black boys from poor families who are given basketball scholarships to an expensive private school. “A film like “Hoop Dreams” is what the movies are for. It takes us, shakes us, and make us think in new ways about the world around us. It gives us the impression of having touched life itself … [It is] poetry and prose, muckraking and expose, journalism and polemic. It is one of the great moviegoing experiences of my lifetime.”
“Do the Right Thing“
Roger said his first viewing of Spike Lee’s searing story of hot weather and hot tempers in Brooklyn penetrated his soul. It exemplifies Roger’s view that movies are “an empathy machine.” He wrote: Spike Lee “made a movie about race in America that empathized with all the participants. He didn’t draw lines or take sides but simply looked with sadness at one racial flashpoint that stood for many others.”
He noted with appreciation the extraordinary stylistic achievement of the then-32-year-old writer/director and marveled at his empathy for all of the characters. “If you can’t try to understand how the other person feels, you’re a captive inside the box of yourself.”
“Chop Shop“
The immigrant experience is an essential part of the American Story. Roger loved this film from writer/director Ramin Bahrani, the American-born son of Iranian immigrants. The adult performers in the film work in the Iron Triangle area where the film was shot. They often used their own words and were often unaware that the camera was rolling.
Roger said, “What is remarkable is the way, after careful preparation and multiple takes, Bahrani finds performances in them that are so natural and convincing, they put professional actors to shame.” The story is about Ale, a 12-year-old orphan trying to care for himself and his sister by working several jobs, including getting $5 for each car he flags down for an auto repair shop. Roger said, “Ale is in the tradition of American symbols of upward striving.”
- Through the Window: 10 Times That Foreign Directors Have Looked at America (July 3, 2026)
As the United States celebrates its 250th birthday in the middle of a truly divided time for the country, there will be a temptation to watch directly patriotic films as fireworks splash across the sky. The pulse of films like “Independence Day” and even “Saving Private Ryan” will undeniably quicken this weekend, but these celebrations of the country’s perceived strengths feel a little different in an age when so many would argue that “Idiocracy” is the American movie of the moment.
An alternative approach to considering the United States at 250 is to examine how outsiders have captured this country through their filmmaking. Whether it’s exaggerating certain aspects of the American experience or simply embracing our broad canvas, directors born outside the United States have been captivated by it in ways that often provide a unique P.O.V. Several acknowledged masters have even done it more than once. This is not a comprehensive list, but an array of 10 memorable times that foreign directors looked at America, and sometimes even liked what they saw.
Note: I considered several great films directly about the immigrant experience like “In America” and “Brooklyn,” but those are so obviously informed by the director’s background in the plotting that they seemed too easy. It’s kind of a different subgenre.
“Paris, Texas”
One of the most acclaimed “foreign films about America” ever made, Wim Wenders’ 1984 masterpiece stars Harry Dean Stanton (who turns 100 this month!) as Travis Henderson, a man who travels across the country with his brother Walt (Dean Stockwell) to find the mother (Nastassja Kinski) of his son. A German/French/U.K. production written by the distinctly American Sam Shepard and directed by the very German Wim Wenders: “Paris, Texas” was always going to be a bit unusual just through that collaboration. But that discordant connection is further amplified by the way the great cinematographer Robby Müller captures the American Southwest in all its unusual splendor. It’s a place that can be both majestic and terrifying in its scope, somewhere a man like Travis Henderson can get both lost and saved.
The story goes that Wenders had been scouting in the Western United States for another film and took photos of the region, including the city of Paris, which the film only mentions but never visits. When he went to work with Shepard on a potential collaboration on the director’s 1982 film “Hammett,” they developed the story together. Elements of John Ford’s work found their way into Shepard and Wenders’ approach, which owes a great deal to the Western, but it’s the visuals that give this film such a unique aesthetic. An imposing sense of desert ambiance through the sound design and a great score by Ry Cooder amplify the haunting Americana of it all, too.
“American Honey”
A very different kind of American road movie unfolds in English filmmaker Andrea Arnold’s 2016 coming-of-age epic, a masterful study of American freedom in all its wonder and pain. Sasha Lane plays a runaway named Star, who hooks up with a group of similar kids who cross the American heartlands, selling magazine subscriptions door to door. The thin narrative skeleton is just something on which Arnold can hang her energetic filmmaking, buoyed by a music-heavy soundtrack that accompanies this study of exuberant youth. Arnold’s film isn’t naïve, but it does tap into something about what it means to be young in the age of the side hustle that American directors often miss.
Shot across Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Iowa, much of “American Honey” was improvised by its cast, with many of the on-screen interactions between Lane and the rest of the young cast drawn from their own realities. The result is a film that feels both like an exaggerated vision of the freedom of American youth and an intimate, realistic one: the endless potential of the American heartland’s expanse contrasted with the human stories unfolding in small towns and at rest stops along the freeways that intersect it.
“RoboCop”
Foreign directors have been giving movie fans visions of the future in which the country could be called unspecified, but not Paul Verhoeven’s “RoboCop,” which is a direct deconstruction of American Capitalism and macho U.S. masculinity as much as it is a kick-ass action movie. Dismissed by some at the time as just another part of the fabric of the American action blockbuster experience dominated in that era by Sly and Arnie, “RoboCop” is much more than just a shoot-em-up, a film that has developed a deserved reputation as one of the smartest sci-fi/action flicks ever made. It’s one of the most prescient films of the ‘80s, a movie that foresaw how technology would dehumanize people, valuing perceptions of justice and profit over humanity.
Peter Weller plays Alex Murphy, a Detroit cop who is murdered by a gang, resurrected by Omni Consumer Products in the form of RoboCop, a killing machine who doesn’t have to worry about little things like the Constitution or due process. Extremely violent, especially for its time, it’s very clearly a commentary on Reagan-era America, but Verhoeven’s background gives it a different edge than it would have had with a U.S. filmmaker. In a sense, it’s a case of a foreign director dropping right into the era of Reaganomics and patriotic American action films, exploding both with a muzzle flash.
“The Ice Storm”
Starring Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, and Joan Allen, “The Ice Storm” is a story of infidelity and tragedy, but it’s the subtle manner in which director Ang Lee approaches the material that keeps it from its potentially melodramatic trappings. He made a film in which secrets corrode from the inside more than explode, one that doesn’t get as surreal as many of the Outsider America films on this list but feels like it would have had a distinctly different tone if made by someone born and raised in the Connecticut region in which it was set. Sometimes we need an outsider to really see what’s on the inside.
One of the best films of a very good year in 1997 (it was Gene Siskel’s #1), Ang Lee’s adaptation of Rick Moody’s 1994 novel has always felt like its artistic success owed a great deal to its filmmaker’s Taiwanese upbringing. The Oscar-winning director of “Brokeback Mountain” and “Life of Pi” had made several films before this one about repressed emotion and fractured domesticity, and it took the approach he honed on films like “Eat Drink Man Woman” and “The Wedding Banquet” (and even “Sense and Sensibility”) to make Moody’s intimate novel into something cinematic in a way that a traditional American filmmaker couldn’t have.
“Dogville”
Cinema’s enfant terrible, Lars von Trier, certainly wasn’t about to make a movie that simply spelled out his feelings about the United States, although it’s impossible to read “Dogville” as anything but a vicious castigation of the world power, even before it ends with a needle drop of David Bowie’s “Young Americans”. To be fair, some viewers might have been caught up in the filmmaking conceit of “Dogville” too much to really unpack what it was saying: The whole thing takes place on an obvious soundstage, amplifying its theatricality in a Brechtian manner that aligns with Von Trier’s Dogme experimentation.
Part of an intended trilogy known as “USA: Land of Opportunities” with 2005’s “Manderlay” and a third film, “Washington,” that never got made, “Dogville” stars Nicole Kidman as Grace, who finds her way to the titular location after being chased there by mobsters. She’s put to work, used, and abused; her need for protection turned into an asset for the townspeople to exploit. It’s such a violent, vicious movie that ends so darkly that some critics saw it as downright anti-American, but that’s too dismissive of a dramatically daring work. It’s a study in how this country uses poverty and need when it can see a way to commodify them for labor or control. Since its release, its reputation has only grown, with most now citing it as one of Von Trier’s best films.
“Zabriskie Point”
Speaking of films about America from foreign directors whose reputations have shifted, that has undeniably happened with Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1970 drama, a movie that was downright loathed upon its release but has earned a critical reappraisal across subsequent generations. How much have people come around on “Zabriskie Point”? In the same decade it was released, it was featured in a book titled The Fifty Worst Films of All Time.
Over a half-century after its release, people have come around to Antonioni’s vision, one that takes a look at the counterculture movement of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s through a European lens. Writer Sam Shepard was involved in the screenplay for a film about campus life in the ‘60s that marries Antonioni’s eye with an almost stream-of-consciousness unpacking of American issues like student protests and a country obsessed with firepower. Like almost all critics, Roger disliked the film, saying, “Their voices are empty; they have no resonance as human beings.” Generations later, that kinda feels like the point.
“Django”
There are a number of films set in the American West made by foreign filmmakers (definitely check out “Slow West” when you can, and Leone’s “The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly” deserves its place in the pantheon, of course), but this film represents them all through its sheer bravado. Sergio Corbucci’s influential vision introduced the world to Franco Nero (still working as recently as last week’s “In the Hand of Dante”) as the title character, a Union soldier who ends up in a battle between Confederate Red Shirts and Mexican revolutionaries. It’s a film that could be categorized as more of a “border movie” than an “American one” if it weren’t for the manner in which Corbucci injects so much dark imagery from this country, including KKK iconography.
Exceedingly violent for its time, “Django” was too easily dismissed upon release but gained a following over the years as its combination of brutal violence and Corbucci’s painterly eye made for a mesmerizing blend. It’s an angry movie, one that uses American history to tell a story of pain and redemption. It’s not a coincidence that Quentin Tarantino would use the same name for another story that recontextualizes American history through extreme violence in “Django Unchained.”
“Chinatown”
Roman Polanski’s upbringing and its intersection with the rise of the Third Reich have always felt like significant factors in unpacking this beloved story of displacement, corruption, and unchecked power. Screenwriter Robert Towne was inspired by the actual Owne River Valley scandal of 1908, one that led to a land grab that resulted in the formation of Chinatown, and the film is loosely based on the water wars of the 1930s in California, but it’s all filtered through a foreign auteur’s vision. At its core, “Chinatown” is that very American of genres, the noir, but it deconstructs so many of its tenets, including turning the femme fatale into a victim herself, and emphasizing that it’s the broken systems of this country that will always win.
If Polanski just wanted to make a traditional historical noir after the success of “Rosemary’s Baby,” this film would have played a lot differently. Not only does the displacement of Polanski’s youth influence the tone here, but the way he captures the Oz-like nature of Los Angeles feels unique to someone who had to travel there from his own Kansas. As Roger said in his Great Movies essay, “Los Angeles, a city born in a desert where no city logically should be found.” It took a foreigner to craft this vision of an impossible city.
“The Apartment”
Austrian master Billy Wilder made a number of films set in America, but this 1960 masterpiece feels like his most strident commentary on the underbelly of his chosen country. One could make a case for “Double Indemnity” or especially “Ace in the Hole” to take this spot, but there’s something insidiously American about the story of “The Apartment” in how it looks at how the corporate machine can grind up those who attempt to use it. Jack Lemmon plays an insurance clerk who allows the people who employ him to use his apartment to cheat on their wives. When he falls for an elevator operator played by Shirley MacLaine, he doesn’t know she’s the mistress of his company’s head of personnel.
One of the first true examinations of how work and life would increasingly become untied in the American populace, “The Apartment” is both funny and heartbreaking, a movie that’s somehow light on its feet while also being remarkably dark in its subtext and themes. As Roger pointed out in his Great Movies essay, Lemmon and MacLaine’s characters are both “slaves to the company’s value system.” He also says something so perfect here and gets at why a Wilder film needed to be on this list: “Wilder pictures don’t play as period pieces but look us straight in the eye.”
“Stroszek”
Werner Herzog has made several films that could take this spot, but his 1977 comedy is his most aggressively American, at least what it was a half-century ago. Bruno S. plays Stroszek, a West Berlin street performer who moves to Wisconsin with a prostitute named Eva. Shot in Wisconsin and North Carolina, “Stroszek” was filled out by local non-actors, giving it almost a non-fiction feel as Herzog and his leading man, playing a variation on himself, explored what it means to be an American. This one could arguably fall into the disclaimer at the beginning of this piece regarding immigrant stories, but it’s such a unique vision of unheralded corners of the country that it feels like it should qualify. And we gotta have a Herzog.
Like a lot of Herzog’s work, “Stroszek” is a strange genre hybrid in which one can feel the lines blurring between reality and fiction. Ebert tells the story in his Great Movies essay that Herzog and the beloved Errol Morris were going to dig up a grave on Ed Gein’s property, but the documentarian never showed, but Herzog stumbled onto the mechanic shop that would serve as a setting for the film. There’s a reason that Ebert called it “one of the oddest films ever made.” He smartly notes that Herzog seems to be adding detail on the spot, letting the film and its setting take him where they want to go. How very American.
- Apple TV’s “Silo” Falters in Transitional Third Season (July 2, 2026)
It can often be a blessing and a curse when a series gets a two-season order. Yes, it’s nice to give creators a vote of confidence to extend their storytelling across multiple seasons. On the other hand, it sometimes leads to seasons like the third of Apple TV +’s once-excellent “Silo,” an outing that feels far too much like table-setting for the fourth and final chapter. Don’t get it wrong: This is still intelligent, ambitious science fiction. But there’s a sense of urgency that surged through the first two seasons that’s just lacking here. Splitting the storytelling between two time periods, tied together through a theme of corruption and false narratives, hints at the impressive reach of the writing this season, but it’s one of the choices that also leads to a sense that this season is a bridge instead of a destination. “Silo” has been one of the best shows on TV during its first two season; it’s just barely good enough in is third to keep viewers excited to see how it all ends.
The last season of “Silo” ended with two serious cliffhangers regarding the mortality of two characters so come back after you’ve watched the third season premiere if you don’t want to know how at least one of them ended. Whether or not Bernard Holland (Tim Robbins) survived the fireball in the season-two climax is held for long enough that it won’t be spoiled here, but we learn quickly that Juliette Nichols (Rebecca Ferguson) made it back from Silo 17 to her people, who she now serves as the silo’s Mayor. The small problem is that Juliette doesn’t remember what happened to her with Jimmy (Steve Zahn) and the other silo. And her amnesia is more than just a product of the explosion, as we learn that she is being drugged to keep her memories repressed. How people in power rewrite history to serve their needs is one of the strongest themes of season three as Juliette, a former leader of the rebellion, has become a pawn in a game to keep the people of the Silo in check.
Who’s playing this game? Believe it or not, Camille (Alexandria Riley) moves to a central role this season as the Wizard of this Underground Oz chooses her to be its liaison, replacing Bernard as a reticent villain for much of the season, to the surprise of her husband Robert (Common, doing his best work of the series to date this year). Part of the problem with season three is how much it sidelines previously fascinating characters like Juliette, Jimmy, and Bernard in favor of people like Camille, Knox (Shane McRae), and Shirley (Remmie Milner). It’s not that these performers are necessarily bad, but they have big shoes to fill when it comes to carrying “Silo” and there’s a bit of stumbling, especially in the first half of the season.
A similar problem invades the other half of the third season of “Silo,” which takes place much closer today than the show’s vision of a post-apocalyptic future. There was actually another sort of cliffhanger at the end of last year when the writers jumped back generations to introduce us to a congressman named Daniel (Ashley Zukerman) and a journalist named Helen (Jessica Henwick), hinting that we might learn a bit more about the origins of the silos. Actually, it’s a lot more than you might have imagined as about half of the third season of “Silo” takes place in this timeline, introducing us to Daniel’s sister (Jessica Brown Findlay), along with characters played by Laura Innes, Reed Birney, Matt Craven, and Colin Hanks, doing a nice riff on the timely issue of the icy inhumanity of the uber-wealthy.
It’s a good cast, but the writing in the “origin” half of “Silo” just doesn’t hum with the same urgency as the rest of the show. It’s a nearly impossible task to pivot from the survivor story that people have been watching since the season premiere—one that’s had unexpected deaths and a simmering rising tension of a rebellion—to a “how we got here” narrative that simply lacks that tension. The truth is that how the silos were constructed and why isn’t as immediate as how Juliette might lead a revolution against them. Imagine “Snowpiercer” if half the movie was about the people who built the train and laid down the tracks.
The less-interesting characters taking the spotlight and the drag of the early timeline make for the first season of “Silo” that often drags. Having said that, the ensemble is still strong enough and the concept sturdy enough that the show never completely collapses. It’s also a season that can be interesting to unpack thematically. The American people in the Silo Construction arc are being lied to about their safety in a way that makes the headlines about tech sector doomsday prepping even more disconcerting, and the people of Silo 18 have been lied to for most of their lives about just about everything. At its core, it’s a show about how societies are manipulated by the Powers That Be, and that maintains.
Season three of “Silo” ultimately feels like an extensive bit of table setting. Without spoiling, multiple arcs and characters intersect in a finale that sets up season four for a climactic battle that could be one of the best shows of whatever year it airs. If that happens, this transitional season might arguably have all been worth it. Only then will we know if “Silo” will rise again.
Whole season screened for review. Returns on Apple TV+ on July 3rd.
- Annecy 2026: The City of Animation (July 2, 2026)
Every June, Annecy, a sun-drenched lakeside town in France’s Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, becomes the world capital of animation, hosting a festival that has grown in prestige over its six-decade existence. It is with that spirit in mind that CITIA, the organization that runs the event, decided to expand the concept by turning Annecy into a year-round rendezvous for animation lovers. Specifically, this year’s festival, which ran two weeks later than usual because of the G7 taking place in the region, coincided with the inauguration of the Cité du Cinéma d’Animation, a permanent exhibition space and cinema located a stone’s throw from the Bonlieu Theater, the event’s primary screening venue.
The exhibition space, accessible free of charge during the inaugural weekend, houses a permanent exhibit that covers the overall history of animation, from the zoetrope to the advent of CGI, with sketches and props illustrating the evolution of the artform, alongside video commentary from directors who have attended the festival over the years (including Guillermo del Toro, Henry Selick and Wes Anderson). Temporary shows highlight current and upcoming projects, with Laika’s “Wildwood” being the hottest ticket. Puppets and sets from Travis Knight’s new stop motion movie were on display for everyone to see, although security was tight to an unusual degree: to prevent leaks (since the exhibit opened before the visuals were made public via a special presentation at Bonlieu), staff were instructed to put stickers on people’s phones to cover the cameras. A sound strategy, as it forced spectators to truly take in the first glimpse at what promised to be an epic journey to a new world.
Wildwood
Speaking of stop motion, the Aardman crew—founders Peter Lord and David Sproxton, “Wallace & Gromit” creator Nick Park, and others—were in town to celebrate the company’s 50th anniversary (technically 54th, but they’re counting from when they started using clay instead of hand-drawn animation). Their panel set the tone for the entire festival, not least because it was, for many attendees, the first time seeing this year’s Annecy trailer: shown before each screening, the video—humorously showing the city, the event, and its sponsors—is made by a different studio each year. In 2026, that honor belonged to Aardman, and the resulting short was a self-deprecating delight. By the end of Day 1, viewers were whistling along once the familiar “Wallace & Gromit” theme music kicked in to cap off the video.
The other recurring element every year is a second festival trailer, or rather, a series of them (they change according to the day or the venue), made by students from Les Gobelins, the foremost animation school in France. They usually pay tribute to the individual edition’s country in focus, but this vintage of the festival didn’t have one, owing to the Cité inauguration and the resulting desire to celebrate all forms of animation (regular proceedings will resume in 2027, with Colombia as the guest of honor). The Gobelins package followed suit, each gorgeously hand-drawn short referencing a different style, with the anime-inspired “Sparkle Ranger” attracting the loudest rounds of applause.
Due to the shift in dates, the festival had to make do without some titles that would otherwise have been sure things, such as “Toy Story 5”. One old friend that didn’t fail to show up was Illumination, a regular since the very first “Despicable Me” premiered at Annecy in 2010. Eight films in, the franchise is still ridiculously amusing, and “Minions & Monsters” is arguably the best of the bunch, as it fully embraces the potential for chaos tied to the yellow henchmen, unleashing them in the context of silent era Hollywood. Given how famously cinephile a nation France is, and how much the language informs the gibberish spoken by the Minions (voiced by franchise creator Pierre Coffin, who was raised in Paris), the festival’s opening ceremony was the ideal way to unveil this ode to creative insanity.
Iron Boy
The Feature Film Competition surveyed the best of global animation, some of it in collaboration with the other major French film event: out of eleven titles vying for the top prize, six had premiered in Cannes the month before. Naturally, national productions were a huge part of it, with “Iron Boy,” “In Waves,” “Lucy Lost” and “Viva Carmen!” gaining praise at both festivals. The remaining two Cannes veterans hailed from Japan (“We Are Aliens”) and the US (“Tangles”), and all six films exemplified the main unifying theme of the competition: aside from the Chinese production “Tana,” which used computer animation, all the entries were hand-drawn, showcasing the versatility of traditional techniques in one of the rare places where old school craft is not considered outdated.
In fact, “old school” is something that comes to mind when thinking of “The Violinist,” which took home the main prize. A co-production between Singapore and Spain (with additional funding from Italy), the film, directed by Ervin Han and Raúl García, is a simple yet affecting story of friendship born through music and then torn asunder when war keeps the two protagonists apart. A visual and aural trip down memory lane (the bulk of the movie is an extended flashback), its warm colors find their emotional match in the impeccably classic score.
The Sunrise File
Looking at the past century was a theme, most notably in another film with a Cannes connection: a few weeks ago, Croisette visitors were the first to see “Moulin,” a French drama about the fateful encounter between Resistance figurehead Jean Moulin and Gestapo officer Klaus Barbie; the latter returned in Annecy via “The Sunrise File,” a thriller recounting the complex relationship between the Israeli intelligence apparatus and a couple of Nazi hunters. Brian Cox lends his gruff tones to the aging Israeli secret agent whose memories are the basis of the narrative. Co-director Rupert Wyatt (“Rise of the Planet of the Apes”) makes his animation debut, with quietly devastating results.
The Contrechamp competition, showcasing films that go against the grain aesthetically or narratively, featured one of the biggest swings when it comes to a movie with a marked contrast between subject matter and depiction. It was another film dealing with the wartime period, specifically in a Japanese context: “Peleliu–Guernica of Paradise”. Set on the island of the same name in 1944, Goro Kuji’s tale of camaraderie is at times startlingly brutal, its portrayal of violence being starker than one might expect considering the characters have the physical proportions—and, to a degree, the facial features—of Funko Pops and look much cuter than your typical war movie cannon fodder.
Blaise
Contrechamp’s big winner was another Cannes veteran, “Blaise,” a French dark comedy with an animation style reminiscent of the TV series “Archer”. Putting its own spin on the age-old trope of the dysfunctional family, it chronicles the everyday experiences of two parents and their teenage son as they come to terms with their oddball nature and actually try to fit in and make friends. Occasionally off-putting (in a very deliberate manner), but French cinema aficionados are in for a treat courtesy of Léa Drucker’s impeccable voice work as the mother.
On the short film side, longtime Annecy attendees were probably disappointed by the absence of Swedish director Niki Lindroth von Bahr, who won in 2017 with the exquisite “The Burden” and took Cannes by storm in May with “The End”. That said, stop-motion with a Nordic feel to it was still very much present in the form of “Please,” a melancholy tale about the need for human attachments. The puppets are human rather than anthropomorphic animals like in Lindroth von Bahr’s films, but there is an amusing behind-the-scenes connection: Alexander Skarsgård is one of the voice actors in “The End,” while his father Stellan lends his weary tones to “Please” with his usual charm and wit.
Dynamic Duo
Besides film screenings, a major component of Annecy’s yearly celebration of the animated form is a wide array of special presentations: studio showcases, work-in-progress sessions, masterclasses, and the like. And none, besides the Aardman event on opening day, were as highly anticipated as the Warner Bros. Pictures Animation panel, touted as a new chapter in the company’s history (much like DC Studios, the animation unit is now its own thing within the Warner Bros. family). Those who follow what’s going on in Hollywood were justifiably concerned about what the future may hold for the team, given the merger with Paramount that appears increasingly, depressingly unstoppable. And yet, what unspooled on the screen, illustrating a slate of films coming out through 2028, was sometimes mesmerizing, never anything less than interesting (“Dynamic Duo,” a puppet-based take on the DC universe, looks spectacular).
The presentation also allowed attendees to see a new Looney Tunes short, “Daffy Season,” which will premiere theatrically with “The Cat in the Hat” later this year. A gem of pure lunacy, with Daffy Duck losing it over the fact everyone is suddenly obsessed with soccer (or, as he calls it, European football), it marks the return of animated shorts meant for theaters, as far as Warner Bros. is concerned, after a protracted absence. In other words, that’s not all, folks!
- “Elle” Does Its Best to Smell Like Teen Spirit (July 1, 2026)
In 1995, six years before she was introduced to the world in the 2001 film “Legally Blonde,” Elle Woods was a high school student suddenly thrust out of her sunny Beverly Hills comfort zone into the overcast, extremely flannel world of Seattle. That is the backstory created in “Elle,” a new Prime Video series and prequel to “Legally Blonde” that imagines what life would have been like for teenage Elle if she’d had to navigate the grungy Pacific Northwest scene armed with an almost entirely pink wardrobe and a plucky attitude that shines a little too brightly for the shoegazer crowd.
Created by Laura Kittrell, whose previous writing and producing credits include “Insecure” and the wonderful, underrated “High School,” “Elle” begins with a clunky pilot and slowly becomes more watchable as it progresses through the eight episodes in its first season. It helps that the lead role once owned by Reese Witherspoon, also an executive producer, is occupied by newcomer Lexi Minetree, who looks a teeny bit old for high school (the actress is 25 in real life), but effectively channels the same bubbly, can-do spirit of Witherspoon’s Elle, along with her frustration with people who judge the cover of her book and immediately file her in the “vapid” section. But particularly in its early installments, the show “Elle” tends to place many of its characters into overly simplistic categories.
Literally every kid at Rainier West High School—which Elle attends after her plastic surgeon father (Thomas Everett Scott) performs a reputation-ruining botched nose job that forces her family to leave L.A.—dresses in either black, gray, or some monochromatic combination of the two. They’re all a bit cynical, mildly depressed and, sometimes, downright mean. “People are saying that you wearing that shirt is the second worst thing to ever happen to Nirvana,” Kimberly (Chandler Kinney), who immediately emerges as Elle’s nemesis, tells Elle when she shows up to school in a Nirvana shirt she bedazzled herself. “Seattle isn’t a costume and pink isn’t a personality,” Kimberly adds. The problem is that the show absolutely acts like Seattle, and the mid-’90s in general, is a costume, a hypocrisy that Elle lightly touches on herself. When Shannon, a fellow classmate and friend, tells Elle that the kids in Seattle are anti-conformity and “afraid to be like everybody else,” Elle responds, “Except when it comes to plaid.”
Tom Everett Scott, Lexi Minetree, June Diane Raphael
It’s best not to spend much time thinking about how the events in “Elle” may or may not disrupt the canon of the “Legally Blonde” franchise, which, for the record, includes three movies and a hit Broadway musical. (It’s okay if you don’t remember the 2009 straight-to-DVD release “Legally Blondes,” about Elle’s twin British cousins. Nobody else does either.) Kittrell and her fellow writers go out of their way to make allusions to the first movie, from the episode titles that repeat classic Elle Woods quotes—“Whoever Said Orange is the New Pink Was Seriously Disturbed” is the name of episode six; episode eight is called, “What, Like It’s Hard”—to the frequent references to Elle’s previously established favorite things (Cosmo and “Days of Our Lives.”)
But the series is just as evocative of other teen films and TV shows as it is of “Legally Blonde.” In fact, if someone turned on this series without knowing what it was, they might be convinced they were watching a streaming adaptation of “Clueless” since it’s set in 1995, the year the film was released; features similar music (“Just a Girl” by No Doubt makes an appearance, as do Radiohead and a cavalcade of other artists who had hits in the ‘90s); and focuses on a protagonist who’s determined to become a better, more serious person. As she did in “Legally Blonde,” Elle also uses a fuzzy feather pen. But we all know who did that first, and she has the same name as the lady who won an Oscar for “Moonstruck.”
Halfway through the season, a storyline involving the potential cover-up of a financial scandal at Rainier West High starts to give “Elle” a bit of a “Veronica Mars” vibe. There’s also an entire episode set during Saturday detention that overtly and frequently references “The Breakfast Club.” And in a choice that is now more poignant in retrospect, James Van Der Beek, whose career launched via “Dawson’s Creek,” plays a school superintendent running for mayor in what turned out to be his final performance. (He died earlier this year of colorectal cancer.)
Dean Wilson (James Van Der Beek) in ELLE. Photo Credit: Kimberley French/Prime Video
The more you can think of “Elle” as another teen show dealing with typical teen issues—including dating mishaps, the struggle to make and maintain friendships, and the attempt to define one’s sexual identity—the more likely you are to meet this series where it is and enjoy it on its own breezy terms. There are indeed some things to enjoy.
In addition to Minetree’s charming performance, Gabrielle Policano is a stand-out as Liz, an out-of-the-closet lesbian and straight shooter who becomes unlikely buddies with Elle. Her character could easily have come across as a stereotype, but Policano gives her a sense of humor and humanity that make her feel like a real teenager rather than one invented for a streaming release. Most of the laughs in “Elle” are generated by June Diane Raphael, who is extremely well-cast as Elle’s mother, a privileged busybody who, like her daughter, is not shy about stating her opinions. “These children are pale on purpose,” she tells Elle in an attempt to comfort her when her classmates are less than welcoming. “They don’t know anything.”
“Elle” won’t teach you anything important that you don’t already know about Elle Woods or, for that matter, what it’s like to be a teenage girl in the ‘90s or any other era. But it’s light, cheerful to look at, and unchallenging to binge in a weekend. Sometimes you need a dose of that after wallowing for too long under heavy clouds and too much flannel.
All eight episodes of season one were screened for review. Premieres July 1 on Prime Video.
