Flavorwire

Your Flavorwire has done its level best to hit the film festivals of note this year, but we’re afraid our travel budget was running a little too dry after Sundance and SXSW for us to make our way over to Cannes. (We’re even more disappointed than you are.) But we’ve been keeping a close eye on the reviews coming from the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès, and have found plenty to get excited about in those dispatches. After the jump, we’ve assembled ten of the Cannes films we’re most looking forward to, with words of encouragement from some of the folks who were lucky enough to get a glimpse. (h/t to IndieWire, for their invaluable CriticWire directory of Cannes reviews.)

Cosmopolis

We’ve been amped about David Cronenberg’s latest since its first, trippy teasers started appearing a couple of months back, so we’re relieved to hear that it is, according to Hammer to Nail’s Michal Oleszczyk, “a mesmerizing, utterly cerebral inquiry into the current economic crisis as channeled by its main character’s slowly imploding mind. At once a follow-up to eXistenZ in its portrayal of reality’s crumbling façade and A Dangerous Method‘s kissing cousin by virtue of a non-stop blast of brainy talk, Cosmopolis is this year’s Margin Call for the philosophical-minded set.” Time Out New York’s David Fear concurs, “virtually everything works, from the intra-Cronenberg echoes (notably Videodrome, Crash and eXistenZ) on down, sickening and sating in all the right measures; having been one of the most anticipated movies at this year’s festival, it’s now officially one of its best.”