After years of immense admiration for the Cannes Film Festival, which premiered such masterpieces as “Taxi Driver,” “Pulp Fiction,” “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” and “Anora,” I attended the world’s most prestigious film fest for the first time this year! I saw 9 films over the 4 days I was there. This post is one within a series of three Cannes 2026 Recaps, each reviewing 3 films. The following covers “Hope,” “Minotaur,” and “Iron Boy.”
Hope (Na Hong-Jin, South Korea – In Competition)
The first and possibly worst film I saw at Cannes, Na Hong-Jin’s sci-fi monster flick owes more to Roland Emmerich and Michael Bay than to Steven Spielberg and James Cameron. This is a soulless, bland, and meandering enterprise that beats you into a coma with its redundancy.
The film makes no attempt to craft developed, three-dimensional characters and instead prioritizes spectacle and environment. This would be fine if the action was well executed, but alas, it is borderline catastrophic. Na Hong-Jin structures each action sequence to be completely identical, following the same boring formula: the bland protagonists run away from the monsters while shooting AR-15s, before being slapped, flung into the air, and slammed back down to the ground, only to immediately spring back up, barely dazed, as if they merely tripped on some Legos. The characters seem to have infinite HP, moving far beyond 90s video game logic into ridiculous territory neither Michael Bay nor Roger dared tread toward.
Without getting into spoilers — not that there’s anything to spoil except for the final two minutes — the film’s absurdity moves beyond the asinine set pieces. The police force in the film appears to have an arsenal equivalent to a small military, utilizing not only assault weapons but actual rocket launchers and cop cars featuring engines designed by Dominic Toretto. For whatever reason, they never call in the actual military, and somehow the South Korean government appears completely ignorant of the situation.
“Hope” also completely falters narratively. The first 45 minutes are an initially promising yet ultimately boring action sequence that other critics have erroneously and heinously referred to as reminiscent of “Mad Max: Fury Road,” when it’s anything but. The middle hour+ is boring, lifeless exposition and poorly scripted dialogue scenes that barely advance the plot, taking 90 minutes to accomplish what could have taken 15 minutes at most. The third hour is another boring action sequence that copy/pastes the first. Essentially, you’re numbed by the end of the first act, falling asleep during the second act, and fighting to stay awake during the third act. The best action films pepper great and vastly differentiated set pieces all throughout.
“Hope” is not simply one of the worst films of Cannes, but one of the worst of the year. A truly terrible monster movie unworthy of its placement into competition.
D
Minotaur (Andrey Zvyagintsev, Latvia – In Competition)
Taking a complete 180° turn to my favorite film of this year’s Cannes, “Minotaur” is an astonishing feat of suspense, relationship drama, and political commentary. Set in 2022 Russia with the Russia-Ukraine War literally hovering over citizens’ heads in the form of enlistment billboards, the film follows Gleb, an oligarchic CEO of an unnamed company. The same time as the government tasks him with listing fourteen of his employees to be drafted into the military, Gleb begins to suspect his wife of having an affair. What follows is an edge-of-your-seat political thriller, and by far the best film I have seen so far this year. Director Andrey Zvyagintsev constructs an atypical but brilliant narrative structure. It begins as a Tarkovsky-esque slow burn, with seemingly mundane scenes of family interactions intercut with likewise subdued moments in Gleb’s office space. While the parallel plot lines at first seem irrelevant to each other, the middle of the film takes a wild turn, which not only ties the two storylines together, but lands an explosive piece of political commentary. Much like Todd Field’s “TÁR” — what I believe to be the greatest film of the decade — “Minotaur” layers so many intricate details for the audience to slowly piece together as it reaches the crescendo of a finale. The film takes a simple story about the breakdown of an upper class marriage and uses it to dissect the corruption and spinelessness of the Russian government, as well as to portray the apathy of Russian civilians forced into a war they did not choose. The seamless combination of intimate, small scale character work with enormous political themes floored me.
Zvyagintsev brings such a precise, deliberate eye to his minimalist direction. Like many Eastern European filmmakers, he utilizes long takes and medium shots to eliminate any manipulative filmmaking techniques like close-ups, in favor of immersing the audience into the unbroken discussions between characters. Each shot has wonderful intention behind it, whether it be the slow panning around a room to visually provide exposition on a character’s background, or thoroughly choreographed blocking of characters to illustrate the emotional disconnect between them. His greatest piece of direction, as well as the film’s best scene, is the extended Hitchcockian sequence in the middle of the movie, photographed and performed with nail-biting horror while maintaining the minimalist visuals.
As soon as the credits rolled in the theater, I whispered, “That was f***ing excellent.” This will certainly feature on my Top 10 of 2026 list by December, at which time I will still be unraveling the film’s moral mysteries. Such labyrinthian, thematically rich, and consistently engaging storytelling is exactly what I want to see at The Movies.
A
Iron Boy (Louis Clichy, France – Un Certain Regard)
“Iron Boy,” on its surface, appears quite typical and unremarkable. It follows a young French farm-boy who, after being diagnosed with a major spinal misalignment, must wear an iron back brace that imposes significant difficulties on his life at school and home. We’ve seen this type of film hundreds of times before. Yet the execution, across all levels of filmmaking, is so warm and deeply human that one cannot help but fall for the charming narrative. The animation has this wonderful watercolor style that adds a nostalgic, childlike sensibility across the entire film. Our lead character is so sweet and effortless to root for, as life strikes him with tragedy after tragedy and he triumphs over it all. The movie leaves you with a skip in your step, reminiscent of 1980s family films. “Iron Boy” certainly will not blow anyone away, but I always welcome an uplifting tale which both children and adults can enjoy.
B+