Le Silence De Lorna: The Cannes juries tend to love the movies by the Belgian directing brothers Jean-Pierre et Luc Dardenne, making this an early front runner for the top prize. The movie is about an Albianian woman who marries a drug addict to obtain Belgian residency and citizenship. The critics should soon at a plot that is such a political and moral hot potato. Awards will follow, but thanks to the subtitles most North American audiences will probably stay away.

Synecdoche, New York: Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman is one of the few legitimate geniuses working in Hollywood today (check out his mind-bending movies Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind for yourself if you don’t believe me), which makes his directorial debut a rather exciting prospect. Philip Seymore Hoffman stars in a typically warped Kaufman premise about a playwright who is slowly losing his autonomic functions, so he dives headfirst into his latest project, which is a dramatic recreation of his real life set in a massive stage replica of New York held in a warehouse. The theatre staff will want to cover all of the seats in plastic for this one, because the movie is sure to make audiences’ brains explode.

Films Screening Out of Competition

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: This movie is supposed to be about an adventurous archeologist or something like that. Apparently there have been several movies featuring the same character made before this one, but lord knows I haven’t heard of them. I’m not sure why this got into Cannes. It seems like an odd choice.

The Good, The Bad, And The Weird: The latest movie by Kim Jee-Woon (the Korean mastermind behind the creepy A Tale Of Two Sisters and the action packed A Bittersweet Life) is some sort of bizarre Asian homage to the spaghetti western. The film is about a bounty hunter, a hitman, and a thief finding a mysterious map that entangles them in an adventure involving the Japanese army and Russian bandits. Based on Jee-Woon’s previous work, this movie should be violent, bizarre, and relentlessly entertaining. It should earn a cult following based on the title alone.