criterionforum.org

Given Gene Siskel's fondness for the Playboy Mansion, I'm surprised no one's cited him as an example. Surely he's written reviews of this nature, and indeed this is one that was published in his column in the Chicago Tribune:

Spoiler

LACKING DRAMA, `STRIPTEASE' LITTLE MORE THAN A DEMI MOORE PEEP SHOW
Siskel, Gene.  Chicago Tribune; Chicago, Ill.. 28 June 1996

Our Flick of the Week is "Striptease," in which Demi Moore moves a little bit closer to making her ultimate movie, "Demi Goes to the Gynecologist." That's the direction her career is heading after the naked Vanity Fair magazine covers, the chest-heaving in "Disclosure" and the bath in "The Scarlet Letter."

"Striptease" works only as a peep-show look at Moore's fabulous body -- and should be judged as such. She has powerful thighs, and her breasts look great when they are partially covered but implant-stiff when fully exposed, as in her final dance. If you think such criticism is unwarranted, sorry, but her body is precisely what this movie is about.

Moore plays a mother caught in a child-custody battle who takes a job as a nude dancer to pay her legal bills. Burt Reynolds, trying to make a comeback by intentionally playing a fool, co-stars as a drunken, right-wing Southern senator who frequents her club and attacks a patron. Will he be exposed as well? Reynolds' character is a too-giddy rip-off of the drunken politician played better by the Oscar-nominated Charles Durning in "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas," which Reynolds also starred in.

Tired ethnic stereotyping abounds in the "Striptease" script, which is at a loss for any kind of drama between Moore's dances. Not for a second do we care about her as a mother, wife or working woman. Only her first dance in a modified man's suit approaches the energy of the much better "Flashdance."

Of course "Striptease" does offer some value; its admission ticket is a lot cheaper than those of the strip clubs, I'm told. Rated R. (star)

Searching "Siskel" and "breasts" in the Tribune's archive dug up quite a few hits, so I imagine this isn't a one-off.

How coincidental, 3 Siskel & Ebert shows popped up in my youtube feed yesterday and so I watched them for nostalgia's sake as I watched the show almost every week as a kid. Funny this discussion shows up the next day.

Worst of 1980
Guilty Pleasures (1987)
Body Heat/Continental Divide/Mommy Dearest/Only When I Laugh

If anything, both seem to be inconsistent in their critiques as in some movies each might criticize it for focusing too much attention on naked bodies (Blue Lagoon, while in another they might praise it for being steamy and sexy (scene where William Hurt breaks into Kathleen Turner's house to have sex with her in Body Heat). They were split over Summer Lovers (the follow up to Blue Lagoon), where Siskel enjoyed it as a guilty pleasure, while Ebert was offended by the attempt to add a psychological dimension to the film. When viewed in hindsight neither seems to have a cohesive theory on what makes sex/nudity in film offensive/attention-grabbing and what makes it erotic/attractive.

"The sex is hot!" (SNL parody)

Lowry_Sam wrote:When viewed in hindsight neither seems to have a cohesive theory on what makes sex/nudity in film offensive/attention-grabbing and what makes it erotic/attractive.

That seems fine … I can scarcely think of anything that seems more tedious than film critics with “a cohesive theory on what makes sex/nudity in film offensive/attention-grabbing and what makes it erotic/attractive.”

It's not so much that they don't elaborate on the why (it is commercial tv afterall), just that watching multiple reviews reveals them to be inconsistent.

hearthesilence wrote: Fri May 15, 2026 7:05 pm Given Gene Siskel's fondness for the Playboy Mansion, I'm surprised no one's cited him as an example. Surely he's written reviews of this nature, and indeed this is one that was published in his column in the Chicago Tribune:

Spoiler

LACKING DRAMA, `STRIPTEASE' LITTLE MORE THAN A DEMI MOORE PEEP SHOW
Siskel, Gene.  Chicago Tribune; Chicago, Ill.. 28 June 1996

Our Flick of the Week is "Striptease," in which Demi Moore moves a little bit closer to making her ultimate movie, "Demi Goes to the Gynecologist." That's the direction her career is heading after the naked Vanity Fair magazine covers, the chest-heaving in "Disclosure" and the bath in "The Scarlet Letter."

"Striptease" works only as a peep-show look at Moore's fabulous body -- and should be judged as such. She has powerful thighs, and her breasts look great when they are partially covered but implant-stiff when fully exposed, as in her final dance. If you think such criticism is unwarranted, sorry, but her body is precisely what this movie is about.

Moore plays a mother caught in a child-custody battle who takes a job as a nude dancer to pay her legal bills. Burt Reynolds, trying to make a comeback by intentionally playing a fool, co-stars as a drunken, right-wing Southern senator who frequents her club and attacks a patron. Will he be exposed as well? Reynolds' character is a too-giddy rip-off of the drunken politician played better by the Oscar-nominated Charles Durning in "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas," which Reynolds also starred in.

Tired ethnic stereotyping abounds in the "Striptease" script, which is at a loss for any kind of drama between Moore's dances. Not for a second do we care about her as a mother, wife or working woman. Only her first dance in a modified man's suit approaches the energy of the much better "Flashdance."

Of course "Striptease" does offer some value; its admission ticket is a lot cheaper than those of the strip clubs, I'm told. Rated R. (star)

Searching "Siskel" and "breasts" in the Tribune's archive dug up quite a few hits, so I imagine this isn't a one-off.

hearthesilence wrote: Fri May 15, 2026 7:48 pm "The sex is hot!" (SNL parody)

Funny to see you cite these in succession as one of the first things that came to mind when this topic detour started was the Siskel & Ebert appearance on SNL where they sat down with Billy Crystal's Fernando character and argued about the size of Mariel Hemingway’s Star 80 implants. I recall hand gestures being involved.

Brian C wrote: Fri May 15, 2026 7:52 pm

Lowry_Sam wrote:When viewed in hindsight neither seems to have a cohesive theory on what makes sex/nudity in film offensive/attention-grabbing and what makes it erotic/attractive.

That seems fine … I can scarcely think of anything that seems more tedious than film critics with “a cohesive theory on what makes sex/nudity in film offensive/attention-grabbing and what makes it erotic/attractive.”

Siskel literally has a line about this. He says eroticism and comedy aren’t debatable— either you find something sexy or funny or you don’t. I don’t think there is anything wrong with admitting to finding an erotic movie erotic, that’s meeting a film on its level

Yeah that’s basically my point - why would it be consistent in the first place? One scene might seem profoundly erotic, another similar one might seem trashy and exploitative. And then another viewer watches both and has the opposite reaction to each. These things are highly subjective and even instinctual.

I think critics owe it to their audience to be honest about their own reactions, and trying to fit such unpredictable reactions into some kind of theory or consistency seems like it would be fundamentally dishonest. Like, now you’re having to decide which box your own reactions fit into. Tedious.

Never Cursed wrote: Thu May 14, 2026 8:42 pm It's a cloying, sarcastic, fanboyish performance of sexual excitement from a straight guy at what I presume to be expressions of queer sexuality in a movie. It is beneath a professional critic, let alone one of the most famous ones on the internet, to be posting the equivalent of the 10,000 "Hannah Einbinder step on me" reviews that this will get once it appears in theaters from the croisette. Like shut the fuck up.

Surely it's more "Gillian Anderson step on me"? That wouldn't make Ehrlich's post less cringe (most cringe-inducing film critic, consistently) but it would at least explain why he felt so comfortable posting it. "Gillian Anderson is hot" has got to be one of the most tried-and-true uncontroversial sentiments one can espouse online

The only way his reaction wouldn't have been deeply embarrassing is if he wanted Patrick Fischler to step on him

The reviews for Her Private Hell are savage, even apologists for Only God Forgives and Neon Demon seem to hate it.

The Curious Sofa wrote: Wed May 20, 2026 7:07 am The reviews for Her Private Hell are savage, even apologists for Only God Forgives and Neon Demon seem to hate it.

Not this one. For me, its negative buzz makes it that much more intoxicating.

Even before I clicked on the link, I suspected it was going to be Peter Bradshaw. An endorsement from him rarely is a good sign as far as I'm concerned. I was hoping that Refn would make another film that I liked but I thought his last two films were already bafflingly awful (I skipped the TV series), so I doubt I'll become a cheerleader for this. The only thing that could tempt me to give this a shot is a score by Pino Donaggio.

Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi's La Bola Negra appears to be attracting some of the most enthusiastic reviews of the by-all-accounts underwhelming Cannes Competition selections, though there appears to be a contingent of critics (basically the Moir.ee crowd) that are equally enthusiastic in their hatred of the film. It sounds interesting, though the last time this gang of critics was alone in their opposition to a movie was against Emilia Perez, so who knows. The real question is why this Competition selection has been such a disaster (stuff in UCR, like the Schoenbrun, and out of competition has been stealing a lot of the attention one would expect these movies to receive)

Never Cursed wrote: Fri May 15, 2026 5:05 pm Anyway, shame to hear that the Hamaguchi mostly garnered polite positive notices rather than outright enthusiasm. A couple reviews I saw essentially called it preachy, which surprises me.

it is this to an almost astonishing degree, i.e. the narrative will come to a full stop for characters to literally roll out a whiteboard and start diagramming out models of capitalism and having "conversations" about society that sound more like they're trading paragraphs of an undergrad economics thesis. there is still a lot to love about the film but its arguments are unfortunately very heavy handed and didactic

Never Cursed wrote: the by-all-accounts underwhelming Cannes Competition selections

The real question is why this Competition selection has been such a disaster (stuff in UCR, like the Schoenbrun, and out of competition has been stealing a lot of the attention one would expect these movies to receive)

I'm surprised that might be the consensus about it.
I've been using for some years Cannes-ratings.org (edit : corrected !) as an aggregator giving a sense of which movies might be on top of the selection (and of the other branches too), and hindsight allowed to see it's not a bad place in terms of predictions, with a good trend of the best scoring movies to get prized.

Going by this, the 2026 official selection stands at an average score of 6.35 out of 10, very much on par with past official selections, and the other selections aren't looking like getting all the light instead of the OS.

That website (which I hasten to add I believe is cannes-ratings.org) isn't a bad aggregator, but its methodology makes it useless for comparing reactions to the Cannes lineup itself: it clearly includes people's ratings/reviews/whatever of movies from a long time after the end of the festival. I must also question any site that includes as many random Letterboxd users as this appears to (in previous years many of the lower-ranked contributors are credited by what is obviously their username rather than a name/outlet).

I imagine that a natural consequence of casting such a wide net (with 5000-odd "contributors" in this year's festival and 15,000-odd in previous-year festivals) is that the overall score would bias towards a slightly above-average number - in other words, 6.5 or thereabouts. Compare that to the 2015 edition of the festival, one that we can safely call pre-Letterboxd, which has 302 contributors (in other words, something like 2% of the number of the 2025 edition, and a small fraction of all the other recent festivals), and I think the lower overall scores from those earlier years reflect the subsequent mass influx of random Lboxd users and online film journos more than anything else.

I don't think any statistical indicator is going to give an answer to this question, which is why I'm relying more upon social media discussion from critics in which I either have some modicum of trust or else who I think are useful mouthpieces for specific kinds of audiences (Ehrlich etc.). Most of those critics seemed decidedly underwhelmed by the Competition selection, particularly the films by the big-name international filmmakers they were presumably anticipating the most. Some were outright reviled (Farhadi, Kore-eda), some garnered a polarized reception (Harari, Mungiu, Na), and some got polite positive reception rather than the raves their producers or distributors were doubtlessly hoping for (Almodovar, Gray, Hamaguchi, Pawlikowski, Sachs). A lot of these authors seem more enthusiastic about Schoenbrun/Dumont/Jude/whoever than anything in the actual main slate.

I should also say that I don't think any of this has anything to do with the quality of the films, or even accurately or systemically predicts their quality. Emilia Perez is an all-too-recent example of an insulated audience raving over a complete disaster of a film that was, as one detractor predicted, torn to shreds the instant it was shown outside of a film festival. It is interesting and maybe unintentionally revealing, however, to hear these same critics collectively narrativize this competition slate as "a disappointment" or "failure."

Fair points altogether, though at least the current edition and last year's have the option to remove Letterboxd' scores.
But I didn't realise past editions were keeping alive by including newer scores, as I mostly use it to follow the ongoing festival, not so much looking at past ones, and that indeed bias the results.

Per Kyle Buchanan, directors or people associated with the following Comp films have been asked back:

All Of a Sudden/Soudain
The Black Ball (which Netflix just bought for a Fall awards release)
Coward
The Dreamed Adventure
Fatherland
Fjord
A Man of His Time/Notre Salut
Minotaur

Assuming this to be accurate, there's either a tie or a special award. These are largely a mixture of movies that were positively received by most festival-goers or else only met dissent from the artier critics. The movies that polarized (like the Harari and the Na) are absent, as are the films by James Gray and Ira Sachs, the only two Americans in Comp.

Awards:

Palme d'Or: Fjord (Cristian Mungiu)
Grand Prix: Minotaur (Andrey Zvyagintsev)
Director: TIE: The Black Ball (Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo), and Fatherland (Paweł Pawlikowski)
Actor: Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagne, Coward (Lukas Dhont)
Actress: Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto, All of a Sudden/Soudain (Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
Screenplay: Emmanuel Marre, A Man of His Time/Notre Salut (Emmanuel Marre)
Jury: The Dreamed Adventure (Valeska Grisebach)
Camera d'Or: Ben'Imana (Marie Clémentine Dusabejambo)

Minotaur feels like the winner to me

Nope!

Neon d'Or continues unabated

If would be amusing if next year Neon acquires a film expected to win the Palme D'Or, only for the eventual Palme D'Or winner to be acquired by a different distributor (even more amusing if it was say, Magnolia)

I really don't care if a specific American distributor strives to have the Palme. This seems good. I suppose any problem I have with this strategy derives from picking up a film that could have been served better by a different distributor.

This seemed liked another solid Cannes. The ScreenDaily grid (https://www.screendaily.com/cannes-jury-grid) essentially aligns with my perception of the Competition films' reactions although I had Na's film as more divisive. I do think the praise for Los Javis's film was more localized, and it's worth noting that the highbrow critics went for Harari's The Unknown. As for the awards, I would have swapped Zvyagintsev or Grisebach for Mungiu. Filmmakers picking up a second Palme always annoys me unless the film is undeniable, but Mungiu is formally sound; this isn't another Ken Loach win, although Fjord will definitely have Discourse whenever it reemerges around the NYFF.

At the moment, I'm more interested in what films Janus may pick up. Sorogoyen, Grisebach, Marre, Wollner, and Barnard seem likes their best picks—maybe Jude and/or Alonso if no one else goes for them.