THIS won the award for SCREENPLAY at Cannes?!?

Joaquin Phoenix, ABSOLUTELY. The cinematography? Editing? Sound? Score? YES, PLEASE!

But... THE SCREENPLAY? REALLY?!?

Far from my favorite Coen Brothers film, and its not able to overcome any of the problems inherent in anthology films, but overall I liked this much more than I didn't. The first segment is pretty far and away the best, but they all have tremendous cinematography from Bruno Delbonnel and a fantastic Carter Burwell score to help even the lesser stories.

When the Coens finally just give in and make a full-fledged musical, it will very likely be their greatest work.

I mean... the ONLY negative I can come up with is that the plot is extremely (and I do mean EXTREMELY) paint-by-numbers.

But everything else is so well-done and thoughtful that saying that feels churlish. As someone who adored Paddington books as a kid, I adored this almost as much, and am ashamed it took me this long to watch it.

If Black Swan is a horror movie about the mind of a dancer, Suspiria is a horror movie about the body of a dancer. And it gets so much beautifully, painfully right about being a dancer that I'd swear that it was made by dancers.

Yes, the climax makes almost no sense - I think I figured out what's going on, but it took half an hour of deep dive conversation afterwards to do so - but that almost doesn't matter in the face of the fantastic staging of the thing.

And the sound mix is just ridiculously fantastic.