The 10 Most Talked-About Movies at Cannes

The 67^th annual Cannes Film Festival wrapped up Sunday, capping off more than a week's worth of boos and bravos along the star-studded, paparazzi-packed French Riviera. And while the sprawling Turkish drama Winter Sleep took home the coveted Palme d’Or prize, it was just one of several films that moviegoers, critics, and studio executives were chattering about this year, whether to hail it as a masterpiece or decry it as a plague on the eyeballs.

Foxcatcher: Writer-director Bennett Miller (Moneyball, Capote) refused to rush this dark, fact-based psychological drama into last year’s Oscar season. It turned out to be a good call: Miller won the festival’s Best Director prize, and Steve Carell (sporting a fake schnozz) earned the best reviews of his film career as the creepy chemical heir John du Pont, a wealthy wrestling fanatic whose relationship with an Olympic-champion wrestler (Channing Tatum) ended in tragedy. Mark Ruffalo also co-stars in the film, which opens in November — just in time for this year’s Oscar race.

Grace of Monaco: The festival’s first big premiere was also its first big dud: Though this much-anticipated biopic — in which Nicole Kidman played actress-turned-royal Grace Kelly — generated plenty of pre-screening press (in part because of infighting among its producers), Grace received almost universally bad reviews, with the Guardian dubbing it “so awe-inspiringly wooden that it is basically a fire-risk.” Even its best-known backer, Harvey Weinstein, reportedly skipped the screening, a move that can only be interpreted as a French kiss-off.

Maps to the Stars: Director David Cronenberg took a bite out of Hollywood in his angry, L.A.-set ensemble satire, starring Julianne Moore as an aging, dark-hearted film actress, with supporting turns from John Cusack, Mia Wasikowska, and Robert Pattinson. Though reviews were mixed, Moore’s performance as an increasingly twisted showbiz veteran won the festival’s Best Actress award — and set off chatter that the long-respected, frequently nominated star might finally be on her way to her first-ever Oscar win.

Two Days, One Night: In this French-language drama from two-time Palme d’Or winners Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (Rosetta, L’Enfant), a seemingly ordinary working-class mother (Marion Cotillard) has one weekend to win over her co-workers, take on her bosses, and save her job. It’s the second Cannes film in as many years to win raves for Cotillard, whose performance in last year’s brilliant The Immigrant can be seen in theaters now.

Lost River: Ryan Gosling’s writing and directing debut — a dreamy, Detroit-shot drama about a struggling single mom (Christina Hendricks) and her sons — drew frequent comparisons to David Lynch, not all of them positive. But even though the movie was coolly received, rest assured that someone, somewhere, will figure out a way to make a meme out of it.

Mr. Turner: Cannes favorite Mike Leigh, who won the Palme d’Or for 1996’s Secrets & Lies, set the bar high early on in the festival for his sweeping biopic about English painter J.M.W. Turner. Within hours of its debut, critics had anointed Turner star Timothy Spall — a veteran British character actor and frequent Leigh collaborator who’s appeared in everything from tiny indies to the Harry Potter films — as Cannes’ breakout success story, culminating in Spall winning the fest’s Best Actor award.

Clouds of Sils Maria: Kristen Stewart plays the attentive personal assistant to Juliette Binoche’s aging, neurotic actress in writer-director Olivier Assayes’ well-received All About Eve homage. Chloë Grace Moretz co-stars as an up-and-coming, media-hounded young starlet — a role Stewart’s been playing in her real life for years now.

The Homesman: This controversial, female-centered Western — co-written and directed by Tommy Lee Jones — follows a struggling pioneer (Hilary Swank) charged with escorting three madwomen from Nebraska to Iowa. Swank, who hasn’t appeared on the big screen in nearly three years, was hailed by reviewers for her comeback-kid performance.

The Search: All eyes were fixed on Director Michel Hazanavicius and his partner-star Berenice Bejo in their first film after the Oscar-sweeping The Artist. But Cannes audiences were underwhelmed by this drama about a friendship between a peace worker (Bejo) and a young Chechen refugee (Abdul-Khalim Mamatsuiev).

Winter Sleep: With a running time of more than three hours, this psychologically complex drama about an actor-turned-innkeeper in a small Turkish town might not seem like an obvious breakout hit. But Sleep was beloved by critics — one dubbed it “the least boring 196-minute movie ever made” — and, voila, by the festival’s end, it had walked away with the festival’s biggest prize.

Photo credit: Cannes International Film Festival