The best films and biggest flops at Cannes 2025

Between the latest Mission: Impossible installment and the new red carpet dress rules, this year's Cannes Film Festival is filled with buzz and controversy.

Today on Commotion, host Elamin Abdelmahmoud speaks with film critics on the ground at Cannes, Barry Hertz and Rad Simonpillai, about the hype around the biggest films of the festival, as well as the attendees' reaction to the festival's various new rules. 

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: Rad, one of the big movies at Cannes this year is Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. The expectations for this movie, truly through the roof. It's supposed to be the last of the franchise. What's your take?  

Rad: Well, let me preface this by saying—

Elamin: Oh no, oh no. Just giving it a preface means you're not that excited, man. Oh, no.

Rad: Yes, because I love the Mission: Impossible franchise. I think the Mission: Impossible franchise is the best franchise. Like, I don't think there's such a thing as a bad Mission: Impossible movie. However, this one certainly tested that belief. 

It's not that I didn't love and appreciate what this movie was going for. It's just that it was going for a lot. Of course, it's going for the big, spectacular action set pieces, where Tom Cruise is risking life and limb. It also wants to speak to the current moment in terms of how the internet is turning young men into trolls, basically. There's a whole subplot in this movie where there are radicalized young men becoming terror cells because they're following the villainous AI. So the movie wants to speak to now, but also wants to speak to and celebrate the past by incorporating story elements from the past 30 years of movies. Like, there's a guy that shows up from the original Mission: Impossible movie — like that dude's here. It's all part of this movie's big victory lap. 

And the thing is: it's just too much movie. There's too much going on. It struggles to bring all that together. It's the most convoluted and the most exhausting Mission: Impossible. At the same time, when it kicks into gear and you can set aside those frustrating plot elements, it still gives you some of the most beautiful looking action that will run circles around any other blockbuster.

Elamin: Barry, I'm so disappointed to hear this tepid response to this particular Mission: Impossible movie that I'm just going to move it right along and pretend I didn't hear any of that until I see it on Friday because I refuse to believe that there's any hesitation about a Mission: Impossible movie. 

And instead I'm going to ask you about another big movie at the festival this year, The Phoenician Scheme, that's Wes Anderson's new movie, starring Michael Cera. Walk me through it. What do you think?

Barry: I mean, this, on paper, should be a delight. 

Elamin: Oh, come on, you guys. More prefaces! Come on!  

Barry: OK, we'll get the good out of the way here. Michael Cera is great in this. It's a shock that he has never worked with Wes Anderson before. He walks out of an Andersonian picture book, basically. And they have been friends, apparently, for decades, but this is the first time they're actually collaborating. And it works. He has a great role, and it's kind of a little bit of a twisty role too, requiring some turns there, which I appreciated. 

But the rest of the thing is just really emotionally empty. There's a black hole of empathy at the centre of this movie. It's very picturesque, it's extremely well art directed, it's everything you would expect visually of a Wes Anderson movie. But whereas something like Asteroid City or The French Dispatch actually had characters you cared about and were exploring metacontextual elements of what film and storytelling means to Anderson, there's really none of that here. This is a lark — and kind of a dead fish lark at that.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Jean Kim.