Photo: Irene Cho

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Towards the end of this year's Cannes Film Festival, Film Society's Daily Buzz talked to Guy Lodge of HITFIX, Aaron Hillis of Video Free Brooklyn, Annette Insdorf of The Huffington Post, and Peter Debruge and Scott Foundas of Variety. They discussed their favorite films of the festival, debated the most talked-about films, and highlighted some overlooked gems.

Guy Lodge on Blue Is the Warmest Color (La Vie d'Adele): “It’s risky but, at the same time, incredibly humane. It’s got these incredibly explicit sex scenes, which will be a talking point in a lot of the media coverage of the film, but it’s not using them just to get the film a reputation. I think they have a very human rationing behind them.”

Aaron Hillis on All is Lost: “There was a film I that I really did not expect much of based on how it looked on paper, and that’s [JC Chandor's] All is Lost… I thought, well this seems like a little Perfect Storm, a little Castaway. Seemed like kind of a gimmicky thing. And I felt that it was some of the most visceral and classy filmmaking I have seen. It’s a one-man action movie.”

Annette Insdorf on The Immigrant: “There’s nothing wrong with it, but it’s conventional filmmaking, and one of the reasons I come to Cannes is to try to find examples where you’re pushing the envelope of cinematic storytelling.”

Peter Debruge on The Great Gatsby: “I feel like Great Gatsby is almost a continuation of a certain kind of film language that was happening—a really exciting language that, as soon as sound cinema came in and cameras were kind of anchored back down and everything, you almost had to kind of dial it back. And I almost sense that that’s something exciting Luhrman’s doing with that movie—playing into the era of cinema of that time.”

Scott Foundas on North, the End of History: “This is quite a remarkable, novelistic film with touches of Les Miserables… Very unusual and highly absorbing film that, hopefully, will travel a bit.”

Keep up with our Daily Buzz podcast interviews from Cannes here on FilmLinc Daily or on Fandor or iTunes.