“The festival is often criticized for its allegiance to established auteurs, a loyalty that leads to sighs of familiarity and worse, especially when it comes to work like Still the Water, the latest from another Cannes regular, Naomi Kawase, which opens with a man slitting a goat’s neck. I left after an hour of empty landscapes, talk and the sight of a second goat having its neck slit.” — N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis in her latest Cannes report. For years I’ve been getting roasted in this space for my occasional walkouts. “How dare you?,” “You call yourself a critic?,” “You have to see the whole thing!,” etc. But everyone does it from time to time, and there’s nothing dicey about saying “I saw this much of a given film and then I bailed, but here’s what I thought about the portion that I saw.” In my own small way perhaps I’ve helped to make the world a bit safer for those who wish to write this.