Dave Chappelle's Block Party – This unfinished concert film of a Brooklyn event arranged by Dave Chappelle in the fall of 2004 was filmed by Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind's Michel Gondry, who wisely chooses to intersperse the performances periodically throughout footage of Chappelle inviting a wide variety of people from his hometown of Dayton, Ohio to attend his party.  Nobody has any idea where they were going, who they were going to see, or really what they were attending as they boarded chartered busses headed for a Bed-Stuy neighborhood that was the former home of artists like Mos Def, Jay-Z, Biggie Smalls, and L'il Kim.

The collection of performers is impressive, as well: Kanye West, the Roots, Lady Kim Smith, and a reunion of the Fugees, among others.  These are artists with actual messages, and none of that Thug-4-Life bullshit.  Nobody on stage brags about how many times they've been shot, or has ever held a press conference to announce their umpteenth name change.  And there's a house band, with a four-piece horn section.  Gondry takes the time to let Chappelle expore the neighborhood, but the real highlight here is watching Dave hand out Golden Tickets ("like Wee Willy Wonka" – they were good for the bus ride and a hotel room) to average people he ran into while doing his day-to-day in Dayton.

L'Enfant – The Dardenne brothers' 2005 Golden Palm winner had roughly the same affect their 1999 Golden Palm winner, Rosetta.  Both films made me want to find both the respective Cannes juries and the Dardennes, and pummel them all into something that would fit through a typical sewer grate.  Also, they both made me really sleepy.

Sonia (the adorable Déborah François) has just had a baby, and had to tote the kid home by herself.  When she gets there, Sonia learns her lowlife boyfriend Bruno (Jérémie Renier, from Ozon's Criminal Lovers) has sublet their apartment.  He has no job, and survives by stealing and begging, but Bruno really wins the audience over when he sells his own son for a fistful of Euros.  I'm no expert on relationships, but I think this kind of activity crosses a line.

The acting from the two leads is decent, as is the way the Dardenne's photograph their story, but everything else is just wickedly average.  Shots linger, pointlessly, making most of the film about as necessary as our color-coded terror warning system.  If this won the Golden Palm, then the equally dull Pavee Lackeen should be the winner of the Platinum Palm as the best film ever made.

Thankfully, there was a lot of grumbling after L'Enfant was screened for critics here (for a few minutes, I thought I was missing something).  The only award-winning aspect I could think of possibly bestowing the film would be for its title, which cleverly assigns a title ("the child") but is unclear about who it might be referring to.  It could be the baby, or either of its parents.

Big Papi socked another winner tonight, as the Red Sox take the three-game series against the Blue Jays.