Well, that’s a wrap on Venice. The 81st Venice Film Festival came to a close today, and the full winners of the festival were announced. Jury president Isabelle Huppert and her panel awarded the top prize, the coveted Golden Lion Award, to Pedro Almodovar’s “The Room Next Door,” starring Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore in essentially an impermanence and euthanasia drama.

Continue reading Venice Awards: ‘The Room Next Door’ Wins Golden Lion, Nicole Kidman Win Best Actress & Brady Corbet Takes Best Director at The Playlist.

While lesser known than her contemporary Yorgos Lanthimos, Greek filmmaker Athina Rachel Tsangari has played a large part in shaping the so-called “weird wave” that swept the country’s cinematic exports. Her international breakthroughs “Attenberg” and “Chevalier” highlighted the absurdity of social structures by having intrepid individuals flout taboos. Tsangari’s latest work, “Harvest,” approaches her central concern from the reverse angle, showing how the imposition of an artificial order fertilizes the soil to reap chaos.

Continue reading ‘Harvest’ Review: Caleb Landry Jones Tries To Expand Borders In Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Allegorical Drama [Venice] at The Playlist.

Politicians often invoke the idea of children or future generations when urging the importance of collective action with consequences that only emerge in the long term. Humans can show tremendous capacity as a species when facing a tragedy that stares them in the face. When needing to make immediate painful sacrifices to stave off those calamities, our capacity for relative empathy tends to shrivel. Oscar-winning documentarian Asif Kapadia arrives with a radical solution to this problem faced by a world in crisis.

Continue reading ‘2073’ Review: Asif Kapadia With Samantha Morton Reframes Dystopia As Present, Not The Future [Venice] at The Playlist.

Tense, taut, and deeply gripping writer/director John Swab’s dramatic drug cartel/fentanyl trade crime thriller “King Ivory” is a terrific surprise from the Venice Film Festival’s Orrizonti Extras section. Reminiscent of Steven Soderbergh’s Academy Award-winning drug trafficking thriller, “Traffic,” though rougher and slightly more condensed in scope, “King Ivory”— one of the many street slang monikers for fentanyl— centers on the ongoing war on drugs, the way it affects many different communities and lives, and the hard reality struggle to make even a tiny dent in this conflict.

Continue reading ‘King Ivory’ Review: James Badge Dale Leads A Searing, ‘Traffic’-Esque Drug Cartel Crime Thriller [Venice] at The Playlist.

By now, you must know Academy Award, BAFTA, and Grammy-winning filmmaker Asif Kapadia, known for “Senna,” “Diego Maradona,” and “Amy” about the late singer Amy Winehouse that won the Best Documentary Feature at the 88th Academy Awards. And his latest film, “2073,” sounds like it will test some boundaries.

Continue reading ‘2073’ Trailer: Samantha Morton Stars In Asif Kapadia’s New Dystopian “True Sci-Fi” Horror Documentary at The Playlist.

A Margherita pizza is a classic for a reason: you mix cheese and tomato atop a well-baked base with a handful of fresh basil leaves, and it works. The same goes for action movies. If you have two competent stars and a well-baked script with a handful of inspired add-ons, it works. You don’t get much bigger stars than George Clooney and Brad Pitt, who reunite for the first time in sixteen years in Jon Watts’s “Wolfs” as two unnamed fixers who realize they have been booked to do the same job.

Continue reading ‘Wolfs’ Review: Brad Pitt & George Clooney Are In Top Form In Jon Watts’ Entertaining Action Comedy [Venice] at The Playlist.

Matter and antimatter in contact will annihilate each other, leaving in its place pure energy. Still, millions of years ago, a particle of a billion managed to survive this frantic exchange of uncontained energy—an inconceivably small fraction of matter that would become responsible for creating life on Earth. Brady Corbet’s period epic “The Brutalist” understands that utter and complete annihilation can, almost miraculously, leave in its place not emptiness but a product of such magnitude the simple mind cannot begin to comprehend it.

Continue reading ‘The Brutalist’ Review: Brady Corbet Delivers A Masterful Period Epic For The Ages [Venice] at The Playlist.

Having now screened Justin Kurzel’s “The Order,” a world premiere at the 2024 Venice International Film Festival, we are still perplexed how its subject matter has become an almost forgotten footnote in American history. Chances are you were unaware of a White Nationalist movement in the Northwest United States in the 1970s and ’80s. Or, that in 1983, a splinter group known as The Order, wreaked havoc robbing banks, printed counterfeit money, killed innocent civilians, and, eventually, assassinated a public figure.

Continue reading ‘The Order’ Review: Jude Law, Nicholas Hoult & A White Nationalism History Lesson [Venice] at The Playlist.

Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn is at the 20224 Venice Film Festival for two purposes: he’s promoting A restored version of his 1996 drug/crime drama debut “Pusher “is screening, and so his “Beauty Is Not a Sin,” a seven-minute commercial for Italian motorcycle company MV Agusta. The film’s tagline is “Who said a movie can’t be seven minutes long?”

While in Venice, Refn spoke to the trades and gave several updates.

Continue reading Nicolas Winding Refn’s Tokyo-Set ‘Avenging Silence’ Will Shoot Next Year, Explains Why ‘Barbarella’ Is Dead at The Playlist.

To the uninformed bystander, Romy (Nicole Kidman) leads a perfect life. She is a beautiful CEO living in a lavish New York townhouse with two loving teenage daughters and a doting husband who still desires her after two decades of marriage. Still, in these twenty years, theatre director Jacob (Antonio Banderas) never managed to give his wife an orgasm. And boy, does Romy need one. When a dashing new intern walks into her office, it is as if all these years of suppressed fantasies come bubbling up within the woman, who finds in Samuel (Harris Dickinson) the opportunity to do what she never could with her husband: ask for what she wants.

Continue reading ‘Babygirl’ Review: Nicole Kidman & Harris Dickinson Sizzle in Halina Reijn’s Erotic Drama [Venice] at The Playlist.

A fascinating but imperfect exploration of the “truth” and how certainties and facts have been radically altered and evolved in the 21st Century during the age of social media, its weaponization, bad faith actors, eroding public trust in the media, cancel culture, and more, Alfonso Cuarón’s new seven-part limited series, “Disclaimer,” is a captivating, but not always convincing change of pace for the Academy Award-winning writer/director.

Continue reading ‘Disclaimer’ Review: Cate Blanchett Shines In Alfonso Cuarón’s Compelling But Flawed Revenge Thriller Mystery Series [Venice] at The Playlist.

Why must talented women die of a broken heart? The myth goes that it was heartbreak that killed Amy Winehouse, Judy Garland, Edith Piaf, and countless more women who once vibrated with rare genius but whose emotional ache led to lonely, tragic deaths. Pablo Larraín’s “Maria” does very little to dispel this myth.

If “Jackie” and “Spencer” saw the Chilean director try his hand at vastly well-known stories about vastly well-known women, the final entry in his trilogy of biopics tackles a tale less familiar to general audiences.

Continue reading ‘Maria’ Review: Pablo Larraín’s Saccharine Biopic Starring Angelina Jolie Does Maria Callas A Disservice [Venice] at The Playlist.

Every year, we have the push and pull of cinema, a tension that keeps the medium healthy and on its toes. The big studio blockbusters, franchises, and the like dominate summer. Then fall is primarily reserved for the adult drama, the Oscar contenders, and arthouse films (and yes, some big tentpole escapist fare is released too, generally around Thanksgiving on Christmas).  But it all kicks off every year with the Venice Film Festival, which is followed closely by the Telluride Film Festival (more on that one later this week).

Continue reading Venice 2024 Film Festival Preview: 15 Must-See Movies To Watch at The Playlist.

If it’s the last week in July it’s time for the Venice International Film Festival to announce its selections. This morning, La Biennale di Venezia did just that officially revealing the already known inclusion of two Warner Bros. releases, Tim Burton’s “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” and Todd Phillips’ “Joker: Folie à Deux.” But there are other major titles now hitting the Lido including Pablo Larrain’s “Maria” with Angelina Jolie; Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer” with Daniel Craig; and Pedro Almodóvar’s first feature length English language film, “The Room Next Door” starring Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton.

Continue reading Venice 2024: New Films From Pedro Almodóvar, Pablo Larrain, Luca Guadagnino at The Playlist.

It’s interesting how the Venice Film Festival has gone from one of the festivals of the fall festival season to arguably the best film festival in the world now, even overshadowing Cannes in recent years thanks to the fact that Netflix now avoids the Croisette for the most part because of France’s theatrical laws and save their Oscar contenders for the Lido. Venice has had an amazing run, arguably since 2017 when Guillermo del Toro’s “The Shape Of Water” won the top prize and then went on to win the Oscar for Best Picture, which has happened one more time since with “Nomadland” and several key Oscar contenders since).

Continue reading Venice Film Festival 2023: ‘Poor Things’ Wins The Golden Lion Top Prize [Full Winners List] at The Playlist.

It’s hard to encapsulate the cinema of a particular filmmaker in just one word, but if one were to try their hand at it with Mexican maverick Michel Franco, a word that’d come to mind is violence. The filmmaker’s work is built upon the looming expectation of violent transgression, society standing flimsy atop the fragile idea of cordiality. Such benevolence, sustained by the centuries-old notion of polite society, is easier to break within the intimate confines of the family home, a sentiment Franco explores to the very limits of shock and emotional obliteration within his body of work. 

Continue reading ‘Memory’ Review: Jessica Chastain & Peter Saarsgard Star In Michel Franco’s Stunted Observation On Trauma [Venice] at The Playlist.

When Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) first conceived of the multifaceted premise that would eventually become the lauded non-fiction book “Caste: The Origin of Our Discontents,” her editors were concerned about whether she would manage to cohesively merge her personal experiences with all the moving parts of her research across cultures and continents to prove that it all interconnects.  

Venice Film Festival 2023: The 17 Most Anticipated Movies To Watch

That’s in turn the same task that writer-director Ava DuVernay faced to convey the big-picture ideas and Wilkerson’s revelatory odyssey to put them on the page in an enticingly cinematic manner.

Continue reading ‘Origin’ Review: Ava DuVernay Adapts Isabel Wilkerson’ ‘Caste’ With Dazzling Inventiveness [Venice] at The Playlist.

Can Finbar Murphy escape his past? “In The Land of Saints and Sinners” presents a mysterious man with a dark past who faces a crisis between doing what’s right and facing his own mistakes. Liam Neeson stars as Murphy, a man searching for solace and redemption; it’s yet another film that sees the actor carefully balance his dramatic roots with his recent success in high-profile action hits.

READ MORE: Fall 2023 TV Preview: Over 35+ Most Anticipated Shows To Watch

The project is Neeson’s second collaboration with director Robert Lorenz — the actor and director who previously teamed up on 2019’s “The Marksman.” Neeson is joined by Kerry Condon, who portrays terrorist leader Doireann.

Continue reading ‘In The Land Of Saints & Sinners’ Trailer: Liam Neeson, Kerry Condon & More Star In A New Irish Crime Drama Debuting In Venice at The Playlist.

The Huston dynasty has produced so many raw, undeniable talents that its younger members are undoubtedly among the very few “nepo babies” who can still come out of that exhausting discourse unscathed. We may even feel pity for them, sometimes, living as they do in the shadows of so many brilliant relatives. But Jack Huston is only the latest in a series of descendants to show that this legacy seems a blessing rather than a curse, at least in terms of creativity.

Continue reading ‘Day Of The Fight’ Review: Jack Huston Harnesses The Poetic Power Of Boxing Movies In A Stylish Feature Debut [Venice] at The Playlist.

You don’t need to know much about the criminal justice system to understand its broken, biased, and grim nightmare— unfair, unjust, unforgiving, a bureaucratic Kafka-esque hellscape you never want to be trapped within. Turkish filmmaker Selman Nacar (“Between Two Dawns”) understands this all too well—he was a law student for several years before switching to filmmaking and saw all the flaws in the legal justice system firsthand. His suspenseful new moral, legal drama, and character study, “Hesitation Wounds,” is proficiently crafted with a fittingly claustrophobic and inhospitable quality.

Continue reading ‘Hesitation Wounds’ Review: Tülin Özen‘s Striking Performance Drives Selman Nacar’s Gripping 24-Hour Moral/Legal Drama [Venice] at The Playlist.

The question of whether or not technology has killed the classic crime thriller has popped in and out of the discourse as the years saw pocket watches morph into sci-fi-looking gadgets capable of getting one both dinner and a first-class ticket to Dubai in the space of a couple of minutes. Directors who have solidified their careers through portrayals of mafiosos, gangsters, and assassins held tightly to the period film as a chance to continue working with the story beats that work so well within the genre, recreating CCTV-free alleyways and public phone booths to allow their scoundrels and scumbags to wreak havoc in overpopulated mazes around the world. 

Continue reading ‘The Killer’ Review: David Fincher’s Homage To The Classic Crime Thriller With Michael Fassbender Is Entertaining But Orthodox [Venice] at The Playlist.

You didn’t expect French filmmaker Bertrand Bonello to make a conventional sci-fi, did you? Good, because “The Beast” is far from it. It all starts in 2044 with beautiful actress Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux) in desperate need of a job. To get it, she’ll have to conform to the new normal in this quasi-dystopian society where the frigid efficiency of AI has deemed human emotions unproductive and downright dangerous. 

The solution to this nagging little human problem is simple: to eliminate the futile intensity of emotions altogether.

Continue reading ‘The Beast’ Review: Léa Seydoux Leads Bertrand Bonello’s Epic, Time-Spanning Sci-Fi Warning About A.I.  [Venice] at The Playlist.

Ten years after “Spring Breakers,” the neon pinks and greens of Harmony Korine’s mainstream breakthrough return in an Internet-inflected and even more abstract ode to the thug life, with seriously mixed results. To call “Aggro Dr1ft” stupid or silly isn’t wrong, but it is missing the point. The dialogue is incredibly banal and hilariously repetitive, the story a thin assemblage of clichés. But the images!

Continue reading ‘Aggro Dr1ft’ Review: Harmony Korine Goes Sicko Mode In A Visually Stunning Journey Through Miami Thug Life  [Venice] at The Playlist.

A scene early in Ibrahim Nash’at’s chilling new documentary “Hollywoodgate” makes clear the stakes of Nash’at’s undertaking. Invited by the Taliban to film a top leader, the new air force commander Malawi Mansour, and a lower-ranking Taliban Mukhtar, after the departure of American Troops from Afghanistan in 2021, Mansour makes clear his feelings about the documentary and Nash’at. Speaking with an underling, he notes, “if his intentions are bad, he will die soon.” It’s a scene that, like the rest of the film, is viewed at a distance, a prerequisite for Nash’at’s undertaking.

Continue reading ‘Hollywoodgate’ Review: Ibrahim Nash’at’s Terrifying Film Documents The Taliban’s Takeover Of Afghanistan [Venice] at The Playlist.

Time is a relative construct stretched to the limits of elasticity by Saverio Constanzo with the period drama “Finally Dawn.” The bloated 140-minute runtime begins at a cinema in Rome in 1953 as three women watch the final scene of a saccharine war drama, the light of the big screen coming to reveal a mother and two daughters, one donning the beauty of a Hollywood starlet and the other the beauty of a traditional Italian woman, with big blue eyes framed by thick curly hair.   

Venice Film Festival 2023: The 17 Most Anticipated Movies To Watch

The curly-haired girl is Mimosa (Rebecca Antonaci), a shy 21-year-old used to inhabiting the uncomfortable but familiar shadow of her daintier sister, Iris (Sofia Panizzi).

Continue reading ‘Finally Dawn’ Review: Lily James & A Starry Cast Can’t Save A Painfully Dull Italian Drama [Venice] at The Playlist.