80th. Venice Film Festival

Festival Reviews

CineVerdict: Memoria

CineVerdict: Memoria

by | Sep 20, 2023 | , ,

CINE VERDICT: Después de su inquietante pero bien recibido thriller `Sundown`, el director mexicano Michel Franco , continúa  con `Memoria` un drama familiar-romance dibujado con plantilla , actuado por Jessica Chastain en el papel de una trabajadora social emocionalmente afectada, en Brooklyn.

CineVerdict: La sociedad de la nieve

CineVerdict: La sociedad de la nieve

by | Sep 9, 2023 | ,

La caída del avión uruguayo en 1972 en los Andes es recreada respetuosamente y en gran detalle en “La sociedad de la nieve,” una película infartante sobre el desastre, que cierra el festival de cine de Venecia número 80, y es dirigida por J.A. Bayona, que ganó fama con “Lo imposible.”

Memory

Memory

by | Sep 9, 2023 | , ,

Mexican director Michel Franco follows up his unsettling but well-liked Tim Roth thriller ‘Sundown’ with ‘Memory’, a paint-by-numbers romance/family drama starring Jessica Chastain as an emotionally damaged social worker in Brooklyn

Coup!

Coup!

by | Sep 8, 2023 | , ,

Writer-director duo Austin Stark and Joseph Schuman blend historical pandemic echoes with timeless political tensions in their old-fashioned but engaging class-war drama ‘Coup!’

Out of Season

Out of Season

by | Sep 8, 2023 | , ,

An unexpected story of loneliness and yearning from Stéphane Brizé in which two former lovers come face-to-face with the disappointments of life, beautiful in its understatement and cinematic restraint yet still generating tremendous poignancy.

Lubo

Lubo

by | Sep 7, 2023 | , ,

Part survival-revenge drama, part love story, Giorgio Diritti’s ‘Lubo’ addresses the Swiss state’s forcible removal of Jenisch children from their families beginning in the 1930s, and while Franz Rogowski’s magnetism keeps his morally complex character sympathetic, the film feels too much like a miniseries cut down to a very long feature length.

The Summer with Carmen

The Summer with Carmen

by | Sep 7, 2023 | ,

A queer filmmaker in a funk despite his pink-blue hair needs to come up with a treatment for a film that’s “fun, sexy, Greek and low budget” in Zacharias Mavroeidis’ The Summer with Carmen (To kalokairi tis Karmen). The resulting meta film succeeds on three of those...

Malqueridas

Malqueridas

by | Sep 7, 2023 | ,

Women in Chilean prisons record motherhood and the raw pain of separation in Tana Gilbert’s empathetic and impressionistic, mobile-shot doc of solidarity.

Origin

Origin

by | Sep 6, 2023 | , ,

Ava DuVernay’s “Origin” is a highly ambitious attempt to fictionalize Isabel Wilkerson’s theory on the centrality of caste rather than race in determining discriminatory hierarchies, playing to the director’s strengths in terms of depicting personal relationships but also her weaknesses in several overly didactic sequences that treat characters and audiences like ignoramuses.

Dormitory

Dormitory

by | Sep 6, 2023 |

Turkish rookie director Nehir Tuna has made a beautifully played and shot if somewhat opaquely told coming-of-age story set in a rarely-seen world.

Following the Sound

Following the Sound

by | Sep 6, 2023 | ,

Kyoshi Sugita’s “Following the Sound” ticks all the boxes for nipponophiles seeking some extremely austere storytelling and swathes of slow-moving, soothing imagery set in a small, serene town in Japan.

Snow Leopard

Snow Leopard

by | Sep 6, 2023 | , , ,

Rural herders, urbanite journalists and a young monk consider the fate of a captured, livestock-ravaging wild animal in “Snow Leopard”, an affective, nuanced and multilayered film bowing out of competition at Venice four months after the death of its Tibetan director Pema Tseden.

For Night Will Come

For Night Will Come

by | Sep 6, 2023 |

A French family moves to a new place in a rural village in For Night Will Come (En attendant la nuit). What the villagers aren’t initially aware of is that the tenebrous and toothy teenage son of the family, Philémon, is somewhat unusual in nature. It’s not hard to...

Enea

Enea

by | Sep 5, 2023 | , ,

A withering take-down of Rome’s vapid middle class, Pietro Castellitto’s (‘The Predators’) exuberant second feature ‘Enea’ is an amusing, fast-paced game that winks at gangster movies and bows in Venice competition.

Green Border

Green Border

by | Sep 5, 2023 | ,

In ‘Green Border’, veteran Agnieszka Holland is joined by young directors Kamila Tarabura and Katarzyna Warzecha in a black-and-white drama about refugees trying to enter the EU, which is more thematically than emotionally resonant.

Sky Peals

Sky Peals

by | Sep 5, 2023 | , ,

An alienated young man becomes fixated on his late father’s extra-terrestrial origins in debutant director Moin Hussein’s underpowered but appealingly strange inner-space odyssey ‘Sky Peals’.

CineVerdict: Memoria

CineVerdict: Memoria

by | Sep 20, 2023 | , ,

CINE VERDICT: Después de su inquietante pero bien recibido thriller `Sundown`, el director mexicano Michel Franco , continúa  con `Memoria` un drama familiar-romance dibujado con plantilla , actuado por Jessica Chastain en el papel de una trabajadora social emocionalmente afectada, en Brooklyn.

CineVerdict: La sociedad de la nieve

CineVerdict: La sociedad de la nieve

by | Sep 9, 2023 | ,

La caída del avión uruguayo en 1972 en los Andes es recreada respetuosamente y en gran detalle en “La sociedad de la nieve,” una película infartante sobre el desastre, que cierra el festival de cine de Venecia número 80, y es dirigida por J.A. Bayona, que ganó fama con “Lo imposible.”

Memory

Memory

by | Sep 9, 2023 | , ,

Mexican director Michel Franco follows up his unsettling but well-liked Tim Roth thriller ‘Sundown’ with ‘Memory’, a paint-by-numbers romance/family drama starring Jessica Chastain as an emotionally damaged social worker in Brooklyn

Coup!

Coup!

by | Sep 8, 2023 | , ,

Writer-director duo Austin Stark and Joseph Schuman blend historical pandemic echoes with timeless political tensions in their old-fashioned but engaging class-war drama ‘Coup!’

Out of Season

Out of Season

by | Sep 8, 2023 | , ,

An unexpected story of loneliness and yearning from Stéphane Brizé in which two former lovers come face-to-face with the disappointments of life, beautiful in its understatement and cinematic restraint yet still generating tremendous poignancy.

Awards Corner

VENICE 2023

  • No awards yet.