Venice 2024 - The Film Verdict

Festival Reviews

Venice 2024: The Verdict

by Antonello Reitano | Sep 9, 2024 | Featured, Festivals, Venice 2024

The long, hot summer seemed reluctant to end as crowds returned to the Lido to see the stars and the Venice film selection.

Venice 2024: The Awards

by Antonello Reitano | Sep 7, 2024 | Festivals, Venice 2024

Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language feature ‘The Room Next Door’ was a dignified winner of the Golden Lion: a quietly profound meditation on love and death, pain and glory, buoyed by knockout performances from TIlda Swinton and Julianne Moore.

Producer Alex C. Lo bursts onto the international festival scene

by Deborah Young | Sep 7, 2024 | Featured, Festivals, Venice 2024

Taiwan-born and New York-based producer Alex C. Lo seems to be everywhere on the A-list festival circuit.

Love

by Max Borg | Sep 7, 2024 | Festivals, Venice 2024

Dag Johan Haugerud’s trilogy about relationships in present day Oslo continues with the cleverly moving ‘Love’, screened in Venice’s main competition.

Youth: Homecoming

by Max Borg | Sep 6, 2024 | Festivals, Venice 2024

Wang Bing brings his documentary trilogy to a strong close with ‘Youth: Homecoming’, first screened in Venice’s main competition.

Stranger Eyes

by Stephen Dalton | Sep 6, 2024 | Featured, Festivals, Venice 2024

A kidnap thriller rooted in surveillance, voyeurism and the unkindness of strangers, Yeo Siew Hua’s third feature ‘Stranger Eyes’ is the first ever Singaporean film to compete for the Golden Lion in Venice

Mistress Dispeller

by Stephen Dalton | Sep 6, 2024 | Festivals, Venice 2024

Director Elizabeth Lo explores China’s novel solutions to infidelity and marital crisis with her intimate love-triangle documentary ‘Mistress Dispeller’.

Sicilian Letters

by Max Borg | Sep 5, 2024 | Festivals, Venice 2024

Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza put their own compelling spin on a true Mafia story with ‘Sicilian Letters’, a Venice competition premiere.

Almost Certainly False

by Ben Nicholson | Sep 5, 2024 | Festivals, Venice 2024, Verdict Shorts

Coming of age is tough in Almost Certainly False, a deft exploration of identity and duty in the life of a young Syrian immigrant dreaming of leaving Istanbul for Europe.

Peacock

by Stephen Dalton | Sep 5, 2024 | Festivals, Venice 2024

A professional friend-for-hire wakes up to the horrors of his soul-destroying job and hollow lifestyle in Austrian writer-director Bernhard Wenger’s sharp-witted, superbly acted black comedy ‘Peacock’.

April

by Deborah Young | Sep 5, 2024 | Featured, Festivals, Venice 2024

Choosing a narrative style as austere and unforgiving as her OB-GYN heroine, rising Georgian director Dea Kulumbegashvili (‘Beginning’) plumbs the depths of female suffering and self-sacrifice in ‘April’, a festival film which, like its protag, is destined to be admired more than loved.

Seeking Haven for Mr. Rambo

by Adham Youssef | Sep 5, 2024 | Festivals, Venice 2024

In this love/hate letter to Cairo, Khalid Mansour’s sensitive debut feature ‘Seeking Haven for Mr Rambo’ pays tribute to a generation of young Egyptians shackled by economic and societal frustrations.

Joker: Folie à Deux

by Stephen Dalton | Sep 4, 2024 | Festivals, Spotlight, Venice 2024

Joaquin Phoenix and director Todd Phillips return to their billion-dollar killer-clown origin story with the music-stuffed, lavishly staged but dramatically flawed sequel ‘Joker: Folie à Deux’.

Three Keenings

by Ben Nicholson | Sep 4, 2024 | Festivals, Venice 2024, Verdict Shorts

Three Keenings is a darkly comic character portrait depicts an actor presenting a facsimile of grief that is a thin veneer over the real thing waiting to erupt.

The Quiet Son

by Max Borg | Sep 4, 2024 | Festivals, Venice 2024

Delphine and Muriel Coulin deliver a compelling family drama with their third feature ‘The Quiet Son’, screened in Venice’s main competition.

Kora

by Ben Nicholson | Sep 3, 2024 | Venice 2024, Festivals, Verdict Shorts

Claudia Varejao’s experimental documentary, Kora, is a soulful glimpse into the lives of female refugees and the power of photographs in connecting diasporas with home.

Queer

by Stephen Dalton | Sep 3, 2024 | Festivals, Venice 2024

Daniel Craig stars in Luca Guadagnino’s sumptuous adaptation of the cult William Burroughs novel ‘Queer’, a trippy erotic fever dream that mostly hits the target, despite some narrative flaws.

Harvest

by Deborah Young | Sep 3, 2024 | Festivals, Venice 2024

Strewn with beauty, sadness and food for thought, Rachel Tsangari’s gripping adaptation of Jim Crace’s novel ‘Harvest’ is an allegory on how modernity has rapidly destroyed our natural relationship with the world.

Vermiglio

by Deborah Young | Sep 2, 2024 | Festivals, International Oscars 2025, Venice 2024

Maura Delpero’s visually resonant, close-to-nature second feature ‘Vermiglio’ follows a large family living in a tiny Alpine village as WW2 draws to a close, emphasizing the changing role of women in society.

The Room Next Door

by Stephen Dalton | Sep 2, 2024 | Featured, Festivals, Venice 2024

Starring Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language feature ‘The Room Next Door’ is a minor-key but quietly profound meditation on love and death, pain and glory.

The Poison Cat

by Ben Nicholson | Sep 2, 2024 | Festivals, Venice 2024, Verdict Shorts

A closed, patriarchal community begins to transform as the cries of a legendary forest beast foreshadow social revolution in the spirited short, The Poison Cat.

Phantosmia

by Clarence Tsui | Sep 2, 2024 | Venice 2024, Featured, Festivals

A retired military sniper tries to atone for his murderous past in ‘Phantosmia’, Philippine auteur Lav Diaz’s poetic, reflective, modest yet visually captivating study of guilt and redemption.

The New Year That Never Came

by Max Borg | Sep 2, 2024 | Festivals, Venice 2024

Romanian filmmaker Bogdan Muresanu delivers sharp holiday-themed satire with his feature debut ‘The New Year That Never Came’, screened in Venice’s Orizzonti section.

Wolfs

by Alonso Duralde | Sep 1, 2024 | Festivals, Spotlight, Venice 2024

It takes the combined power of George Clooney and Brad Pitt to maintain interest in this paper-thin farce about rival crime-scene cleaners.

Baby Invasion

by Stephen Dalton | Sep 1, 2024 | Featured, Festivals, Venice 2024

Ageing bad-boy auteur Harmony Korine’s latest experimental art-punk feature ‘Baby Invasion’ is a visually impressive but ultimately hollow exercise in jaded hipster nihilism.

I’m Still Here

by Deborah Young | Sep 1, 2024 | Featured, Festivals, International Oscars 2025, Venice 2024

Director Walter Salles and actress Fernanda Torres relive the terrors of Brazil’s military dictatorship in the 1970s and one woman’s resistance to silence in ‘I’m Still Here’, a gripping, elevating drama about making truth known and rebuilding a life when all seems lost.

The Brutalist

by Stephen Dalton | Sep 1, 2024 | Featured, Festivals, Venice 2024

Writer-director Brady Corbet’s monumental period drama about a tortured genius of modernist architecture, ‘The Brutalist’ is ponderous and bloated, but visually stunning and superbly acted.

The Eggregores Theory

by Ben Nicholson | Sep 1, 2024 | Festivals, Venice 2024, Verdict Shorts

The surrealism of images created by artificial intelligence evokes the unreliability of memory and elusive nature of a dystopian plague in the sci-fi short, ‘The Eggregores Theory’.

The Order

by Alonso Duralde | Aug 31, 2024 | Spotlight, Venice 2024

White-supremacist violence in the US is an evergreen subject, but this docudrama about an FBI takedown of a racist cell plays like countless other feds-versus-terrorists thrillers.

Battleground

by Deborah Young | Aug 31, 2024 | Featured, Festivals, Venice 2024

Three doctors of different political views struggle to treat soldiers returning from the front during WWI and combat a new menace, the Spanish flu, in director Gianni Amelio’s grimly shocking film about war’s after-effects, ‘Battleground’.

And Their Children After Them

by Stephen Dalton | Aug 31, 2024 | Featured, Festivals, Venice 2024

French writer-director duo Zoran and Ludovic Boukherma go back to the 1990s with their operatic but flawed coming-of-age saga ‘And Their Children After Them’, adapted from a prize-winning novel.

Trois amies

by Deborah Young | Aug 30, 2024 | Festivals, Venice 2024

A trio of French couples exchange partners while they search for love in Emmanuel Mouret’s professionally crafted but unsurprising salute to a great French film genre, ‘Trois amies.’

Babygirl

by Alonso Duralde | Aug 30, 2024 | Spotlight, Venice 2024

Nicole Kidman delivers another emotionally and physically fearless performance in Halina Reijn’s provocative, kink-themed coming-out story.

Kill The Jockey

by Stephen Dalton | Aug 30, 2024 | Featured, Festivals, International Oscars 2025, Venice 2024

A horse racing champion embarks on a surreal gender-blurring ride in Luis Ortega’s bumpy but stylish, colourful, enjoyably goofy comedy thriller ‘Kill The Jockey’.

One to One: John & Yoko

by Deborah Young | Aug 30, 2024 | Featured, Festivals, Venice 2024

The life, politics, music and relationship of cultural idols and revolutionary artists John Lennon and Yoko Ono are brilliantly blasted onscreen amid exploding shards of 1970’s Americana in Kevin Macdonald’s and Sam Rice-Edwards’ irresistibly original and high-energy documentary, ‘One to One: John & Yoko’.