Venice

★★★☆☆ Following the dreadful A Burning Hot Summer which showed in competition in 2011, Philippe Garrel returns to the Lido with Jealousy (La Jalousie, 2013), a modest relationship drama of love and betrayal. Garrel casts his son in the lead role of Louis, a struggling actor who we see splitting with his girlfriend and the…

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★★★☆☆ No stranger to the Venice Lido, Amos Gitai’s new film Ana Arabia (2013) – in competition this year – is a quiet exploration of love and tolerance in Israel. On the border between Jaffa and Bat Jam exists a small dusty enclave of Arabs and Jews. A young reporter, Yael (Yuval Scharf), arrives to…

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★★★★☆ Italian documentarian Gianfranco Rosi has been at Venice on several occasions, but with his new film, Sacro GRA (2013), he has graduated to the main competition. Rosi’s roam on the orbital road of the title is a fascinating, witty and meditative piece which delivers an alternative view of Rome, far from the postcard locales…

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★★☆☆☆ With his debut feature Kill Your Darlings (2013), premièred at the Venice Film Festival in the Venice Days sidebar, John Krokidas has assembled a stellar cast to tell his story of the Beat poets at school, with former Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe taking the lead role as the young Allen Ginsberg and Chronicle’s…

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★★★★★ Following an almost decade-long absence – his last film, the controversial Birth, was released in 2004 – director Jonathan Glazer returns with his third feature, Under the Skin (2013), which joins a strong raft of British films in competition at the 70th Venice Film Festival. Scarlett Johansson stars as the woman who fell to…

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★★★☆☆ It’s been a long time since Terry Gilliam made an unambiguously great film. Flash floods, the death of a lead actor and shrinking budgets have plagued this visionary ex-Python, famed for Time Bandits, Brazil and Twelve Monkeys. Showing in competition at Venice, The Zero Theorem (2013) – Gilliam’s first since 2009’s The Imaginarium of…

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★★★☆☆ Filmmaking prodigy Xavier Dolan directs and stars in Venice pick Tom at the Farm (2013), an absurd, blackly funny thriller set in rural Canada and based on the play by Michel Marc Bouchard. Tom (Dolan) is a dishwater-blonde city boy in an oversized leather jacket who drives from Montreal into the rainy countryside to…

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★★☆☆☆ In competition at this year’s Venice, Peter Landesman’s debut film Parkland (2013) is an efficient and occasionally intriguing reconstruction of the events in Dallas following the JFK assassination of 22 November, 1963. Sadly, this Tom Hanks-produced drama really has no place in competition at a major film festival. Dr. Jim Carrico (Zac Efron) wakes…

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★★★★☆ Japanese animator extraordinaire and Venice favourite Hayao Miyazaki – who today announced his retirement from feature filmmaking – makes his final appearance in competition at said festival with The Wind Rises (2013), a straight biopic on the life of aviation engineer Jirô Horikoshi (Hideaki Anno), the designer of the Mitsubishi Zero fighter plane. Elements…

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★★★☆☆ Following her 2010 revisionist western Meek’s Cutoff, Kelly Reichardt is back in competition at Venice with Night Moves (2013), an offbeat thriller about a small group of eco-terrorists who plan to blow up a dam. Josh (Jesse Eisenberg) is a worker at a communal organic farm, Dena (Dakota Fanning) is a radicalised rich girl…

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