Venice 2017: The Insult review
★★★☆☆ In Lebanese-born director Ziad Doueiri’s The Insult, an apparently minor argument on a Beirut street escalates into a full-blown legal battle, which itself...
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7 September 2023
Venice 2023: The Theory of Everything review
★★★★☆ The ‘multiverse’ is one of the worst concepts to enter storytelling since Victoria Principal woke up in Dallas and discovered it had all been a dream. And so it’s weird to find yourself in a universe where the concept finally gets a decent cinematic treatment in Timm Kröger’s The Theory of Everything, not to be confused with Eddie Redmayne’s black hole.
10 September 2022
Venice 2022: All the Beauty and the Bloodshed wins Golden Lion
The head of this year’s Venice jury Julianne Moore awarded the festival’s top prize, the Golden Lion, to Laura Poitras’ All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, her profile of artist Nan Goldin and her campaign against the Sackler family. It’s a brilliant, committed piece of activist cinema.
8 September 2019
Venice 2019: Joker has last laugh with Golden Lion win
In what has to be one of the crazier award ceremonies to grace the Venice Lido on its 76th edition, Todd Phillips’ Joker took home this year’s Golden Lion in a move guaranteed to provoke a flood of hot takes, an avalanche of think pieces and further lubrication for Oscars season.
Venice
Venice 2017: Nico, 1988 review
★★★☆☆ Opening the Horizons sidebar, Susanna Nicchiarelli’s Nico, 1988 is a biopic of the German songstress who found fame with The Velvet Underground. Danish...
Venice 2017: Our festival highlights
Celebrated American director Alexander Payne’s high concept sci-fi comedy Downsizing will open the 74th Venice International Film Festival (30 August-9 September) in a spot...
Venice 2016: Voyage of Time review
★☆☆☆☆ Director? Malick? Where have you gone? There was a time when you took the lives of individual characters – sociopathic youth, itinerant workers,...
Venice 2016: These Days review
★☆☆☆☆ Venice is notorious for foisting shoddy local produce on its delegates, but this year has been particularly chronic. Director Alberto Barbera admitted in...
Venice 2016: Planetarium review
★★★★☆ Natalie Portman must love Venice. When twirling psycho-ballerina drama Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan debuted on the Lido in 2010, Portman definitively glissaded away...
Venice 2016: Paradise review
★★★☆☆ There’s a lot that’s wonderful about Andrei Konchalovsky’s Holocaust drama Paradise and yet there’s something fundamentally wrong with the film. Beginning in France...
Venice 2016: On the Milky Road review
★★★☆☆ Emir Kusturica enters the race for the Golden Lion with On the Milky Road, a bonkers Balkan wartime romance that, with its full...
