Venice 2016: Safari review
★★★☆☆ “The killing is only a small part,” says Gerald, one of the subjects of Ulrich Seidl’s new film Safari. By its conclusion you...
★★★★☆ 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.
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.
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.
★★★☆☆ “The killing is only a small part,” says Gerald, one of the subjects of Ulrich Seidl’s new film Safari. By its conclusion you...
★★★☆☆ You have to admire the nerve of Dutch director Martin Koolhoven. The title card for his first English language effort reads ‘Martin Koolhoven’s...
★★★☆☆ “Let me tell you a story,” says Michael (Michael Silva), a spiritually inspired young man in the wastes of the Chilean desert. The...
★★★☆☆ “I could’ve been a contender,” declares Marlon Brando’s brooding pugilist from On the Waterfront, and every actor these days seems to have a...
★★☆☆☆ In a way the title of Charlie Siskel’s documentary American Anarchist is something of a misnomer. Anarchy as a political movement doesn’t get...
★★★★☆ Korean director Kim Jee-woon is a prolific and accomplished generic gadfly with a western – The Good, The Bad and The Weird –...
★★★☆☆ There are seven stages to grief, we’re told, from denial to acceptance. Andreas Dalsgaard and Obaidah Zytoon’s The War Show is structured with...
★★☆☆☆ You know when you buy a new camera, go into the garden to try it out and just snap things to see how...