Venice 2015: ‘De Palma’ review
★★★☆☆ Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow’s unpretentious documentary De Palma (2015) reveals a clear-sighted and fascinating director, who often seems as bemused by the...
★★★★☆ 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.
★★★☆☆ Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow’s unpretentious documentary De Palma (2015) reveals a clear-sighted and fascinating director, who often seems as bemused by the...
★★★☆☆ Last time he was on the Venice Lido, Jerzy Skolimowski was chasing Vincent Gallo through the snow in 2010’s wordless survival picture Essential...
★★★☆☆ In Emin Alper’s sophomore film Frenzy (2015), two brothers look to survive the paranoia, terror and repression of a frantically unstable Turkey. Mehmet...
★★★☆☆ “We won’t get the truth,” Court President Racine (Fabrice Luchini) tells his assembled jury. “Our job is to apply the law. Show people...
★★★☆☆ The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin on 4 November 1992 shocked the world. Showing in competition at the 72nd Venice Film Festival, Amos Gitai’s...
★★☆☆☆ Some linguistic determinism is at work in Oliver Hermanus’ The Endless River (2015), a leaden-paced South African melodrama about the repercussions of a...
★★★★☆ The indefinite article is an important element to consider in the cinema of Danish writer and director Tobias Lindholm. Three years ago he...
★★☆☆☆ British star Nicholas Hoult hasn’t had much luck with the future this year so far. In Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) he played...