Venice 2018: Our picks of the festival
This Wednesday (29 August) will see the official opening of the 75th Venice Film Festival. The programme is crammed with internationally renowned directors and...
★★★★☆ Following Agnieszka Holland’s land-bound refugee tale Green Border earlier this week, Matteo Garrone’s new film Io Capitano departs geographically further south and takes its characters on an epic journey which involves land and sea. But its direction and terrain are not the only difference here.
★★★★☆ 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.
★★★★☆ Tales of lone assassins and guns for hire are all based on urban myths. That’s the fact gleefully revealed in Richard Linklater’s latest crime comedy Hit Man, premiering at Venice this week. “Think about it,” asks the film’s protagonist Gary Johnson (Glen Powell), “is someone really going to risk the death penalty for a few thousand bucks.” It’s a good point.
This Wednesday (29 August) will see the official opening of the 75th Venice Film Festival. The programme is crammed with internationally renowned directors and...
★★★☆☆ Showing Out of Competition at Venice, Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond goes behind the scenes on the shooting of Miloš Forman’s Man...
★☆☆☆☆ Sebastiano Riso flies the Italian flag on the Lido with his new film Una Famiglia, a claustrophobic, scuzzy drama about a couple engaged...
★★★☆☆ When a factory owner is murdered by an ex-employee the guilt appears certain and the case cut and dried. However, an ambitious lawyer...
★★☆☆☆ In the black comedy Suburbicon, George Clooney takes us to the small town, white bread America that Donald Trump wants to MAGA us...
★★★☆☆ Three middle-aged siblings gather after their father suffers a stroke in The House By the Sea, a beautifully observed ensemble piece from French...
★★★★☆ War, grief and family are the themes of Samuel Maoz’s Foxtrot, which joins the race for the Golden Lion at the 74th Venice...
★★★★☆ Fans of Bone Tomahawk won’t be disappointed with director S. Craig Zahler’s bone-crushing, face-smashing, slow-burning genre mash-up Brawl in Cell Block 99. It...