John Bleasdale
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Venice 2015: ‘Courted’ review
★★★☆☆ “We won’t get the truth,” Court President Racine (Fabrice Luchini) tells his assembled jury. “Our job is to apply the law. Show people what they can and cannot do.” This baldly-stated realism and modesty could just as easily apply to Christian Vincent’s slick if not world-shattering comedy Courted (2015) – the French title L’hermine,…
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Venice 2015 ‘The Wait’ review
★★☆☆☆ Entering the race for this year’s Golden Lion, Sicilian director Piero Messina’s The Wait (2015) is potentially an impressive twenty-minute short inflated into a shapely but ultimately empty feature, rank with religiosity. A crucifix hangs in an operatic darkness. A woman older than the universe kisses the feet of the effigy and Anna (Juliette…
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Venice 2015: ‘Rabin, The Last Day’ review
★★★☆☆ The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin on 4 November 1992 shocked the world. Showing in competition at the 72nd Venice Film Festival, Amos Gitai’s Rabin, The Last Day (2015) is an earnest, forensic examination into the slaying of the Israeli Prime Minister. It was a moment when political murder struck at the heart of a…
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Venice 2015: ‘The Endless River’ review
★★☆☆☆ Some linguistic determinism is at work in Oliver Hermanus’ The Endless River (2015), a leaden-paced South African melodrama about the repercussions of a horrific crime. Percy (Clayton Evertson) has just been released from prison after serving four years for armed robbery. He is met by his loyal wife Tiny (Crystal-Donna Roberts), a waitress at…
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Venice 2015: ‘A War’ review
★★★★☆ The indefinite article is an important element to consider in the cinema of Danish writer and director Tobias Lindholm. Three years ago he was in Venice with A Hijacking (2012), the film Captain Phillips might have been if Paul Greengrass’ Seal team cavalry hadn’t been called in. Now entering the Orizzonti sidebar competition comes…
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Venice 2015 ‘The Clan’ review
★★★☆☆ When General Leopoldo Galtieri launched Operation Rosario its failure, including defeat and humiliation in the Falklands (or Malvinas) in 1982, would lead to the end of his dictatorship and the tentative return of democracy to Argentina. It’s in this period of uncertainty that Pablo Trapero’s new crime thriller The Clan (2015), which screened today…
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Venice 2015 ‘A Bigger Splash’ review
★★★★☆ I Am Love (2010) director Luca Guadagnino returns to the Venice Lido with A Bigger Splash (2015), his starry remake of the classic Jacques Deray film La Piscine (1969). Regular collaborator Tilda Swinton plays Marianna Lane, a rock star who has achieved the heights of world-renowned fame but is now in retreat from the…
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Venice 2015: ‘Equals’ review
★★☆☆☆ British star Nicholas Hoult hasn’t had much luck with the future this year so far. In Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) he played a mutant road rodent with a suicidal hankering for death via automobile. Nothing could be further from the dusty grunge of George Miller’s vision than Drake Doremus’ antiseptic and soporific Equals…
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Venice 2015: ‘The Danish Girl’ review
★★☆☆☆ Following his Oscar-winning turn as Stephen Hawking in James Marsh’s The Theory of Everything (2014), British actor Eddie Redmayne makes his bow on the Venice Lido in Tom Hooper’s The Danish Girl (2015), complete with another transformative portrayal – this time of a Danish painter who slowly realises his true identity as a woman.…
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Venice 2015: ‘The Childhood of a Leader’
★★★★★ Part of the Orizzonti sidebar at the 72nd Venice Film Festival, actor Brady Corbet’s debut feature The Childhood of a Leader (2015) combines an Ibsen-like austere family drama with a cinematic verve that’s been sadly lacking on the Lido this year. A pounding orchestral overture (courtesy of the legendary Scott Walker) sets the scene…