Venice 2013: ‘Memphis’ review
★★★☆☆ Timothy Sutton’s second film, Memphis (2013) – in show at this year’s Venice Film Festival – is a meditation into music, “God-given” talent...
★★☆☆☆ “An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,” Percy Shelley once wrote in his sonnet England in 1819. He was firing his barbs at King George III but the words could just as well be used for any number of English monarchs including Henry VIII.
★★★★★ Turkish master director Nuri Bilge Ceylan returns to the Cannes Croisette with About Dry Grasses, a wonderful wintry meditation on male fragility and the way we often make our own hells and then deceive ourselves that we’re trapped.
★★★★☆ From sub-Saharan Africa to Afghanistan, Syria to Iraq and Iran, the climate crisis, drought, war, and oppression has created a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions. It is treated as an ethical conundrum, but it isn’t. Either we wish to save those who are in danger of dying, or all our talk of human rights is just so much hot air. This is the core concern of Green Border.
★★★☆☆ Timothy Sutton’s second film, Memphis (2013) – in show at this year’s Venice Film Festival – is a meditation into music, “God-given” talent...
★★☆☆☆ Tsai Ming-liang, joint-winner of the 1994 Golden Lion for Vive L’Amour, returns to Venice with new film Stray Dogs (2013), a motionless motion...
★★☆☆☆ Part of a new generation of young horror directors, Ti West arrives in Venice with The Sacrament (2013), a found-footage frightener based loosely...
★★★★☆ Showing in the Orizzonti sidebar at the 70th Venice Film Festival, Ruin (2013) is by turns a gritty and dazzling lovers-on-the-run tale set...
★★★★★ The opening film of the 70th Venice Film Festival is Alfonso Cuaròn’s sci-fi blockbuster Gravity (2013), featuring Lido regular George Clooney and Sandra...
★★★☆☆ Following the dreadful A Burning Hot Summer which showed in competition in 2011, Philippe Garrel returns to the Lido with Jealousy (La Jalousie,...
★★★☆☆ No stranger to the Venice Lido, Amos Gitai’s new film Ana Arabia (2013) – in competition this year – is a quiet exploration...
★★★★☆ Italian documentarian Gianfranco Rosi has been at Venice on several occasions, but with his new film, Sacro GRA (2013), he has graduated to...