Venice 2024: Luca Guadagnino's "Queer"

by Elisa Giudici

Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey in QUEER (photo: Yannis Drakoulidis)

Luca Guadagnino's 2024 double feature, early release Challengers and the new premiere Queer, explore the intricate and slow process of calibrating love. In both,love is a delicate balancing act where one person loves intensely, perhaps even desperately, while the other remains more passive, content to be loved without being deeply invested in the relationship. The fundamental difference between the two lies in how they resolve this imbalance...

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Venice 2024: "Kill the Jockey" and "One to One: John & Yoko"

by Elisa Giudici

KILL THE JOCKEY © Rei Pictures, El Despacho, Infinity Hill, Warner Music Entertainment) 

KILL THE JOCKEY by Luis Ortega
There is a certain aesthetic in the self-destruction of genius. In El Jockey (or Kill the Jockey), this is encapsulated in a visually seductive scene where Nahuel Pérez Biscayart prepares his signature cocktail: a base of horse medicine in a glass of whiskey, drowned in a cloud of cigarette smoke. He downs it in one gulp and then mounts his horse for a race that ends sooner than expected.

Kill the Jockey has an explosive first half-hour...

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International Feature Race - 15 Contenders Thus Far

by Nathaniel R

Though I know I've been absent from writing, I have been updating the International Feature Film Oscar charts to track the submissions. So far 15 countries have announced their submissions, some of which are available to US viewers. After the jump, the list so far, impending decisions from Israel and South Korea, and general observations...

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Venice 2024: "Maria" and "Pooja Sir"

by Elisa Giudici

MARIA © Pablo Larraín

MARIA by Pablo Larrain
In Pablo Larraín’s unofficial trilogy of melancholic 20th-century female icons, Maria finds itself positioned somewhere in the middle. Maria is better than Spencer but falls short of Jackie's excellence...

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Venice 2024: Series Better Than Movies #1 - Disclaimer

by Elisa Giudici

Alfonso Cuarón, behind the scenes of DISCLAIMER | © Apple TV+

From the moment the Venice lineup was announced, it was clear that this year, the festival was betting heavily on TV. The impression was that the quality was high enough to justify their inclusion and the commitment to watch long episodes, even at the expense of film screenings. Early viewings have confirmed this prediction. In these diaries from the Lido, I can already tell you that at least two series will make headlines. The first one is:

DISCLAIMER by Alfonso Cuarón

When it comes to TV series, Alfonso Cuarón proves to be the dream director for a platform like Apple TV+…

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