Venice Diary #03 - D-Day: Diana, Dune and a huge hole in the ground

by Elisa Giudici

Today Venice lived its climax, with screenings of two of the most awaited movies of the entire year: Pablo Larraín's Spencer and Denis Villeneuve's Dune. The latter in particular is perceived by everyone as an event, even by Venice standards (where a lot of the protagonists of the last Oscar races have been premiered). The fight for tickets to the screenings was merciless. Every show  sold out in a matter of seconds and the artistic director of the Festival, Alberto Barbera, tried to answer the general audience and press's complaints with multiple tweets. Moreover, it is the first movie in the five years I've been attending in which every ticket holder is required to seal his phone in a bag for piracy prevention. Warner Bros faces more than a calculated risk here: Dune's box office can be the dividing line between the cinema experience as we used to know and something new and yet uncertain...

Click to read more ...

Elisa's Venice Diary #2: Lost Daughter and lost souls: Sorrentino, Schrader and Gyllenhaal

by Elisa Giudici

Day two, three movies: a luxury, considering how difficult it is to get tickets this year. Usually, the Venice way is to queue outside the screening hoping to be able to get inside. If you have a red or blue pass you are reasonably sure to see everything you want, even when you arrive only 5 minutes before the beginning of the show. If you are a green or yellow pass holder, you need to show up early and hope red or blue pass holders are busy somewhere else. Due to Covid-19 safety rules and social distancing, only one-third of available seats can be occupied. It means you have to be really quick to book a seat online, 74 hours before the show. The hot movies sold out in mere seconds so I am incredibly lucky to be able to review three major movies from the main competition today.

The Card Counter (Paul Schrader)
Knowing how austere and morally inflexible Paul Schrader is about cinema (and life) I think The Card Counter is his most  accessible recent movie by pure accident. I really enjoyed it and I think the general public will like this thriller about poker, gambling, and the casino world...

Click to read more ...

Nathaniel in Venice: "Power of the Dog" and "Madeleine Collins"

Nathaniel reporting from Venice, day 1 part 2

Day 1 (continued). I didn’t expect death to linger so completely over Parallel Mothers and curiously my opening night at the fest kept on inviting the grim reaper in. The first day of screenings ended with Jane Campion’s The Power of Dog in which death is far less of a subject but clouds the vast Montana skies.  But first I took in Madeleine Collins, a French addition of our favorite subgenre here at The Film Experience, Women Who Lie To Themselves™  in which everyone in the film avoids talking about a death they probably should have spent lots more time processing.  

Madeleine Colllins (Antoine Barraud)
Elisa already hit the highlight of the film in her brief capsule, but it bears repeating: Virginie Efira! Virginie Efira! Virginie Efira!

Click to read more ...

Nathaniel in Venice: "Parallel Mothers" and city impressions

Nathaniel reporting from Venice - Day 1, Part 1

"Dont Look Now" .. the most famous Venice movie?

Dearest readers, what's the first thing you think of when you think of Venice? My first memory of the city,  vicariously, is Madonna's gyrating gondola ride in the "Like a Virgin" music video. Nothing as seismically sexy is likely to occur in pandemic 2021 (tourists and masks kinda kill that vibe) but I did witness the paparazzi chasing a celebrity the literal minute I exited the airport to board a boat to my airbnb. Seeing paparazzi in the country that invented the word was fun but I didn't recognize the celebrity (short girl with black hair and baggy clothing with heavily tatted tall boyfriend?). Auspicious beginnings. 

Venice is one of the most beautiful cities you'll ever see this side of Copenhagen, and that's surely due to all the canals; Oh to live on the water! Travelling to the movies each morning by boat is going to be heaven. Coming back to the main island at night to sleep, though, is as eery as any shot from Don't Look Now (1973), since every street feels like walking down a dark alley, even in the middle of the day. The buildings are uncomfortably close together  -- sometimes you have to turn sideways for other pedestrians -- and the streets are utterly mazelike. With the caveat that I have a terrible sense of direction, I was lost four times in the first 24 hours. 

My first screening was the opening night film Pedro Almodóvar's Parallel Mothers so the festival began, figuratively, with Penélope Cruz asking the audience to smize...

Click to read more ...

Review: "Shang-Chi" soars through action and chemistry

by Nathaniel R

Father vs Son in Shang-Chi

Many years ago I was at the movies with my best high school girlfriend. I had convinced her to see The Piano, which was not her usual sort of film. At the exact moment that mute Holly Hunter lost her little finger to her husband’s axe, I let out a non-mute yelp. My bestie and I were both deep in the story onscreen and at the film’s most violent moment she had dug her fingers into my arm so tightly offscreen that I was in pain. What does that have to do with the latest Marvel Cinematic Blockbuster, you might, very sensibly, ask? It is only that this long-forgotten sense memory came rushing back to me in two winning ways, the first of which occurred as Shang-Chi’s action mettle was put to the test.

While the film takes its time getting there — blame the familiar slow pacing of flashback heavy origin stories— the story properly takes off as soon as Sean (Simu Liu) and his best girlfriend Katy (Awkwafina) are suddenly beset by assassins on a San Francisco city bus, One of them, Razor Fist (Florian Munteanu)  is so extra he has a blade where his arm should be. This particular action sequence is as shocking to us as it it is to Katy but for different reasons...

Click to read more ...