The Italian Oscar race: 18 contenders for the submission, 1 probable winner

by Elisa Giudici

THE HAND OF GOD

The Italian longlist for the 2021 Oscar submission is very long and much better than usual, quality-wise. Although if the Italian Cinema Academy appointed by ANICA really wants to give Italy a chance to make the finals,the choice is obvious: Paolo Sorrentino's The Hand of God.

Unfortunately, in the last decade, the Italian film commission's rulings on this matter have not proved to be that smart. I mean, how can you send Marco Bellocchio's The Traitor (as beautiful and important as it was domestically) when The New York Times states that Pietro Marcello's Martin Eden is the best movie of 2020? Our only solace was that that was the year of Parasite, so there was no room for a real contender to Bong Joon-ho's victory in Best Internatural Feature Film...

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Nathaniel in Venice: It's a brutal world but men sure make it worse!

Nathaniel reporting from Venice, final days...

On day one Parallel Mothers set the theme that Venice would be about death. Not Death in Venice, mind you (different movie). And now the death of my Venice trip as I'll be flying across the Atlantic as you read this back to NYC. Power of the Dog  (also on the first day of the fest) also revealed that you would not be able to escape films examining toxic masculinity. So here are three more doing the latter, one from Italy and two from Mexico.

The Catholic School (Stefano Mordini)
This mainstream Italian film which premiered out of competition belongs to the ever popular “true crime” genre. It seeks to analyze the environment that led to an infamous rape/murder committed by three upper class school boys in 1975 that set the Italian nation on edge...

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Nathaniel in Venice: Horrors! It's "Last Night in Soho" and "Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon"

Nathaniel reporting from the Venice Film Festival

Let’s take a wee break from the Oscar-bound and foreign arthouse offerings at Venice and talk genre. As with comedies, there’s not enough of it at festivals but it’s good to program a variety of pictures if you can. Here are two films featuring supernatural elements, one a complete misfire the other a future cult gem... 

Last Night in Soho (Edgar Wright)
I am deeply sad to report that this wasn’t (at all) for me, though I was so looking forward as I generally enjoy Wright’s work. I was worried from the start with the movie’s hyper enthusiasm about everything it’s doing even before it’s begun doing things...

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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...

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Luca Guadagnino @ 50: A Trilogy of Desire

Happy belated 50th to Luca Guadagnino.

by Cláudio Alves

Like many a director in film history, Luca Guadagnino's cinema is characterized by common themes, through lines transversal to all his works, though more evident in some than others. During the release and promotional tour of Call Me By Your Name, the Italian auteur came to realize that his last three films could be construed as an unofficial trilogy of desire, though he later repudiated the notion. Nevertheless, akin to Bergman's Silence of God tercet, Guadagnino's I Am Love, A Bigger Splash, and Call Me By Your Name complete a three-part thesis in cinematic form. Instead of the Swedish master's spiritual dread, we have a multifaceted portrait of human desire as a force so great it's both overwhelming and life-changing, magical and terrifying, a blessing, a curse, perchance a deliverance…

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