Venice: The Mara Sisters in "Bucking Fastard"

Elisa Giudici reporting from Venice

BUCKING FASTARD © Gateway to Orkney LLC

Back in the 1980s, Werner Herzog met the Chaplin twin sisters for a project, but he is the first to warn against connecting his return to fiction filmmaking after a string of documentary projects too closely to that real story. In his new film Bucking Fastard, Jean and Joan are not twins but sisters who "speak, move, dress, dream and even slip their tongues, as the title proves, in the very same way." The movie is about their quest for true love, one that is neither particularly well planned nor particularly successful, as if the point were simply to find a way not to feel alone. Joan and Jean feel that way - alone together - even though they are always together, even though their understanding of each other is absolute...

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Venice: Danny Boyle Returns with "Ink"

Elisa Giudici reporting from Venice

We live in such a dark age of media, information, conflict and geopolitics that even Rupert Murdoch doesn't seem quite so evil anymore. Or at least his evilness now comes with a why, a when, a where, and all the other Ws clearly attached. It's paradoxical, considering that Ink opens with Murdoch trying to professionally seduce Jack O'Connell's Larry Lamb into becoming the editor of the least serious newspaper on Fleet Street, the heart of the British press back in 1969. (Murdoch is played by Guy Pearce who, after The Brutalist, apparently has become the go-to guy for tycoons who want to own talented people as if they were property.) Lamb tells Murdoch that, of the five Ws, "'Why' is the least important": sometimes there is no why behind what happens, and even when there is, not giving readers one makes it possible to rerun a story forever.

Lamb and Murdoch's power struggle is at the center of a movie that feels like the ideal follow-up to Boyle's little-loved Steve Jobs, another biopic full of shades of morally gray about a powerful mediatic figure...

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Venice: "Wild Horse Nine" is an Instant Oscar Contender

Elisa Giudici reporting from Venice

WILD HORSE NINE © Searchlight

Two days into Venice, and the new Martin McDonagh movie already seems close to ending the competition for the Golden Lion. There are more than a few dark horses and wild cards waiting over the next ten days of the festival, but the enthusiastic applause at the end of the press screening and John Malkovich's immediate entrance into the Oscar conversation as a leading actor should give everyone a clear idea of just how strong and convincing the film is. Believe the hype: this is a very solid movie about male friendship (no surprise here) that really does not shy away from the political.

McDonagh will not be the last filmmaker arriving here at the Lido with a movie that is quintessentially his creature, "just" another version of his usual work. Nevetheless this one is written and directed with such control and cocksureness, that the result is impressive in its formal perfection...

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Streaming Review: "Don't Say Good Luck" Transcends Happy Madison

By Ben Miller

It's always nice to be pleasantly surprised. Julia Hart's Don't Say Good Luck might have all the makings of a nothingburger direct-to-streaming film, but instead delivers a character-focused film filled with emotion and devoid of cliches. It's also one of the unexpectedly great films of the year...

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Review: "Tony" Subverts the Origin-Story Biopic Formula for the Better

By Ben Miller

While watching Matt Johnson's Tony, there were long stretches I forgot I was watching a biopic. Instead of focusing on the well-documented mythology of famed chef Anthony Bourdain, this film decides to tell a worthwhile story, which just happens to include a future famous person.

Biopics follow a well-worn pattern of showing a person in their pre-fame life, struggling to emerge through the crowd, which will lead them to a great successes and worldwide acclaim. Tony begins and ends with the main character completely anonymous to the world. Rather than hold your hand and lead you to the point where the character finds success, it plants the seeds to send them in that direction without ever getting close to the actual finish line...

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