Venice Diary #07 - "The Last Duel" and the last movies of the fest

by Elisa Giudici

Michael Myers is back in "Halloween Kills"

Final day!  I hope you are ready because in this entry I am going to cover all the movies I saw in the last two days of the Venice Film Festival. Eight movies, from European arthouse cinema to Hollywood blockbusters, with some solid performances, an instant cult, and the only major disappointment of this incredible edition of the Mostra.

I'll try to keep it short because of the lack of sleep. An inside joke between my roommate and me this year was that the Filipino movie with its 208 minutes of length lasted longer than our typical night of sleep in the last two weeks...

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Nathaniel in Venice: "L'Evenement" and "Mother Lode" are gems.

Nathaniel reporting from Venice

This is my final review batch post from Venice. This weekend we'll talk Cambodia's Oscar submission (decided it deserved its own post!), and I'll sound off on "jury of one" stuff after the official winners have sunk in to underline my own 'best' of; You know how we love a list here at TFE and the neat thing about festivals is that everyone designs or ends up with their own program within the larger programs! And yes after all that (aka Monday) we'll be updating each Oscar chart. I am now safely ensconced back in NYC and thanks to Chris for holding down the fort on my travel day. As you read this I am undoubtedly snuggling with the boyfriend’s cat who is very clingy and filled with “missed you” purrs -- heaven! This post will probably contain no movies you’ve yet heard of but don’t run away! Festivals are also about discovering films from all over the world.

Here are the last four films I screened at Venice in ascending order of pleasure...

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Venice Diary #06 - A comedian, a captain, and multiple torturers

by Elisa Giudici

A lot of movies to discuss today (the festival ends tomorrow) including two potential Golden Lion winners....

Reflection (Valentyn Vasyanovych)
A major theme in this edition is torture, as experienced by both victims and torturers. It is common to see movies on such brutal acts of violence revolving around the need to give a voice and a spotlight to the forgotten victims and their true stories. Some of the movies shown this year in Venice prefer to focus on the torturer, asking the audience if it is really possible to atone for such a crime?

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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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