Venice Festivals by Year: Prizes, Juries, Favorites   Other Fests: Cannes / Chicago Stay tuned for more yearly indexes!  Browse Films by Title / Year / Reviews Nick's Flick Picks Home / Blog / E-Mail		Jurors: Quentin Tarantino (president), Guillermo Arriaga, Ingeborga Dapkunaite, Arnaud Desplechin, Danny Elfman, Luca Guadagnino, Gabriele Salvatores     Golden Lion: Somewhere, USA, dir. Sofia Coppola Special Jury Prize: Essential Killing, Poland, dir. Jerzy Skolimowski Best Director: The Last Circus, Spain, dir. Álex de la Iglesia Best Actress: Attenberg, Ariane Labed Best Actor: Essential Killing, Vincent Gallo Marcello Mastroianni Award: Black Swan, Mila Kunis Best Screenplay: The Last Circus, Álex de la Iglesia Technical Contribution: Silent Souls, Mikhail Krichman (cinematography) FIPRESCI Prize: Silent Souls, Russia, dir. Aleksei Fedorchenko SIGNIS Award: Meek's Cutoff, USA, dir. Kelly Reichardt Venice Horizons Award: Verano de Goliat, Mexico/Canada, dir. Nicolás Pereda Future Film Festival Digital Award: 13 Assassins, Japan, dir. Takashi Miike Competition Films I Have Seen: Ranked in order of preference   My Golden Lion Black Venus (France/Algeria, dir. Abdellatif Kechiche) - A justifiably punishing sit. Meticulous recreation that refuses to absolve its audience of complicity with voyeurism. Silent Souls (Russia, dir. Aleksei Fedorchenko) - Tender, enigmatic, contentedly odd elegy for a wife, a friend, a father, and a culture; like Auden meeting Kaurismäki Post Mortem (Chile, dir. Pablo Larraín) - Steady, muted accretion of Chilean political horror, intriguingly if unevenly joined to Lanthimos-style deadpan macabre Meek's Cutoff (USA, dir. Kelly Reichardt) - Academy framing a treat, as are visual and sonic textures. But dramatic opportunities get missed. Perfs a bit off? Attenberg (Greece, dir. Athina Rachel Tsangari) - Dogtooth's brittle lensing and weird behavior, making ambitious but uneven grabs at your heartstrings. Coolly intriguing. Black Swan (USA, dir. Darren Aronofsky) - Frazzling dread, superbly lensed, good for shabby shocks—and yet a thin pillowcase of cliché, stuffed with cheap tricks (full review) 3 (Germany, dir. Tom Tykwer) - Comic, sexy, proudly noodly urban fable about married couple shtupping same man. Tykwer fondly regards humans as loose electrons. The Last Circus (Spain, dir. Álex de la Iglesia) - Pitiless slaughterhouse-allegory in which rival maniacs break the back of easily-seduced Spain. Bold but puerile. Somewhere (USA, dir. Sofia Coppola) - Coppola's films have always been airy, but the absolute dramatic laxity of this one is startling. Evanescent, unstirring. Four Lovers (aka Happy Few) (France, dir. Antony Cordier) - Neither consistent with context nor willingly abstract. Story of four-way liaison seems to float above its own movie. Sidebar Films I Have Seen: Ranked in order of preference   The Town (USA, dir. Ben Affleck) - Swift, muscular, absorbing pulp. Some overworked dialogue and extra speeches, but such confident direction. Humor a plus. Competition Films I'm Curious to See: Ranked in order of interest; more on this year's lineup here (opens in a new window)   Essential Killing, Poland, dir. Jerzy Skolimowski 13 Assassins, Japan, dir. Takashi Miike The Ditch, China, dir. Wang Bing Norwegian Wood, Japan, dir. Tran Anh Hung We Believed, Italy, dir. Mario Martone Promises Written in Water, USA, dir. Vincent Gallo Potiche, France, dir. François Ozon Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame, China, dir. Tsui Hark Road to Nowhere, USA, dir. Monte Hellman The Solitude of Prime Numbers, Italy, dir. Saverio Costanzo Miral, USA/France/Italy/Israel, dir. Julian Schnabel Barney's Version, Canada, dir. Richard J. Lewis Sidebar Films I'm Curious to See: Listed alphabetically   1960, Italy, dir. Gabriele Salvatores Beyond, Sweden, dir. Pernilla August I'm Still Here, USA, dir. Casey Affleck Machete, USA, dir. Robert Rodriguez El Sicario, Room 164, Italy, dir. Gianfranco Rosi The Tempest, USA, dir. Julie Taymor Trackbacks: Permalink Venice Page 2010 Home Blog E-Mail