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Venice Festivals by Year: Prizes, Juries, Favorites Other Fests: Cannes / Chicago
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Jurors: Alexandre Desplat (president), Joan Chen, Philip Gröning, Jessica Hausner, Jhumpa Lahiri, Sandy Powell, Tim Roth, Elia Suleiman, Carlo Verdone
 Competition Films I Have Seen:Ranked in order of preference My Golden Lion: The Look of Silence (Denmark/Indonesia, dir. Joshua Oppenheimer) - Confounds expectations less than The Act of Killing, but manifests equal if quieter audacity. Heroic. A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (Sweden, dir. Roy Andersson) - Frontloaded with most brilliant vignettes; tapers off a bit. Such droll humanism. Birdman (or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (USA, dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu) - Snazzy, mock-heroic battle among sorrow and swagger, hubris and depth. Iridescent as an oil slick. Keaton its best effect. Far from Men (France, dir. David Oelhoffen) - Short Camus tale becomes well-shot, well-paced, Stagecoachy two-man Algerian Western. Classic style, laudable clarity. 99 Homes (USA, dir. Ramin Bahrani) - Film blanc, suggesting moral rot not through deepening shadow but wispy, edge-dulling light. Bit schematic but acted well. Red Amnesia (China, dir. Wang Xiaoshuai) - Caché-meets-The Whisperers mystery: she did something nasty in the Cultural Revolution and now, it follows. Unsettling. Hungry Hearts (Italy, dir. Saverio Costanzo) - Hyperbolic nonsense about a young mother's unraveling. Lenses, story get increasingly distorted. Two Venice awards??  Sidebar Films I Have Seen:Ranked in order of preference The President (Georgia, dir. Mohsen Makhmalbaf) - Makhmalbaf as I've rarely met him, in bumptious tragicomic picaresque. Funny, brutal. Great lead. Winner? Hill of Freedom (South Korea, dir. Hong Sang-soo) - Hong's latest jewel-cut doodle charms, especially amid heavy festival environment. He repeats himself but so do we. Nabat (Azerbaijan, dir. Elcin Musaoglu Guliyev) - Vaguer on heroine's POV than you'd think, with so few folks in the film. But pained, poetic study pays other rewards. Heaven Knows What (USA, dirs. Joshua and Benny Safdie) - Bombastic yet credible insiders' view of addicts' amour fou. Often amateurish, then suddenly assured. The music! The Boxtrolls (UK, dirs. Anthony Stacchi and Graham Annable) - Copious visual detail unwittingly makes film seem heavy. Thin plot. Characters never sparked. I just don't get Laika? Competition Films I'm Curious to See: Ranked in order of interest; more on this year's lineup here (opens in a new window) Tales, Iran, dir. Rakhshan Bani-Etemad The Cut, Germany, dir. Fatih Akin Leopardi, Italy, dir. Mario Martone Sivas, Turkey, dir. Kaan Müjdeci The Postman's White Nights, Russia, dir. Andrei Konchalovsky Black Souls, Italy/France, dir. Francesco Munzi Good Kill, USA, dir. Andrew Niccol Pasolini, France/Belgium, dir. Abel Ferrara 3 Hearts, France, dir. Benoît Jacquot Fires on the Plain, Japan, dir. Shinya Tsukamoto Manglehorn, USA, dir. David Gordon Green The Price of Fame, France, dir. Xavier Beauvois The Last Hammer Blow, France, dir. Alix Delaporte Sidebar Films I'm Curious to See: Listed alphabetically Olive Kitteridge, USA, dir. Lisa Cholodenko In the Basement, Austria, dir. Ulrich Seidl The Golden Era, China/Hong Kong, dir. Ann Hui No One's Child, Serbia, dir. Vuk Rsumovic Theeb, Jordan, dir. Naji Abu Nowar Court, India, dir. Chaitanya Tamhane Return to Ithaca, France, dir. Laurent Cantet Words with Gods, Mexico/USA, dirs. Guillermo Arriaga, et al. Cymbeline, USA, dir. Michael Almereyda The Sound and the Fury, USA, dir. James Franco She's Funny That Way, USA, dir. Peter Bogdanovich |
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