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Venice Film Festival

Happening (L’événement) movie review: the history about to repeat itself

Fri, May 06, 2022
no comments yet

An intense, intimate tale of historical illegal abortion, with a central performance of focused terror; a harrowing body horror that looms again. I cannot overstate the absolute urgency of this film.

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Sweet Country movie review: an essential confrontation with the ugly not-so-past past

Mon, Apr 23, 2018
4 comments

As harshly beautiful as its landscape, this is a stark corrective to the American western it echoes, and a pragmatic confrontation with the deep, tenacious roots of modern racism.

| 4 Comments

Custody (Jusqu’à la garde) movie review: family ties, slashered

Thu, Apr 12, 2018
2 comments

Transforms a straightforward story of domestic violence into something like a horror movie, and it’s so harrowing and so incredibly tense that I’m not sure that it’s not exploitive.

| 2 Comments

Sculpting Time: The Films of Andrei Tarkovsky movie retrospective review: tragedy, trauma, and torment, Russian-style

Fri, May 20, 2016
3 comments

A significant new retrospective of the legendary and hugely influential Russian filmmaker is a fresh opportunity to see some gorgeous films on a big screen.

| 3 Comments

Miss Violence movie review: keep it in the family

Fri, Jun 20, 2014
1 comment

Deeply unnerving, yet it borders on a salacious exploitation of the everyday horrors it means to condemn.

| 1 Comment

wtf: Sofia Coppola wins the Golden Lion, and so it must be favoritism?

Mon, Sep 13, 2010
6 comments

Almost instantly on the heels of the news of Coppola’s win came grumblings that she only won because the jury president was Quentin Tarantino. Whom she once dated.

| 6 Comments

question of the day: Is hearing news and reviews from film festivals torture for you, too?

Fri, Sep 10, 2010
6 comments

Sheesh, you could do a solid two solid months of film-festivaling, traveling from Venice to Toronto to New York to London for these carnivals of cinemania, an odyssey that sounds to me as wonderful as it does exhausting.

| 6 Comments

because no one will listen to what the ‘Hurt Locker’ pirates are saying

Fri, May 14, 2010
14 comments

It’s hard to imagine that the people involved with this endeavor are failing to see what’s really going on here. But on the off chance that they don’t, I’ll explain. As an introduction, The Hollywood Reporter offered us this exclusive scoop earlier this week: The war against movie piracy is getting downright explosive. We’ve learned … more…

| 14 Comments

Streamers (review)

Tue, Jan 12, 2010
no comments yet

It’s almost impossible to watch this 1983 Robert Altman film today with the mindset of the time in which it was created. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing…

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