Category: Venice Film Festival
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The Fate of Searchlight in the Hands of “Ann Lee”
We hinted on the Academy Anonymous podcast that with The Testament of Ann Lee still on the bidding table one of the art-house (and Oscar friendly) specialty labels would pounce – but only after their homegrown stock either failed to launch or fizzled! There were rumblings at TIFF about Netflix jumping on board, which we…
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Netflix poised to make a move on “The Testament of Ann Lee”?
By all accounts, it appeared that Mona Fastvold and Brady Corbet wanted to apply the same savvy release strategy that they unfurled last year with “The Brutalist,” the runaway talk of Venice, with this year’s “The Testament of Ann Lee.” After its Venice debut, Corbet’s “The Brutalist” would go on to be acquired by A24…
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Venice Film Festival 2025: Contested Winners and a Divided Jury
The winners of the 82nd Venice Film Festival were announced on Saturday, September 6th. As expected, critics and attendees were underwhelmed by some of the jury’s choices in the main competition, while others were outraged that some of the brightest films at the Lido were completely shut out—particularly Park Chan-wook’s widely acclaimed No Other Choice.…
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Final Venice Predictions
The winners of the 82nd Venice Film Festival will be announced this Saturday, so here are our final predictions for which films might take home a prize. Recently, Ildikó Enyedi’s competition entry SILENT FRIEND received a very warm reception — great news, as she remains one of our most prominent surreal humanist filmmakers, a true expert at…
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Venice Day Seven HOT TAKES: The Return of Kathryn Bigelow, The Sealing Of A Best Picture Nominee
The biggest news out of today’s Venice Film Festival screenings was loud and clear: Kathryn Bigelow’s first film in eight years (her last being the under-seen Detroit in 2017) was unanimously adored by critics, earning an impressive 88 on Metacritic and 88% on Rotten Tomatoes. Joseph and I predicted this outcome on our last podcast,…
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Venice Day Six HOT TAKES: Acting Contenders Emerge in Dwayne Johnson, Amanda Seyfried, and Emily Blunt
The two biggest premieres on Day 6 of the 82nd Venice Film Festival were without question Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine—his first feature without his brother Josh—and Mona Fastvold’s The Testament of Ann Lee, which arrives on the heels of her Oscar nomination last year for co-writing The Brutalist. Both films landed strongly with critics,…
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Venice Day Five HOT TAKES: Jim Jarmusch’s latest adored by critics; WIZARD OF THE KREMLIN and Ann Lee receive polarizing reactions
The biggest premieres of day 5 of the Venice Film Festival were the Jim Jarmusch’s Father Mother Sister Brother, Olivier Assayas’s The Wizard of the Kremlin, and first peek at Mona Fastvold’s The Testament of Anne Lee. Jim Jarmusch’s minimalist style, wry humor, and poetic portraits of outsiders have made him a pioneer of independent…
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Venice Day Four HOT TAKES: Guillermo del Toro’s FRANKENSTEIN is Alive!!
Guillermo del Toro’s dream project was finally unveiled tonight at the Venice Film Festival. What seems like a perfect melding of artist and subject, his take on Frankenstein certainly drew it’s ardent admirers—many who were in awe of the film’s craftsmanship, and del Toro’s success in crafting a transcendent, romantic, emotionally complex melodrama—as well as…
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Venice Day Three HOT TAKES: Is Park Chan-wook’s NO OTHER CHOICE the next Golden Lion winner?
Day three saw the official red carpet premier of After the Hunt, which has continued to procure very mixed reviews, prompting many on film twitter to hastily declare it a catastrophic misfire (the good ol’ folk on film twitter tend to oscillate between extremes often, especially regarding film festival premieres, especially during awards season). This…
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Venice Day Two HOT TAKES: BUGONIA ascends; AFTER THE HUNT falls; JAY KELLY is mid-tier Baumbach
Day 2 of the Venice Film Festival was a big one: the highly anticipated, and Oscar-pegged, titles of Jay Kelly, Bugonia, and After the Hunt revealed themselves to the world for the first time (After the Hunt during a press-only screening). Results were interesting, if not all that surprising. Prior to the festival bows, Joseph…
