#venice 2016

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[behindfairytales]

Gemma Arterton during the 73rd Venice Film Festival [xx]

[thefilmstage]

Does it expand our possibilities to express ourselves and to be storytellers, or doesn’t it? 3D does, so I like it and I embraced it, and I’m horrified by the fact that it’s going to disappear before we know it because it’s only been abused. It’s been abused, and abused and misused over and over again, so now a lot of people are sick and tired of it. And they think it’s useless, because it’s mainly used in useless ways. Unfortunately.

Wim Wenders discusses being grateful for James Cameron, the catastrophe of Brexit, and more.

[thefilmstage]

Serbian director Emir Kusturica, once a revered name on the arthouse European scene, is back in the helmer’s chair with On the Milky Road. His return to fiction feature filmmaking comes after a few years spent directing documentaries (Maradona by Kusturica), doing some acting and contributing to omnibus films (Words with God – with his short Our Life nominally serving as inspiration for this one, executive-produced by Guillermo Arriaga).

While his recent works have done little to sustain this, it’s still surprisingly difficult in the world of 2016 to readjust perceptions of Kusturica after his rapturous, wildly energetic early successes. And that constitutes further burden on his latest film – a highly self-indulgent, magical realist fairy tale of profoundly uneven quality.

Spanning fifteen years and harking back to the days of the civil war, On The Milky Road is the story of Kosta, a milkman who braves the path along the frontline every morning on his comically undersized donkey. Kusturica takes his time in establishing a war-torn world that has settled into a drowsy routine, save for a few skirmishes here and there. The beautiful vistas across the Serbian mountains come across as more than pretty scenery in the first act, which in retrospect constitute the film’s strongest spell. Nature, along with the animal world, is clearly important for Kusturica – even beyond the traditional dichotomy which sees the purity of the natural world contrasted with the horror of war.

Continue reading our Venice review of On the Milky Road.

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Venice Film Festival 2016 Awards: Golden Lion To ‘The Woman Who Left’; Tom Ford’s ‘Nocturnal Animals’ Scoops Grand Jury Prize; Emma Stone Best Actress – Live

Refresh for updates… The awards ceremony for the Venice Film Festival 2016 is just getting started in the Sala Grande. The jury, led by Sam Mendes, has a rich roster of movies to choose from …

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[thefilmstage]

Eyebrows were raised when it was announced that South Korea will submit the as-yet-unreleased espionage thriller The Age of Shadows for Oscar consideration instead of Cannes hits The Handmaiden and The Wailing. Premiering out of competition at the 73rd Venice Film Festival, writer/director Jee-woon Kim’s return to Korean-language cinema after a brief stint in Hollywood with the Schwarzenegger-starrer The Last Stand turns out to be a worthy choice that makes particular sense representing the country given how it speaks directly to the national memory/identity.

Set during the Japanese colonial period in early 20th century, the movie follows a group of resistance fighters who risk their lives for the independence movement under the militant watch of a ruthless foreign regime. After a series of compromised missions, the daredevil activists, led by the cool and resourceful Kim Woo-Jin (Yoo Gong), set their mind on “turning” the Korean-born Japanese police captain Lee Jung-Chool (Kang-ho Song). The bulk of the story takes place as the nationalists try to smuggle a supply of explosives out of Shanghai while courting the enemy and baiting a rat from within their own ranks.

Continue reading our Venice review of The Age of Shadows.

[thefilmstage]

Having experimented with feature-length fiction films, shorts, and archival-footage documentaries in the course of his career, Sergei Loznitsa’s output since his 2014 Ukrainian crisis documentary Maidan has both garnered him greater acclaim than before and zeroed in on cinema as a collectively generated form.

In Maidan, Loznitsa’s camera is on the ground, observing the crowd gathering in Kiev for what was initially a pacific protest against President Yanukovych. Watching the film’s early scenes and knowing what’s going to happen later gives a devastating power to those hopeful, spontaneous short moments around the square. You are watching a revolution while it’s happening, but it’s that plurality, that mixture of faces passing by, that prompts you to assemble it in your mind. Similarly, 2015’s The Event captures the essence of uncertainty in a crowd as history is unfolding -- or is it? Loznitsa’s films are magnetically attracted to collectivity, quickly establishing a moving perimeter in which the viewer becomes an active part of the scanning and decoding process.

Austerlitz, the director’s new documentary, is once again concerned with large groups of people and the act of watching, except, this time, there is no event. History is already locked in the past -- but how do we remember it? How do we experience it?

Continue reading our Venice review of Austerlitz.

[thefilmstage]

Tom Ford, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Michael Shannon on the set of Nocturnal Animals.

Our Venice review.