Venice Film Festival — A–Z of films

Guadagnino is tilting at windmills and there isn’t even any wind.

Rosi expertly paints a picture of a community with all its widely varied facets.

While some directors spend their lives crafting love letters to the worlds they create, Yorgos Lanthimos has developed a fine line in cinematic hate mail to humanity.

This isn’t a fuzzy celebration of making do with what you have as you get older but of embracing the passions that endure.

A beguiling mix of magic-realist fable, coming-of-age drama & post-colonial critique.

Duse is as much about the rise of fascism as it is about the decision making of an artist at a precarious time in her life.

Nvotová doesn’t shy away from torturing her protagonists while the camera lingers on Michal’s and Zuzka's bodies and minds collapsing inward.

There is a magnetism to it all.

Likely to put a smile on the faces of horror fans who favour the dissection of ideas over dismemberment.

In A House Of Dynamite the uncertainties are propulsive, what we learn unsettling. Each tick of the clock reorients our understanding of the same events.

It may be episodic but its themes are so well connected that it never feels disjointed.

It cannot be denied that Jay Kelly is interested in exploring the human condition through the lens of fame and fatherhood, but the romantic, sentimental, and saccharine tones come with a risk.

A feat of patience.

At times it feels as if Jensen is trying to spin too many plates at once, but in the moments when it all comes together, it’s a delight to watch.

Burch and Jones clearly enjoy updating rich kid Myers and his literary salon pals to the present without ever falling into clownish cliché.

The choice of child protagonists not only adds to Lost Land’s emotional heft but also brings home the extra level of uncertainty and confusion felt by youngsters across the globe forced to make these sorts of dangerous odysseys in hope of safe haven.

Mincan – who grew up in the period depicted himself – doesn’t need to make the politics or shifting social structures overt, they are just baked in.

This is such a buttoned up character study that it feels more like a riff than an exploration.

Park keeps inviting us to laugh, then forcing us to confront what, exactly, we’re laughing at.

The kindness of strangers in this foreboding and foggy world of gangsters and crooks reveals an aspirational and tender heart underneath it all.

Supernatural possession is closely intertwined with the idea of radicalisation, evil jinn with distorted ideology.

Jenkin’s style, impressionistic when it comes to places, is particular in regard to objects, the real anchors of our lives.

Just as the sun dapples down through the trees, so the shadows of war creep in at the margins.

Repetition also works against Safdie, with matches towards the end of the film feeling as though he is labouring the point.

Ozon remains faithful to the source and keeps its sense of mystery but has strengthened the female characters

Kotevska leans into the metaphor with the full force of a Disney film – but it is hardly inappropriate given the state of many modern farming communities who find their livelihoods dwindling and their younger family members forced to fly the nest in a bid to provide for their own children.

Made with consummate care, the film stands out for its exquisite cinematography.

There is some very good work here, and all of it tempered where it needs to be, to give due prominence to Hind herself.

Dano has chosen to use the same flat vocal expression throughout, a technique well suited to satire which might have worked if only the rest of the film had been a bit more lively.