Venice 2025: The Voice of Hind Rajab
Aiman Ouladali We often call confrontational cinema hard to watch. Kaouther Ben Hania reminds us that some films are hard to listen to. At the center of The Voice of Hind Rajab…
Reviews
Venice 2025: Dead Man’s Wire
On February 8, 1977, Indianapolis resident Tony Kiritsis marched into Meridian Mortgage, wired a sawed-off shotgun to executive Dick Hall’s head, and held him for 63 hours. He paraded Hall…
Venice 2025: A House Of Dynamite
Kathryn Bigelow’s new film may not be horror, yet it is more frightening than most. Her first feature since Detroit arrives at Venice with the sting of a siren and…
Venice 2025: The Smashing Machine
On paper, this looks like surefire awards bait. A beloved star transforms for a redemption saga inside the blue-collar world of mixed martial arts. Benny Safdie has all the ingredients,…
Venice 2025: The Wizard Of The Kremlin
“In general,” observes the Narrator, played with dry clarity by Jeffrey Wright, “things in Russia go pretty well. But when they go bad, they go really bad.” That line sets…
Venice 2025: The Last Viking
Mads Mikkelsen gives a wonderfully dry, gently heartbreaking performance as Manfred, a man who insists he is John Lennon and demands to be addressed as “John.” Call him Manfred and…
Venice 2025: Jay Kelly
In Noah Baumbach’s “Jay Kelly,” George Clooney plays a movie star who might as well be stamped from his own marquee image. The biography tracks, sure, but it’s the vibe…
Venice 2025: Bugonia
Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone’s fifth outing together is a wild, precision-tuned gut punch—and, yeah, I liked it more than Kinds of Kindness. Where last year’s anthology felt airless and…
Locarno (2025): The Dead of Winter
The Dead of Winter, directed by Brian Kirk, unfolds amid the stark, frozen expanses of Minnesota, where the icy landscape mirrors the film’s somber mood. Emma Thompson stars as a…
Locarno 2025: The Birthday Party
The Birthday Party, directed by Miguel Ángel Jiménez and adapted from Panos Karnezis’s 2007 novel, unfolds a claustrophobic tale of power and betrayal within a wealthy family. Willem Dafoe leads…