VENICE AND TORONTO festivals Sept. 2025

[Chris Knipp]

VENICE AND TORONTO festivals Sept. 2025

VENICE
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Director Kathryn Bigelow @red carpet for the film 'A House of Dynamite' Venice Tues, Sept. 2, 2025. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

More premieres and reviews from Venice - and Toronto - are coming.

Kathryn Bigelow's A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE, about a future US-Russian nuclear clash, has been shown at Venice and the review are great, Metacritic 88. Posing at the red carpet Venice she still looks sexy at 73.

BUGONIA: SCREEN DAILY (https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/bugonia-review-emma-stone-and-jesse-plemons-are-dynamite-in-explosive-yorgos-lanthimos-thriller/5208306.article)"‘Bugonia’ review: Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons are dynamite in explosive Yorgos Lanthimos thriller". It is "is a gloriously gonzo, sharply satirical chamber piece" wrote Nike Baughan Metacritic 88. (Why did the NYFF not include BUGONIA?)

Peetro Marcello's DUSE (a NYFF Main Slate selection; a pic about the Italian diva Eleanora Duse starring Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) has dropped and Letterboxed reactions aren't very good. Here's one long one there:
Review by Giacomo Togni ★★½
SOURCE (https://letterboxd.com/film/duse/)
Valeria Bruni Tedeschi plays Duse in constant overacting, with a perpetually raised voice and a wild fervour for the theatre that comes across as unpleasantly parodic. Noémie Merlant stands out in the role of her daughter, lighting up every scene she appears in, but unfortunately there is not enough space for her in the script. The script introduces us to the figure of Elenora Duse and her desire to return to the stage before we have even seen her perform. Marcello's adulation of Duse is inexplicable and at times irritating because in the few scenes in which she does not appear, the director makes sure that she is talked about.

This could have been handled better by giving more prominence to Noémie Merlant's character and, above all, by limiting Valeria Bruni Tedeschi's role.
9translated from Italian via DeepL)

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[Chris Knipp]

VENICE
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BENJAMIN VOISIN, REBECCA MARDER IN THE STRANGER

Back to Camus!

The Stranger': exclusive first trailer for Francois Ozon's Venice premiere

TRAILER (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fV3F2fkevCM)

I'm excited about this. Albert Camus' L'Étranger/The Stranger is a great French modern literary classic. We may all become existentialists again. Benjamin Voisin is the "it" boy now, and Swann Arlaud and Denis Lavant make great backup. The reviews look good = Metascore (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt36243564/criticreviews/?ref_=tt_ov_msc) 79%.

The Stranger (French: L'Étranger) is a 2025 French drama film written and directed by François Ozon, based on Albert Camus's 1942 novel. Benjamin Voisin stars in the lead role of Meursault, alongside Rebecca Marder, Pierre Lottin, Swann Arlaud and Denis Lavant.

[Chris Knipp]

VENICE
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The Voice of Hind Rajab

SOURCE (https://thefilmverdict.com/the-voice-of-hind-rajab/)

Director, screenplay: Kaouther Ben Hania

[THE FILM] VERDICT: A tremendously moving reenactment of a real tragedy that took place in Gaza, Kaouther Ben Hania’s ‘The Voice of Hind Rajab’ masterfully integrates fiction and reality in a grief-stricken lament for a child in mortal danger.

The Voice of Hind Rajab occupies a special place among children-at-war films, thanks to the technical wizardry of Tunisian director Kaouther ben Hania and her ability to create empathy, not just for a six-year-old girl trapped in a car under fire, but for the entire staff of a Red Crescent Emergency Center coordinating the rescue from the West Bank.

Video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3i1k-AEIe8)

This film about an incident that vividly dramatizes the brutal genocide in Gaza received a 23 minute standing ovation at its Venice premiere, the longest of any film.

[Chris Knipp]

VENICE
A return appearance from longtime local film critic Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle who neatly sums up his reactions to this year's Venice film festival.
SOURCE (https://www.sfchronicle.com/entertainment/article/venice-film-festival-2025-21018393.php)

Venice Film Festival 2025: The masterpiece, the misfires and the biggest surprises
By Mick LaSalle,
Contributor
Sep 6, 2025
The Venice Film Festival delivered one genuine masterpiece, bold takes on America in decline, standout veteran directors and Willem Dafoe’s best work in years.

VENICE, Italy — Every film festival has its surprises, but Venice gave us something better: a genuine masterpiece.

Alongside that high point came a handful of other moments worth remembering from Venice Film Festival 2025, which ran from Aug. 27 to Saturday, Sept. 6. Here are four takeaways from this year’s festival.

The breakout of Venice Film Festival 2025
Going to a film festival is like speed dating. You get a lot done in a short period, and even if you think you’re just out for a good time, you’re really hoping to fall in love.

“Duse” is an Italian film that’s not only the best I saw in Venice; it’s my favorite film in at least two years. And the fact that it’s partly produced by Warner Bros., that it’s debuting here in a high-profile way (in competition), and that it received an 11-minute ovation at its premiere, makes me believe that the film will be getting released in the United States.

It's the story of the later years of the great Italian actor Eleonora Duse, and the film and the central performance by Valeria Bruni Tedeschi are wonderfully nuts — free, unexpected, inspired and always right at the edge of losing control.

Directed by Pietro Marcello, the film begins during World War I and continues into the 1920s, when Duse ended an 11-year retirement to return to the stage.

“Duse” is full of memorable two-person encounters, including a meeting between Duse and Sarah Bernhardt (Noémie Lvovsky). There’s also an insane opening-night scene in which the actors, booed at the end of the performance, find the playwright and start pelting him with rotten vegetables.

Best of all, it’s a showcase for Tedeschi’s technical mastery — both her intensity and her moment-by-moment introspection. There’s no doubting that this is Duse and that you’re watching a great actor. You can’t take your eyes off her.

Venice spotlights America in crisis
The notion that the United States is a nation in decline was present in two high-profile films, one fairly good and one not good at all.

The fairly good one is Olivier Assayas’ “The Wizard of the Kremlin,” the fictional story of Vadim Baranov (Paul Dano), an avant-garde Russian artist in the 1990s who discovers a knack for political spin. He seizes on the idea of recruiting Vladimir Putin as Russia’s next president, and the film, among other things, shows the enactment of Putin’s long-term plan to undermine the United States, using a variety of tools, including social media.

At times the film drags, but so long as Jude Law is onscreen in the role of Putin, “The Wizard of the Kremlin” holds a peculiar fascination.

By contrast, Kathryn Bigelow’s disappointing “A House of Dynamite” is both genuinely disturbing and a colossal waste of time. It’s about what happens when a single nuclear weapon is launched by an unknown source in the direction of the American Midwest.

The film tells the same story three times, from three different perspectives (including that of the over-his-head president, Idris Elba), and it doesn’t improve with the retelling. The actors — including Rebecca Ferguson and Tracy Letts — do what they can, but they’re at the mercy of a weak script by Noah Oppenheim, who wrote the equally weak screenplay for the 2016 biopic “Jackie.”

Veteran directors steal the spotlight in Venice
Bigelow’s “A House of Dynamite” notwithstanding, veteran directors did well for themselves.

I absolutely hated the experience of Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein” — I found it baroque and often disgusting — but even I could tell it’s a good movie. It’s committed and passionate, but just not to my taste.

Though Oscar Isaac gets the most screentime as Victor Frankenstein, the film’s highlight is unquestionably the performance of Jacob Elordi, who is heartfelt and strangely beautiful as the monster. Anyone fond of del Toro’s previous films, such as “The Shape of Water” and “Pan’s Labyrinth,” will want to see this.

Gus Van Sant’s “Dead Man’s Wire” goes back to Van Sant’s favorite decade: the 1970s. It tells the real-life story of a bizarre hostage drama that took place in Indianapolis.

Then there’s Jim Jarmusch’s omnibus film, “Father Mother Sister Brother.” The film marks the director’s return to form, with the opening section, starring Tom Waits as the father of Mayim Bialik and Adam Driver, being the standout.

Kent Jones overcomes sophomore curse
Kent Jones has made a number of documentaries (“Hitchcock/Truffaut”) but didn’t release a narrative feature until “Diane” (2018), a memorable film starring Mary Kay Place. His second feature, “Late Fame,” starring Willem Dafoe as a former poet turned postal worker, demonstrates the same ability to find strong emotion in the small movements of everyday life.

Jones is the real thing, and his film provides Dafoe a chance to do his best work since 2017’s “The Florida Project.”

Mick LaSalle is the film critic emeritus of the Chronicle. Email: askmicklasalle@gmail.com

[Chris Knipp]

VENICE
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Vicky Krieps, Jim Jarmusch, Cate Blanchett, Charlotte Rampling, Luka Sabbat, Mayim Bialik, Indya Moore
The awards
The Venice Film Festival awarded the Golden Lion for best film to Jim Jarmusch’s “Father Mother Sister Brother,” a triptych of three different families and their dynamics. The Silver Lion for best director went to Benny Safdie for “The Smashing Machine,” while Gaza drama “The Voice of Hind Rajab” was awarded the grand jury prize.

This year’s competition jury was headed up by “The Holdovers” director Alexander Payne and comprised Oscar-nominated Brazilian actress and writer Fernanda Torres (“I’m Still Here”), prominent Iranian auteur Mohammad Rasoulof (“The Seed of the Sacred Fig”), Palme d’Or-winning Romanian director-writer-producer Cristian Mungiu (“4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days”), French director Stéphane Brizé (“Out of Season”), Italian director Maura Delpero (“Vermiglio”) and Chinese actor and producer Zhao Tao (“Caught by the Tides”).

[Chris Knipp]

TORONTO
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LINKLATER'S NOUVELLE VAGUE

Mike D'Angelo (whose reviews of these may appear on Letterboxd, much later, but I get them in my email as a Patreon supporter, as you can HERE (https://www.patreon.com/gemko)) is at the festival after a six-year break, older, and telling us just how hard it is to cover, with, e.g., a struggle to get tickets and 3 1/2-hour waits for 3-hour films (SOUND OF FALLING (Mascha Schilinski; his rating: 38 - but Metacritic (https://www.metacritic.com/movie/sound-of-falling/) rating 91%).

He liked THE CHRISTOPHERS (Steven Soderbergh; his rating: 70), and also NINO (Pauline Loquès; his rating: 64), even though he says NINO is basically a remake of CLÉO FROM 5 TO 7 (someone in the first hours of dealing with a cancer diagnosis).

That was his Day Five. On his Day Four, he liked FURIOUS (Kenji Tanigaki; his rating: 61), also liked, slightly less - he is always carefully ranking them - Mark Jenkin's ROSE OF NEVADA (60), and also liked, but a bit less, Gus Van Sant's DEAD MAN'S WIRE (rating: 59). ORPHAN from SON OF SAUL and SUNSET'S László Nmmes he could give only a 48 to. ORPHAN is, a summary says, "a technically accomplished but uneven coming-of-age drama set in 1950s communist Hungary, inspired by Nemes's own father's childhood" (no Metacritic ratings for ROSE OF NEVADA or ORPHAN yet).

On Day Three he gave Rian Johnson's WAKE UP DEAD MAN a 58, Gianfranco Rosi's BELOW THE CLOUDS a much higher 68. His other reactions were lukewarm.

On Day Two he liked the Cannes-premiered THE LITTLE SISTER (Hafsia Herzi): 62 ("a familiar but sensitively handled coming-out tale") and liked a tad more one that everybody likes, Park Chan-wook's NO OTHER CHOICE (D'Angelo score: 63; Metacritic rating: 87%). The Oscar Expert bros, also at Toronto, gave NO OTHER CHOICE a special review (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2KrRmyljYI&t=771s) both predicting Oscar noms in five categories for it.

On Day One D'Angelo gave Richard Linklater's BLUE MOON a so-so 54 (Metacritic: 78%), but loved Linklater's Godard remake NOUVELLE VAGUE (67; Metacritic 72%); he found it to be a cooler, more ironic commentary on the French New Wave than others have perceived.
________________
Otherwise:

Joachim Trier's SENTIMENTAL VAlUE'S Metacritic rating has now gone up from 88% to 90%. The Oscar Expert bros said it "didn't need to win the Palm" because it "already wwon," it's everybody's fovorite (It's in the NYFF Main Slate.)

[Chris Knipp]

TORONTO
D'Angelo's Day Six was a disappointment to him, with no films he liked. The ones he saw, with his ratings, are: PEAK EVERYTHING (Anne Emond): 46, COVER-UP (Laura Poitras & Mark Obenhaus): 49, LUCKY LU (Lloyd Lee Choi): W/O (walk-out), and MAGELLAN (Lav Diaz): 41. He says COVER-UP is full of summaries of Seymour Hersh's already well known big cases. The basic premise of LUCKY LU is exactly the same as that of Boris Lojkine's SOULEYMANE'S STORY (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?5569-Rendez-Vous-with-French-Cinema-2025&p=42205#post42205) (R-V 2025), except in New York instead of Paris, and one of these is enough. MAGELLAN is "strongest . . .during lengthy shipboard stretches that emphasize sound and texture; weakest when it inevitably turns into an anti-colonial screed". He also found MAGELLAN'S silent end-credits to show it's serious "pretentious." These two of course are in the NYFF Main Slate. The Metacritic ratings are COVER-UP 83, MAGELLAN 69, so a "meh" reaction for Lav Diaz's non-biopic starring Gael Garcia Bernal is not out of sync with most critics.

GUARDIAN'S Richard Lawson and Radheyan Simonpillai (not Bradshaw for a change) have reviewed most favorably today Chloé Zhao's HAMNET and Maud Apatow's POETIC LICENSE. Though not in the NYFF Main Slate, HAMNET, an audience favorite and Metacritic 89, is going to be a movie to see (and maybe to love) and already strongly predicted by the Oscar Expert to be a contender at rewards time. The Hollywood Reporter (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/poetic-license-review-maude-apatow-leslie-mann-1236364576/) review calls POETIC LICENSE "big-hearted but frustratingly aimless"; no Metascore for POETIC LICENSE yet but it seems to be doing well in reviews. After alll, it's "Apatow family." These both sound like good "TIFF films" - heartwarming tearjerkers. Note (I just learned) that the big prize at Toronto is the "Audience Award" not a jury award.

[Chris Knipp]

TORONTO
Mike D'Angelo's Day Seven was more interesting, to say the least. He knew at once that THE CURRENTS/LAS CORRIENTES (Milagros Mumenthaler; his rating: 78) might be his favorite film of the year. (It is inclueded in the NYFF Main Slate.) He talks more about its technique than what it's about, saying its "logline" "frankly looks kinda dumb," something about hydrophobia. Also an actor new to him, Isabel Aimé González Sola, "turns in one of the finest quasi-opaque (not when other characters can see her, usually) performances in recent memory." He could frankly have spelled out what the film is about more. It's apparently an Argentine film about an ambiguous voyage of self discovery of a woman (Gonzalez Sola) who travels from Buenos Aires to Geneva and back. Few other reviews, that agree on the excellence of the lead but find the film too ambiguous. D'Angelo also saw FUZE (David Mackenzie): 53 (a crime story he calls "pure junk food" but basically enjoyed) and TWO PROSECUTORS (Sergei Loznitsa): "53 also." Loznitsa's film is a treatment of a young man foundering in the Stalinist bureaucracy, " two hours watching an idealistic young man in Stalinist Russia get cheerfully stonewalled by corrupt functionaries." It has skills but left him feeling "a bit numb." Featured at Cannes and Metacritic (https://www.metacritic.com/movie/two-prosecutors/) rating 85%.

NIRVANA THE BAND THE SHOW THE MOVIE (Matt Johnson) has an 86 on Metacritic. It takes off from a web series about a pair of guys trying to get a concert at the Rivoli in Toronto and then run around getting into funny "shenanigans." The Globe and Mail critic says "More than anything, NTBTSTM is simply hilarious – a furiously funny roller coaster of a film whose energy never, ever dips. It is difficult to imagine a better, sharper comedy coming along this year. Or the next." And The Oscar Expert twins totally agree in a quick review, and both awarded it a 9 out of 10, a score they rarely award.

[Chris Knipp]

TORONTO
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THE LAST ONE FOR THE ROAD

D'Angelo's days 8 and 9.
THE LAST ONE FOR THE ROAD (Francesco Sossai): 60 This is one that sounds great to me and he liked it.
Didn’t enjoy the company of Withnail & I’s bitter, self-loathing alcoholics, but mostly had a swell time hanging out with this film’s two cheerful, fun-loving alcoholics as they consume something like 38 consecutive final drinks (over multiple days, one thing forever leading to another). It helps that they impulsively take on a project, running into some lovelorn student and deciding to solve his romantic woes. But the movie’s almost entirely actor-driven. . .-from D'Angelo's Patreon review (which will be on Letterboxd eventually). . The original Italian title is LE CITTÀ DI PIANURA which means "Cities of the Plain" or "plains," thus hinting at a geographical angle.

Mike's other films and scores for the two days were: RENOIR (Chie Hayakawa): 50, (Metascore (https://www.metacritic.com/movie/renoir-2025/) 73%) which he found pretentious; DUSE (Pietro Marcello): 51, which he sounds like he liked better than RENOIR (i.e. more better; he accepted the kind of biopic it is and accepted Valeria Bruni Tedeschi's theatricality and dominance - BLUE HERON (Sophi Romvary): 56, about immigration to Canada. He found it partly like Palmason's THE LOVE THAT REMAINS, only better. It's autobiographical but he thought Rovary "could use more fictionalization and distance." Finally (omitting the W/Os this time for brevity) he lists EXIT 8 (Genki Kawamura): 59, which is from a video game but he accepted because it's creepy. He gave it the extra points because it drew him in and made him observe the screen so carefully ("haven’t spent so much time anxiously scanning the frame since It Follows").