Venice Film Festival, Aug. 31-Sept. 10, 2022

[Chris Knipp]

Venice Monday


COLIN FARRELL, BRENDAN GLEESON IN THE BANSHEEE OF INISHERIN

THE BANSHEEE OF INISHERIN (Martin McDonagh) receives 4/5 stars in Bradshaw's GUARDIAN review, which describes the playwright-auteur's new feature as "a Guinness-black comedy of male pain," reuniting Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson of IN BRUGES (2008) "in remotest Ireland" for "an oddball study of isolation and hurt." The setting is an imaginary island off the Irish coast called Inishirin in 1923 during the civil war and there is a "tremendous performance" from Barry Keoghan. This is a tale of inexplicable, painful, broken-off male friendship that's "weirdly compelling and often very funny."

AMANDA (Carolina Cavalli), 3/5 stars from Bradshaw, is an Italian "absurdist existential comedy" about a spoiled young woman in "a quarterlife crisis." The style has "something of Lanthimos or Kaurismaki, or the Italian director Paolo Sorrentino whose influence is obvious." The characterization of the protagonist is amusing but shallow.

DON'T WORRY DARLING (Olivia Wilde) stars Florence Pugh and Harry Styles and doesn't work in the view of Bradshaw, who gives it 2/5 stars. It's about a sci-fi-mythical Fifties California desert model town where all the men work at a project called "Victory" in a town called "Victory," and won't say what they're doing, and something is terribly wrong. Wilde, who costars, spoils her reveal and it all doesn't jell nor does Harry's American accent. Pugh is wasted and we can't tell whether Styles has promise as an actor. More attention was on whether Harry Styles spat on Chris Pine at the opening than on the film (he didn't, though).