The 2024 Venice Film Festival kicked off August 28 with the long-awaited Tim Burton-Michael Keaton sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice opening the 81th edition, which runs through September 7 on the Lido. Deadline is on the ground to watch all the key films.
The lineup for the world’s oldest fest also includes world premieres of Todd Phillips’ Joaquin Phoenix-Lady Gaga pic Joker: Folie à Deux, Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door, Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, Pablo Larrain’s Maria Callas biopic Maria starring Angelina Jolie and new works from the likes of Alfonso Cuarón, Walter Salles, Harmony Korine, Thomas Vinterberg, Brady Corbet, Takeshi Kitano, Claude Lelouch, Errol Morris and others.
Below is a compilation of our reviews from the fest, which last year awarded its Golden Lion for best film to Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things, starring Emma Stone, who went on the win the Best Actress Oscar. Isabelle Huppert heads the competition jury this year.
The lineup for the world’s oldest fest also includes world premieres of Todd Phillips’ Joaquin Phoenix-Lady Gaga pic Joker: Folie à Deux, Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door, Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, Pablo Larrain’s Maria Callas biopic Maria starring Angelina Jolie and new works from the likes of Alfonso Cuarón, Walter Salles, Harmony Korine, Thomas Vinterberg, Brady Corbet, Takeshi Kitano, Claude Lelouch, Errol Morris and others.
Below is a compilation of our reviews from the fest, which last year awarded its Golden Lion for best film to Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things, starring Emma Stone, who went on the win the Best Actress Oscar. Isabelle Huppert heads the competition jury this year.
- 9/8/2024
- by Pete Hammond, Damon Wise, Stephanie Bunbury, Dominic Patten and Matthew Carey
- Deadline Film + TV
Porn king Riccardo Schicchi was, according to Giulia Louise Steigerwalt’s bubbly, shallow “Diva Futura,” named after Schicchi’s now-defunct multimedia adult-entertainment enterprise, a really sweet guy. Moreover, the film insists, his vision for pornography was similarly wholesome: a means to liberate prudish late-20th century Italian society by celebrating the beauty of women as he saw it — with the dazzled, goofy gaze of the permanent adolescent peering through an uncurtained bedroom window.
But what may have been charmingly unworldly in a man becomes disingenuously simplistic in a film that refuses to really look into the forces that propelled his giddy rise and blameless fall, just as Schicchi, gifted a peeping-Tom telescope by his porn-positive dad as a kid, could look away when the women were clothed, or the curtains were closed.
Confusingly, and with no real reason, the movie hops about in time, so we begin in the middle...
But what may have been charmingly unworldly in a man becomes disingenuously simplistic in a film that refuses to really look into the forces that propelled his giddy rise and blameless fall, just as Schicchi, gifted a peeping-Tom telescope by his porn-positive dad as a kid, could look away when the women were clothed, or the curtains were closed.
Confusingly, and with no real reason, the movie hops about in time, so we begin in the middle...
- 9/7/2024
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
‘Diva Futura’ Review: A Messy but Well-Acted Celebration of the Golden Age of an Italian Porn Empire
Harking back to a simpler, more innocent time, when porn stars got elected to Parliament and the “sexual revolution” was still shiny and new, the comic-tragic feature Diva Futura pays tribute to the Italian adult entertainment empire of the same name and the colorful characters who founded and worked for it. Comparisons to Paul Thomas Anderson’s similarly themed Boogie Nights (1997) will be inevitable and probably not flatter the much messier, less bravura Diva Futura. Nevertheless, writer-director Giulia Louise Steigerwalt’s (Settembre) sophomore effort definitely has its moments and some standout performances.
Moreover, most of the characters met here — such as La Cicciolina (Lidija Kordic), aka Ilona Staller, the porn-star politician, and her tragic fellow star Moana Pozzi (Denise Capezza) — correspond to real-life figures. Only insiders from that time will know exactly how much of this movie (and the memoir by Debora Attanasio on which it’s based) is true.
Moreover, most of the characters met here — such as La Cicciolina (Lidija Kordic), aka Ilona Staller, the porn-star politician, and her tragic fellow star Moana Pozzi (Denise Capezza) — correspond to real-life figures. Only insiders from that time will know exactly how much of this movie (and the memoir by Debora Attanasio on which it’s based) is true.
- 9/4/2024
- by Leslie Felperin
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
There are two kinds of pornography, according to movie mythology. One kind is sordid, exploitative, and supported by shady money and even shadier characters. Then there is the cuddly, family kind, as fluffy and innocently randy as a burrow full of bunnies, that flourished on video before the horrible internet spoiled everything and made porn rapey. Italian director Giulia Louise Steigerwalt’s Diva Futura returns us to this Eden of sex tapes and strippers in a scattergun biopic of Riccardo Schicchi, impresario of club, talent farm and film production house Diva Futura. You can decide how much to believe.
As a boy in the 1960s, Schicchi tells his new secretary Debora (Barbara Ronchi) that he never grasped the first principles of machismo. Bullied by other little boys, by day he enjoyed giggling with the girls at school. By night, his father would lend him his binoculars to spy on women through their windows,...
As a boy in the 1960s, Schicchi tells his new secretary Debora (Barbara Ronchi) that he never grasped the first principles of machismo. Bullied by other little boys, by day he enjoyed giggling with the girls at school. By night, his father would lend him his binoculars to spy on women through their windows,...
- 9/4/2024
- by Stephanie Bunbury
- Deadline Film + TV
There’s an air of sad desperation that hangs over Working Class Goes to Hell. Things have been rough in this unnamed Serbian town since a fire at the May Day Factory killed nine people. And while the town’s wealthy elite, including a shady bar owner, organized crime boss Snowman, and even the corrupt mayor are all prospering, the titular working class are struggling to get by.
The film opens with Ceca (Tamara Krcunovic), an unofficial labour organizer, leading a protest outside the factory owner’s office. He’s plotting to open a new eco-incinerator that will supposedly bring jobs, prosperity, and attention to the region, but it’s clear that wealth won’t trickle down to those who need it.
In the meantime, the residents get by working shifts at the local tavern, becoming de facto sex workers at a new hotel, or engaging in long shot schemes...
The film opens with Ceca (Tamara Krcunovic), an unofficial labour organizer, leading a protest outside the factory owner’s office. He’s plotting to open a new eco-incinerator that will supposedly bring jobs, prosperity, and attention to the region, but it’s clear that wealth won’t trickle down to those who need it.
In the meantime, the residents get by working shifts at the local tavern, becoming de facto sex workers at a new hotel, or engaging in long shot schemes...
- 9/15/2023
- by Joe Lipsett
- bloody-disgusting.com
"There's no turning back now." Something new from Serbia! TIFF has unveiled a festival promo trailer for a Serbian horror dark comedy called Working Class Goes To Hell, the second feature film by director Mladen Djordjevic. Sounds like something wacky and funny and weird and crazy. Here is the quick TIFF intro: "A small-town labor union turns to the dark arts for empowerment against the corrupt forces in their community in Mladen Đorđević’s timely and disturbing socio-horror satire." Essentially it's about a group of workers from a factory that has closed who decide to reach out to the supernatural in a struggle for personal dignity. They, of course, unleash mostly just madness. "One is reminded that sometimes the only salvation for the working class, besides solidarity, is a sharp sense of humor." The cast features Tamara Krcunovic, Leon Lucev, Ivan Djordjevic, Mirsad Tuka, Szilvia Krizsan, Lidija Kordic, and Momo Picuric.
- 9/5/2023
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
Germany-based sales agent Patra Spanou Film has acquired rights to “Working Class Goes to Hell,” which will world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival’s Midnight Madness strand.
Directed by Mladen Đorđević (“The Life and Death of a Porno Gang”), the film follows a group of ex-workers, who, after losing their loved ones, jobs, and dignity to a tragic factory fire and corrupt privatization, seek hope and justice in the supernatural.
The cast includes Tamara Krcunovic (“Humidity”), Leon Lucev (“The Load”), Momo Picuric, Ivan Djordjevic, Lidija Kordic, Mirsad Tuka, Szilvia Krizsan and Tomislav Trifunovic.
“Working Class Goes to Hell,” previously titled “Labour Day,” is supported by Film Center Serbia, Bulgarian National Film Centre, Greek Film Centre, Film Centre of Montenegro, Croatian Audiovisual Centre and Eurimages. The film is produced by Milan Stojanovic (Sense Production), Mladen Djordjevic (Banda), Martichka Bozhilova and Neda Milanova (Agitprop), Maria Drandaki (Homemade Films), Ivan Marinovic...
Directed by Mladen Đorđević (“The Life and Death of a Porno Gang”), the film follows a group of ex-workers, who, after losing their loved ones, jobs, and dignity to a tragic factory fire and corrupt privatization, seek hope and justice in the supernatural.
The cast includes Tamara Krcunovic (“Humidity”), Leon Lucev (“The Load”), Momo Picuric, Ivan Djordjevic, Lidija Kordic, Mirsad Tuka, Szilvia Krizsan and Tomislav Trifunovic.
“Working Class Goes to Hell,” previously titled “Labour Day,” is supported by Film Center Serbia, Bulgarian National Film Centre, Greek Film Centre, Film Centre of Montenegro, Croatian Audiovisual Centre and Eurimages. The film is produced by Milan Stojanovic (Sense Production), Mladen Djordjevic (Banda), Martichka Bozhilova and Neda Milanova (Agitprop), Maria Drandaki (Homemade Films), Ivan Marinovic...
- 9/4/2023
- by Naman Ramachandran
- Variety Film + TV
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