"The dizzying comic energy and intellectual vigor of Mordecai Richler's 1997 satire have largely been drained from director Richard J Lewis's agreeable but inevitably lesser version of Barney's Version
"Toni Morrison once said that regardless of how many beautiful, sappy or tired lines we've heard about the moon, the moment a master writer finds a new way of describing it, we are moved to tears
Photo by Fabrizio Maltese/EF Press/fabriziomaltese.com. Venice 2010. The Sleeping Beauty (roundup) screens in Toronto on September 14, 15 and 19.
"Takashi Miike must be at least two people," writes Lee Marshall in Screen. "The Japanese maverick averages between two and three films a year — and yet this last-man-standing samurai tale, his second
"Having dealt at length with China's 'anti-rightist' campaign in his epic documentary Fengming: A Chinese Memoir, Wang Bing continues to probe the devastating consequences of this little-aired historical
"Abdellatif Kechiche's Couscous [The Secret of the Grain] was pipped at the post for the Golden Lion in 2007 by Ang Lee's unpleasant Lust, Caution," writes Roderick Conway Morris for the International
"Two young married couples who decide to swap partners for sex live to regret it in Happy Few, a story that takes itself far too seriously to be taken seriously by an audience," finds Deborah Young
The Venice Film Festival has an announcement to make and it's all the more delightful if the voice in your head that you read it with has an Italian accent: "The Controcampo Italiano Jury, chaired
"As a director, Ben Affleck is more of a grafter than a dreamer," writes David Jenkins for Time Out London. "The same could be said of his writing. Hell, why don't we throw his acting in there as
Photo by Fabrizio Maltese/EF Press/fabriziomaltese.com. Venice 2010. Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement.
"There is not a moment of respite for viewers in Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski's 83-minute-long political thriller Essential Killing, full of blood and wild nature," writes Camillo de Marco for
"Pablo Larraín is a Chilean director whose feature Tony Manero (2007) revived the memory of John Travolta and Saturday Night Fever in the most unexpected of contexts," writes the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw