A freshly minted English-language Almodóvar melodrama starring Tilda Swinton, “The Human Voice” would be one of the hottest tickets at the Venice Film Festival if it weren’t for the small point that it is just 30 minutes long. Still, it’s not size that counts, but what you do with it, and Almódovar does so much in half an hour that it is bound to be rated as one of the Festival’s highlights, anyway....
At first, it might seem strange that experimental Polish director Agnieszka Smoczyńska (“The Lure”, “Fugue”) chose for her third film a social justice drama about a pair of Black British twins and amateur novelists locked up for petty crimes. But the filmmaker’s esoteric style — “The Lure” was a bloody, lesbian take on “The Little Mermaid” — makes more sense once we get to meet June Gibbons (Letitia Wright) and her sister Jennifer (Tamara Lawrence)....
Before we move on and award “The White Lotus” an off-season imaginary Emmy for Outstandingly Horny Limited Series, let’s be clear what that means. Sex scenes and nudity are all over current television, — especially on HBO — but “The White Lotus” Season 2 excels at sexual tension, sexual politics, and sexuality itself as if manifests between characters. Horny is an energy, not an action. With an attractive cast of all ages (if lacking other types of diversity), the unbearably romantic Italian backdrop, and Cristobal Tapia de Veer’s propulsive score, HBO is poised to deliver the horniest show of the season....
And while celebrating the creation of something like Prince-Bythewood’s “The Woman King” — a crowd-pleasing action epic that just so happens to center a group of African female warriors — is necessary, it also can’t help but come with a button: in 2022, this should not be the exception. Hollywood should have been making films like “The Woman King” for many years. It should not have been a hard sell in 2015....
The Oscar winner advised the Academy Award nominee to live by one simple motto: “No hard drugs and no superhero movies.” So there goes any chance of DiCaprio or Chalamet joining the MCU. Chalamet previously revealed the advice last year, but did not disclose it was none other than “Wolf of Wall Street” actor DiCaprio to tell him. “One of my heroes — I can’t say who or he’d kick my ass — he put his arm around me the first night we met and gave me some advice,” Chalamet stayed coy at the time....
“I feel like so often the discussion around the future of cinema ends up being a discussion that’s more commercial, more business oriented,” Moore said in her opening remarks on August 31. “When we talk about the future of cinema it often degrades into what the future of the business is. That’s not the future of art.” Established in 1932, Venice is the oldest ongoing cinematic awards celebration and is regarded among the world’s most esteemed international film festivals....
“I wanted to see what [fans] wanted from this character and what behavior and look was important to them,” Duggal said. “We wanted fans to be very happy with this.” Duggal knew keeping fans happy meant also consulting with the original comic books, but not everything Carnage did in the source material was allowed to translate to the Sony-backed release. Duggal was inspired by one comic to create a VFX sequence for the movie in which Carnage kills someone by sticking his tongue down a throat, but that was too extreme for the theatrical cut....
