All hail the 2025 Venice Film Festival (Wednesday, 8.27 thru Saturday, 9.6) for having decided to not show Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet, which will probably debut at Telluride before hitting TIFF….spared from another Paul Mescal endurance meditation!
But I’m also genuinely sorry that Scott Cooper‘s Bruce Sringsteen biopic, Deliver Me From Nowhere, won’t have its premiere screening on the Lido. Ditto Edward Berger‘s Ballad of a Small Player. The latter two, I’m guessing, will probably also debut in Telluride.
And seven or eight years after completing principal photography, when oh when will Terrence Malick‘s The Way of the Wind finally peek out? What an indecisive coward-flake.
Otherwise HE is pleased and gratified by most of the official Venice selections (29 HE standouts), which popped early this morning and almost all of which were forecast by HE on 7.17:
Competition faves: (a) The Wizard of the Kremlin (d: Olivier Assayas), (b) Jay Kelly (d: Noah Baumbach), (c) A House of Dynamite (d: Kathryn Bigelow), (d) In the Hand of Dante (d: Julian Schnabel), (e) The Testament of Ann Lee (d: Mona Fastvold), (f) Father Mother Sister Brother (d: Jim Jarmusch…shockingly turned down by Cannes), (g) Bugonia (d: Yorgos Lanthimos…cuidado…bald Emma Stone), (h) Orphan, (d: László Nemes), (i) No Other Choice (d: Park Chan-wook…HE is no fan of this guy, who is almost all DePalma hat and not much cattle), (j) Sotto Le Nuvole (d: Gianfranco Rosi); (k) The Smashing Machine (d: Benny Safdie). (11)
Competition sans any particular interest or excitement: Frankenstein (d: Guillermo del Toro…no offense but how many times can we go to this same damn well?), L’Étranger (d: François Ozon); and La grazia (d: Paolo Sorrentino) (3)
Sans competition faves (fiction): (a) After the Hunt (d: Luca Guadagnino), (b) The Last Viking (d: Anders Thomas Jensen), (c) Dead Man’s Wire (d: Gus Van Sant). (3)
Sans compettion faves (documentaries): Cover-Up (d: Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus); Kabul, Between Prayers (d: Aboozar Amini),(b) Marc by Sofia (d: Sofia Coppola), (c) Ghost Elephants (d: Werner Herzog), (d) Nuestra Tierra (d: Lucrecia Martel); (e) Kim Novak’s Vertigo (d: Alexandre Philippe), (f) Broken English (d: Jane Pollard and Iain Forsyth), (g) Notes of a True Criminal (d: Alexander Rodnyansky and Andriy Alferov); (h) Director’s Diary (d: Aleksander Sokurov. (8)
Sans competition faves (shorts): How to Shoot a Ghost (d: Charlie Kaufman). (1)
Horizons faves: (a) Rose of Nevada (d: Mark Jenkin), (b) Late Fame (d: Kent Jones); (c) Human Resource (d: Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit). (3)
Grand total: 29 films over an 11-day period.
Posted on 7.16.25 (six days ago): As noted, the Venice Film Festival will announce its slate on Tuesday, 7.22. I’ve updated my Venice Film Festival spitball by killing certain titles like Roofman, One Battle After Another, etc. Here’s my take on 26 all but certain, likely, hopeful or potential inclusions:
HE LEGEND: ++ = extra-positive HE expectations. + = mostly positive expectations. X = meh or negative. XX = dread.
1. After the Hunt (d: Luca Guadagnino) Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri, Andrew Garfield, Michael Stuhlbarg, Chloë Sevigny. / ++
2. A House of Dynamite (d: Kathryn Bigelow) / ++
3. Jay Kelly (d: Noah Baumbach) George Clooney, Adam Sandler, Billy Crudup, Laura Dern, Grace Edwards, Stacy Keach, Riley Keough. Emily Mortimer. / ++
4. The Way of the Wind (d: Terrence Malick) / X
5. Bugonia (d: Yorgos Lanthimos) / Neutral
6. The Smashing Machine (d: Benny Safdie) / +
7. No Other Choice (Park Chan-wook) XX / XX
8. Orphan (d: Laszlo Nemes) / ++
9. The Wizard of the Kremlin (d: Olivier Assayas) / ++
10. Father Mother Brother Sister (d: Jim Jarmusch) / Neutral
11. The Ballad of a Small Player (d:Edward Berger) Synopsis: When his past and debts start to catch up, a high-stakes gambler laying low in Macau encounters a kindred spirit who might hold the key to his salvation.” Colin Farrell, Tilda Swinton, Fala Chen. / ++
12. Couture (d: Alice Winocour) +. Angelina Jolie, Louis Garrel, Ella Rumpf, Garance Marillier, Anyier Anei, Finnegan Oldfield. / Neutral.
13. The Cry of the Guards (d: Claire Denis)
14. Chocobar (d: Lucrecia Martel)
15. Sacrifice (d: Romain Gavras)
16. In the Hands of Dante (d: Julian Schnabel) Synopsis of Nick Tosches‘ same-titled 2002 book: “An interweaving of two separate stories, one set in the 14th century in Italy and Sicily and featuring Dante Alighieri, and another set in the autumn of 2001 and featuring a fictionalized version of Tosches as the protagonist. The historical and modern stories alternate as Dante tries to finish writing his magnum opus and goes on a journey for mystical knowledge in Sicily.” Oscar Isaac as Nick Tosches / Dante Alighieri, w/ Jason Momoa, Gerard Butler, Gal Gadot, Sabrina Impacciatore, Franco Nero, Martin Scorsese. ++
17. Ann Lee (d: Mona Fastvold). Amanda Seyfried, Thomasin McKenzie, Lewis Pullman, Christopher Abbott, Tim Blake Nelson, Stacy Martin. / +
18. La Grazia (d: Paolo Sorrentino)
19. An Affair (d: Arnaud Desplechin)
20. Below the Clouds (d: Gianfranco Rosi)
21. Duse (d: Pietro Marcello)
22. Frankenstein (d: Guillermo del Toro) / X
To the preceding I would add “what’s wrong with the following?” and “why not?”
23. Scott Cooper‘s Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere (20th Century, sometime in the fall). Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen in another boomer nostalgia pic, focusing on the recording of Nebraska (’82). Costarring Stephen Graham, Odessa Young, Paul Walter Hauser, Gaby Hoffmann, Johnny Cannizzaro, Harrison Gilbertson, Marc Maron.
24. Chloe Zhao‘s Hamnet (Focus Features, no date) — Fictional tale about Mr. and Mrs. William Shakespeare coping with the death of their son. Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal (!), Joe Alwyn, Emily Watson.
25. Switzerland (d: Anton Corbijn)
26. Fuze (d: David Mackenzie)
From Jordan Ruimy’s assessment: Julian Schnabel’s In the Hand of Dante arrives uncut at a runtime of
150 minutes, following a reported battle with financiers over editing. The cast includes Oscar Isaac, making his second appearance this year following Frankenstein.
Festival chief Alberto Barbera noted that films between 2h15m and 2h30m are becoming the “new international standard,” creating major scheduling headaches for programmers