Jeff Wells

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)

Imagine if James Gunn had decided that instead of David Corenswet‘s Superman getting badly beaten up every seven or eight minutes….imagine if Gunn had decided instead to have Corenswet attend a golden superhero award ceremony every seven or eight minutes and be handed a gleaming Oscar-sized trophy…imagine how repetitve and punishing this would be over a two-and-a-half-hour period. But this is what Superman actually does by having Corenswet get walloped this frequently. It drives you crazy. The repetition is insane.

Announcement: I will not be watching Superman. Thank you Mikepic.twitter.com/HyXDEJ6map

— Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) July 15, 2025

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I thought the whole MAGA belief system was that they didn’t care about Trump being a sociopath and a morally derelict scalawag…that they accepted him as the bully-boy taker and user that he’s always been…so why is the right so cranked up about the Epstein files?

Scott Galloway: “It’s so intellectually or morally inconsistent. If Jeffrey Epstein had invited a bunch of migrant workers to his island, we would have nuked it. But as long as it was just pedophiles? This notion that we’re shocked that a man found liable of sexual abuse, which is rape…that this man [Trump] might be on a list compiled by a powerful man [Epstein] inviting people down to an island with underage women? That’s supposed to be a big shocker? Trump could not be acting more guilty.”

Good Sex Wiki synopsis: 40 year old couples therapist Ally (Natalie Portman), after spending a decade in failed relationships, reluctantly dips back into the New York dating scene.

Costarring Mark Ruffalo, Tucker Pillsbury, Meg Ryan, Rashida Jones and Tramell Tillman. Directed and written by Lena Dunham. Due for Neflix streaming sometime next year.

@alonainthecity Lena is a director of a new Netflix movie “Good Sex” starring Natalie, Rashida, Mark Ruffalo, Meg Ryan and others #natalieportman #natalieportmanedit #natalieportmanlove #padmeamidala #rashidajones #rashidajonesedit #lenadunham #lenadunhamisagenius #blackswan #starwars #celebrity #movieset #setlife #nycblogger ♬ original sound – AlonaInTheCity

This, in my view, is Martin Scorsese‘s best short-burst performance since his psychotically jealous husband-slash-voyeur in Taxi Driver (’76). Which we’re not allowed to mention these days because of the ugly racist current.

What happens between Marty and Seth Rogen in The Studio is lightweight and surface-skimmy, of course, but at the same time…well, it has something because it alludes, at least, to betrayal and soullessness.

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The only Primetime Emmy nominations that accelerated my blood today were the 13 noms for The Pitt, and particularly a Best Drama Series nom for the show itself as well as a Best Actor in a Drama nom for Noah Wyle, who also exec produces.

I loved the opening episode of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg‘s The Studio (especially Martin Scorsese‘s cameo performance as himself) as well as “The Oner”, but I lost interest after the obsequious, one-note Ron Howard episode.

I think it’s a totally sick and disgusting joke that the most recently aired The White Lotus season (#3), which was horribly written and utterly devoid of dramatic tension, has been nominated for anything.

I’m down with The Penguin as far as it goes, but I’m also sick to death of Severance, Hacks, The Bear and The Last of Us being nominated for anything, much less winning this or that trophy…get outta my life.

Variety‘s Naman Ramachandran (7.15.25): “Gregg Wallace‘s co-host John Torode has been fired from BBC‘s MasterChef following an investigation that substantiated an allegation [that] he used racist language in the workplace.”

I’ve read that some of Torode’s offending utterances were overheard back in ’18, but maybe there’s more to it.

So what did Torode say exactly? One presumes he wasn’t vulgar or stupid enough to use flagrantly racist language or epithets, but I’d love to know what his verbal offenses actually were.

They were probably remarks that skirted the line between familiar, no-big-deal racial shorthand (i.e., referring to a light-skinned African American as cappuccino or cafe au lait, let’s say) and casual conversation, but who knows?

I would never dream today of saying “spade cat” (it’s a ’60s and ’70s street term), but I was all but burned at the stake a couple of years ago for insisting that back in the day and in the realm of the street “spade cat” was a term of respect. It alluded to a POC who was hip and Zen-cool and subterranean and perhaps even “experienced” in the Jimi Hendrix sense of that term.

Another term I wouldn’t dare verbalize today is “bloods,” but this was also a term of cultural acknowledgment and respect. It certainly wasn’t informed by racist spite. It refers to a close familial fraternity among POCs…trust, recognition, shared heritage, history. Someone told me it came from a phrase in Sly Stone‘s “A Family Affair,” to wit: “blood’s thicker than the mud.”

When you consider some of the ugly racist terminology heard in M.A.S.H., the first two Godfather flicks, Karel Reisz‘s Who’ll Stop The Rain (“hold it there, tamale pie”), Mississippi Burning, several Quentin Tarantino films and even HBO’s The Sopranos, “spade cat” and “bloods” (not that anyone would be dumb enough to use them in any workplace) are decidedly vanilla. But they’d still get you fired.

We all understand that POCs are never admonished or whacked for using terms that belittle or diminish whites (“whitey”, “Wonderbread”, “whitebread”, “honky mofo”, “preppy cracker”, “trailer trash”, “yokel”) — it only works the other way around.

I don’t know when this Robert Redford interview was taped, but he was still very movie-star handsome so let’s figure the mid ’80s. Sometime around The Natural. A good five years before Indecent Proposal, let’s say. Something like that.

I really miss the company of confident, easygoing, good-looking, classic-era movie stars.

Redford: “We had so much fun doing [Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid]…the most fun I’ve ever had making any film. I remember the experience of it coming out, and I remember being surprised by the kind of success it had. I wasn’t prepared for that at all. I think it had to do with more than just ‘guys running out of time’. It had to do wih a certain kind of bonding and a certain kind of connection…a real friendship.”

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Last night I watched three or four Twilight Zone episodes from the very first season (early fall 1959 to early ’60). The standout was “Perchance to Dream“, which was basically about Richard Conte grappling with a fear of death and a particular fear of suffering a heart attack during a creepy dream.

The episode first aired on November 27, 1959. Three weeks later Conte, who was nudging 50 at the time, began playing another heart attack victim in the original Ocean’s 11. His character was electrician Tony Bergdorf, who drops dead on the Las Vegas Strip tarmac right after the New Year’s Eve heist goes down.

For the viewing public those heart attacks played like a one-two punch, and impressionistically they stuck. Conte lived, worked and prospered for another 15 years after Ocean’s 11, but he was always the heart-attack guy. And then he keeled over from a real-life heart attack on 4.3.75. He died on 4.15.75 — tax day.

Career-wise, Conte’s richest and luckiest period was the early to late 1940s — Guadalcanal Diary, The Purple Heart, A Bell for Adano, A Walk in the Sun, 13 Rue Madeleine, Call Northside 777, Cry of the City.

Paul McCartney‘s version of “My One and Only Love“, a song that dates back to 1947, is from Kisses on the Bottom, a 2012 album I’ve never even listened to.

The below version of “Bluebird” (during a ’74 Wings concert) is a better-sounding performance than the initially recorded version that appeared on Band on the Run (’73).

The instant I saw the white, woolly-haired Zlatko Buric in Superman, portraying Boravian president Vasil Ghurkos with broad gestures and some kind of thick Slavic accent, I immediately thought “okay, a Vladmir Putin-like despot as well as an ally of Lex Luthor, and clearly up to no good.”

And when Boravian troops are shown invading or otherwise hassling their neighboring country of Jarhanpur, I naturally saw this as a reenactment of Russia invading Ukraine.

But a whole lot of TikTok wokeys are seeing a different analogy. Vasil Ghurkos is not Putin but Israel’s Bibi Netanyahu, they’re saying, and Jarhanpur is not Ukraine but Gaza.

Could I get a show of hands from the HE community about which real-world analogy seems the more plausible?

Ghurkos is obviously too much of a vulgar, intemperate, arm-waving blowhard to serve as a convincing stand-in for Bibi, who is well-known for his non-accented English, trimly cut white hair and conservative, well-tailored business suits. But tell this to the TikTokers.

“Everything was too fast…it was like the actors were trying to force me to believe this movie….I’m sorry, I’m sorry…I never cringed so hard…not the movie that everyone said it was.”

This guy (supasilenz) knows.

@supasilenz_ Honest Superman Movie review …and yeah guys idk bout that. I was waiting for this movie to be at least decent and im jus not a fan . Tiktok over hyped this way too much #fyp #foryoupage #foryou #superman #movie #honest #supermanmovie #moviereview ♬ Classic classical gymnopedie solo piano(1034554) – Lyrebirds music