Bleecker Street / Sony Pictures Classics / A24
The Venice Film Festival continued its ascent this year, rivaling Cannes — long the undisputed king of all film festivals — in its capacity to draw stars, spark debate and drive sales of first-rate art films. While some of the bigger titles fizzled (Todd Phillips’ gonzo musical sequel to 2019 Golden Lion winner “Joker” disappointed, and Kevin Costner’s second “Horizon” installment went largely unnoticed), Spanish master Pedro Almodóvar finally claimed a major festival’s top prize.
Meanwhile, high in the Rocky Mountains, Telluride has lost a bit of its award-season luster. For a decade, practically every best picture winner — from “Slumdog Millionaire” to “The Shape of Water” — screened there. Last year, Telluride pulled out all the stops for its 50th anniversary, which meant this year’s ultra-selective lineup was inevitably going to sparkle less, especially in a post-strike year. Even though the elite fest still delivers excellent fare, Oscar pundits may want to hop the Atlantic next year.
Fortunately, Toronto seems to have gotten its mojo back this year. After teetering through the pandemic and losing lead sponsor Bell, TIFF managed to secure several significant launches, including DreamWorks Animation’s “The Wild Robot,” Hugh Grant’s against-type A24 horror movie “Heretic” and Mike Leigh’s terrific return-to-form “Hard Truths” (rumored to have been turned down by Venice and Cannes). It helps that TIFF organizers relaxed the rules on premiere status — a smart move, since many festgoers still view Toronto as the one-stop spot to catch the year’s best offerings, whether they’re premieres or simply the buzziest titles from earlier in the festival calendar (like Palme d’Or winner “Anora” and Annecy breakout “Memoir of a Snail”).
Those three festivals remain incredibly competitive with one another, but always bring an embarrassment of riches. Here, Variety’s critics share their favorites from the Venice, Telluride and Toronto lineups.
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April
Image Credit: Courtesy of Frenesy Film Festivals: Venice, Toronto
Abortion in Georgia is officially legal, though it may as well not be. In Dea Kulumbegashvili’s staggering sophomore feature, Ia Sukhitashvili plays an expert obstetrician in a hard-up patch of Eastern Georgia, who uses her abilities and relative social privilege to work around the system where she can. An uncompromising, intensely felt panorama of female identities, agencies and desires under attack, “April” manages to be a work of both controlled formal rigor and unleashed, often overwhelming human feeling. (Read Guy Lodge’s review.) -
Babygirl
Image Credit: Niko Tavernise Festivals: Venice, Toronto
Distributor: A24
Romy (Nicole Kidman) is the CEO of her own robotics company, with a nice family and a healthy “normal” love life. But underneath it all, she’s craving the kind of transgressive sexuality that will break her existence apart. The young man who ignites her fantasies is Samuel (Harris Dickinson), one of her company’s new slate of interns. Twenty years ago, “Babygirl” might have been a “cougar” thriller, but the director, Halina Reijn, does something far more compelling. As Samuel shoots past all niceties and small talk, turning flirting into an aggro assault (that’s why Romy can’t resist it), “Babygirl” becomes a shrewdly frank movie about a flagrantly “wrong” sadomasochistic affair. It’s an arresting tale of adultery that pushes genuine emotional buttons, the way “Unfaithful” did 20 years ago. It’s all rooted in the fearless performance of Kidman, who captures something indelible about women’s erotic experience in the age of control. (Read Owen Gleiberman’s review.) -
The Brutalist
Image Credit: “The Brutalist” (Courtesy of Focus Features) Festivals: Venice, Toronto
Distributor: A24
If you see only one wildly ambitious, madly allegorical movie this year about a fabled architect who wants to design the future, make that movie “The Brutalist.” Brady Corbet’s stately epic is three hours and 15 minutes long, and it overflows with incident and emotion. It tells the story of László Tóth (Adrien Brody), a Hungarian-born Jewish architect who journeys from Budapest to America after World War II. The construction of his dream building feels inspired, in equal measure, by “The Fountainhead” and “There Will Be Blood.” (Read Owen Gleiberman’s review.) -
Conclave
Image Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features. © 2 Festivals: Telluride, Toronto
Distributor: Focus Features
Ralph Fiennes gives a quietly conflicted performance as a Catholic cardinal struggling between devotion and doubt in “All Quiet on the Western Front” director Edward Berger’s latest. It’s Fiennes’ job to oversee the selection of a new pope in this thinking man’s thriller, which unfolds like a murder mystery behind locked doors, except no one suspects foul play in the previous pontiff ’s death. Just when you think you’ve got it figured out, “Conclave” lobs one of the most satisfying twists in years. (Read Peter Debruge’s review.) -
Familiar Touch
Image Credit: Courtesy of Sarah Friedland Festival: Venice
Sarah Friedland’s remarkable debut is the latest in a recent surge of films, from “The Father” to “Relic” to “Dick Johnson is Dead,” to address the challenges and trauma of living with dementia. It’s a condition often treated on-screen in anodyne movie-of-the-week fashion, or evoked with disorienting levels of psychological trickery. But Friedland’s film takes neither approach: It’s a straightforwardly structured character study, humane but not sentimental, that stands out for the priority it grants to Ruth’s perspective throughout, presenting her not as a victim or a patient, but as the lucid, capable woman she still mostly feels she is. (Read Guy Lodge’s review.) -
The Fire Inside
Image Credit: TIFF / Amazon MGM Festival: Toronto
Distributor: Amazon MGM Studios
A gripping, downbeat sports drama with a different trajectory than we’re used. Ryan Destiny, wearing a scowl of resolve, gives a concentrated performance as Claressa Shields, who rose up from a hardscrabble upbringing in Flint, MI, to become a pioneer in women’s boxing. She won her first gold medal at the 2012 Olympics, and while Rachel Morrison, the acclaimed cinematographer (“Mudbound”) making her directorial debut here, tells that story with commanding authenticity, you’d imagine that Shields’ Olympic triumph would cap the film’s journey. No — it plunges her into despair, since as the leader of a sport (women’s boxing) the culture still wasn’t comfortable with, she can’t get endorsements. The film, like “The Fighter” meets “Air,” is about how she didn’t just box her way to victory but fought for a revolution in the perception of women athletes. — Owen Gleiberman -
Happy Holidays
Image Credit: Indie Sales Festivals: Venice, Toronto
Following Oscar-nominated “Ajami,” Palestinian filmmaker Scandar Copti’s Israel-set second feature is a piercing, realistic family drama, the inflection points of which reveal deep cultural and political dimensions surrounding gender and ethnicity. At its center are four members of an Arab family, who share several casual, agreeable scenes together, but whose secrets speak to a larger culture of silence, shame, social pressure and rampant prejudice, as their lives and futures are brought into sharp, unyielding focus, each in their own segments. — Siddhant Adklakha (Read Siddhant Adlakha’s review.) -
Hard Truths
Image Credit: Dick Pope Festival: Toronto
Distributor: Bleecker Street
Some people bring happiness and positivity into the world, uplifting the lives of all around them, and some make flowers wilt and milk curdle wherever they go. Marianne Jean-Baptiste embodies the latter sort in Mike Leigh’s prickly but fair micro-portrait of an epically unpleasant wife and mother. She’s essentially the opposite of Sally Hawkins’ character from “Happy-Go-Lucky.” In either case, Leigh asks audiences to spend an uncomfortable amount of time in his characters’ shoes, counting on empathy to illuminate such extreme personalities. (Read Peter Debruge’s review.) -
Harvest
Image Credit: Courtesy of Jaclyn Martinez/Harvest Film Ltd. Festivals: Venice, Toronto
Taking on Jim Crace’s historical novel about a farming community undone by parochial dis- trust and encroaching capitalism, Athina Rachel Tsangari’s vigorous, yeasty period piece — her first work in English — occasionally loses the thread of its sprawling ensemble narrative, but transfixes as a whole-sackcloth immersion into another time and place. The non-specific setting underlines the point that this is a narrative we’re still living through. As a feat of world-building — and later, world-dismantling — “Harvest” con- sistently dazzles, creating a convincingly unified and imperiled ecosystem. (Read Guy Lodge’s review.) -
Jane Austen Wrecked My Life
Image Credit: Sony Pictures Classics Festival: Toronto
Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics
A diet of romantic literature is a recipe for disappointment in real life, argues French director Laura Piani’s answer to “Austenland.” Unlucky in love, Agathe (Camille Rutherford) is an exasperated French woman working at an English-language bookstore in Paris, who crosses the Channel to do a writer’s residency at Jane Austen’s former abode. There, she spars with (but also falls for) one of the author’s distant relatives. Part homage, part referendum on all those love stories that make it look easy, Piani’s just-jaded-enough alternative fills the conspicuous gap left by movies such as “Four Weddings and a Funeral.” At a time when practically the entire rom-com genre has gravitated to streaming, this bilingual theatrical offering feels like the best kind of throwback. — Peter Debruge -
The Order
Image Credit: Courtesy of Vertical Entertainment Festivals: Venice, Toronto
Distributor: Vertical
An explosive true-life drama about the dawn of the modern American white-supremacist movement in the 1980s. Jude Law, in what may be his most searing, lived-in performance, plays the FBI agent who leads an investigation into the criminal activities of the Order, a white-supremacist cult led by Bob Matthews (Nicholas Hoult), who wants an armed insurrection now. Justin Kurzel’s grippingly suspenseful film stays true to the events of 1983 but presents itself as a cautionary allegory of what’s happening today. (Read Owen Gleiberman’s review.) -
The Piano Lesson
Image Credit: Courtesy of Netflix Festivals: Telluride, Toronto
Distributor: Netflix
Set in 1936, August Wilson’s Pulitzer-winning play is haunted by history. Since the source material deals with themes of family legacy, it’s fitting that another family came together to make it. Malcolm Washington directs, while brother John David plays Boy Willie opposite Danielle Deadwyler, whose Berniece smolders even when silent, finding layers Wilson couldn’t have anticipated. In the play, a ghost lurks upstairs while two siblings argue about the fate of a precious heirloom, which represents the family’s achievement and sacrifice. (Read Peter Debruge’s review.) -
Queer
Image Credit: Yannis Drakoulidis Festivals: Venice, Toronto
Distributor: A24
Luca Guadagnino has made an ebulliently scuzzy and adventurous adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ early confessional novel. As William Lee, who prowls the queer underbelly of Mexico City in the early ’50s, Daniel Craig gives a performance that’s bold and funny and alive, making Lee a nasty, witty literary dog laced with vulnerability. When he meets the beautiful Eugene (Drew Starkey), the film plays out their affair in a way that turns trippy, even as it remains stubbornly romantic. (Read Owen Gleiberman’s review.) -
Riefenstahl
Image Credit: Bayrische Staatsbibliothek Bildarchiv Festivals: Venice, Telluride
Andres Veiel’s documentary is a valuable and arresting piece of work — a portrait of Leni Riefenstahl that’s really a meditation on her life, her art and the question of her guilt. Riefenstahl made two monumental documentaries for Hitler, who she was personally chummy with, so there’s no doubt that on some level she made a devil with the devil. But what was the deal? What, precisely, did she know? Veiel got access to the archives of the Riefenstahl estate, and this allows him to showcase a great deal of material that’s never been public before: photographs, diaries, tape recordings of Riefenstahl’s phone conversations. For all that, “Riefenstahl” remains a film of suggestions, implications and, on occasion, bits of evidence that could be called eye-opening. (Read Owen Gleiberman’s review.) -
The Room Next Door
Festivals: Venice, Toronto
Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics
It’s rare to encounter a big-screen drama that looks death in the eye the way Pedro Almodóvar’s lyrical and moving film does. It’s essentially a two-hander, a series of conversations between Martha (Tilda Swinton), who has Stage 3 cervical cancer, and her old friend Ingrid (Julianne Moore), who agrees to help her as she chooses the moment to die. Swinton gives a monumental performance, one that in its raw emotion and pensive power is worthy of comparison to the spirit and virtuosity of Vanessa Redgrave. (Read Owen Gleiberman’s review.) -
Saturday Night
Image Credit: Courtesy of Columbia Pictures Festivals: Telluride, Toronto
Distributor: Columbia Pictures
Over nearly 1,000 episodes, “Saturday Night Live” has given America some of its most successful comedians. Now, just one year shy of the show’s 50th anniversary, Jason Reitman gives back, turning an oral history of the very first episode into a rowdy, delectably profane backstage homage. “Saturday Night” kicks off at 10 p.m. and ticks its way to showtime. Casting those famous cutups was always going to be a challenge, but Reitman and casting director John Papsidera pull it off, such that everyone re- flects the singular energy (if not always the exact look) of their characters. Producer Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) is the focus, but Reitman makes time for each of the cast members, relying on actors who could take icons and make them human. (Read Peter Debruge’s review.) -
Sketch
Image Credit: Courtesy of Toronto Film Festival Festival: Toronto
Since the death of her mother, 10-year-old Amber Wyatt has been bothered by all sorts of dark thoughts. Rather than act on those impulses, Amber draws her most monstrous ideas in a secret journal — which would be therapeutic, if not for a gnarly twist that releases Amber’s fearsome menagerie into the real world. Now, it’s up to Amber, older brother Jack and their still-grieving dad (Tony Hale) to confront the feelings they’ve been avoiding all this time, as Amber’s sketches start to terrorize the locals. In the spirit of “Jumanji,” but with something important to say, Seth Worley’s highly teachable feature debut uses imaginative visual effects to impart a va