Anna Magnani is at her raucous best, playing a mother hoping that her daughter would become a child star, as this early comedy-drama by Visconti reveals the exploitative nature of the film industry.
Largely satisfying as a personal-political journey of an Italian sailor trying to escape his working-class background by dreaming about being an intellectual writer.
It doesn’t reach the gleeful heights of the first ‘Knives Out’ mystery, and somewhat suffers from a regressive narrative structure that privileges explanations more than sleuthing, but it is still fun to see Daniel Craig being amused by it all.
Awards season is right up the corner – here are my predictions for the Golden Globes 2023:
WW: Will Win
DH: Dark Horse
Prediction Results: 7/14 (10/14 if including dark horses)
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Dread and unease ooze in abundance in this masterful, bar-raising existential psychological mystery about an exasperated detective trying to solve a series of inexplicable murders.
An Iranian doppelganger thriller exploring themes of identity and anxiety that is bursting with tense, moody atmosphere as a married couple encounters another couple that looks just like them.
Cote goes for a more naturalistic style in this meandering and ultimately inconsequential attempt at humanising nymphomania, as three hypersexual women reside in a rest home guided by a therapist and her assistant.
Touzani’s sophomore feature, a Moroccan queer drama, continues her penchant for a cinema of delicateness, centering on a middle-aged couple whose lives are subtly reinvigorated when a young apprentice joins their tailor shop.
In Schanelec’s under-appreciated slow cinema oeuvre, this could be one of her ‘noisiest’ and most perceptive works as we become privy to the intimate conversations of several groups of strangers who are waiting to depart at the busy Paris-Orly airport.
Soderbergh’s take on the strip show dazzles with sights and sounds, but his film lacks dramatic substance.
Eternality Tan 