The Movie Stars Are Back! Recap of the 81st Venice Film Festival 2024

George Clooney & Brad Pitt at photocall for Wolfs
Photo: Giorgio Zucchiatti - La Biennale di Venezia ASAC

(Venice, Italy) After the dearth of movie stars at last year's film festival due to the Hollywood actor's strike -- a crucial battle over Human Creativity versus Artificial Intelligence (the actors won, yay!) -- the celebrities have returned to Venice to glitz up the Red Carpet and glam around the town. 

This year, I saw fewer films than usual because of scheduling conflicts and a computer booking glitch (I was the glitch). Venice often tries to capitalize on the presence of international journalists in town for the film festival, and schedules openings to other venues around the same time.

Renzo Rosso checking out the selfie he just took with Oprah Winfrey
as she talks with Graça Machel at the DVF Awards
Photo: Cat Bauer

Within the span of a couple days, there were press previews for Julian Lennon's thoughtful photography retrospective Whispers at Le Stanze della Fotographia, and the marvelous celebration of craftsmanship at Homo Faber's "The Journey of Life," both on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore. Diane von Furstenberg's inspiring DVF Awards, now in its 14th edition, saw Oprah Winfrey arrive with her sidekick, Gayle King down at Arsenale, as the Biennale Art exhibition Strangers Everywhere played on in the background. On Sunday, September 1st, the Regata Storica, Venice's main rowing competition, shut down the Grand Canal for hours. Boat taxis carrying dazzling human cargo zoomed across the lagoon from the historic center to the Lido, and special water busses were added to the usual vaporetto lines. The joint was jumpin.' 

Here is my annual quickie recap of the films I managed to see, with letter grades and links to the reviews that I agree with the most.

Winona Ryder & Michael Keaton in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice - Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

1. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

At the press conference, Tim Burton said that over the past few years he had become disillusioned with the movie industry. If he was going to do anything again, he wanted to do something from his heart -- something he wanted to do. He had lost himself a little bit. Beetlejuice was re-energizing -- it was a way to get back to doing the things he loved doing the way he loved doing it with the people he loved doing it with. It didn't matter how it turned out. He just enjoyed and loved making the film with all these people. 

And the public was ready. After waiting 36 years for the sequel, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice scored the second-biggest September opening weekend of all time with an impressive domestic box office of $110 million.

Here's a review from Justin Change at NPR that pretty much sums up the general consensus:

Beetlejuice is back, in a supernatural screwball sequel

Fortunately, there isn’t a whiff of cynicism to Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Burton shows real affection for the first film’s characters and genuine curiosity about how they’re doing three decades or so later.

I love that Beetlejuice and Tim Burton are part of the zeitgeist when the world is bleak, and I think the rest of the planet should get into the same spirit of doing things we love the way we love doing them with the people we love. I'm happy that people are going to the theater to see it on the big screen surrounded by other human beings. Grade B+

Nicole Kidman on the Red Carpet for Babygirl
Photo: Giorgio Zucchiatti - La Biennale di Venezia ASAC

2. Babygirl

Babygirl opens with a close-up of Nicole Kidman's character having an intense orgasm with her loving husband played by Antonio Banderas, which turns out to be fake. I never quite connected with the character, although Kidman ended up winning Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival. It would be excellent if the film inspired more May-December romances between younger men and older women. 

Tim Grierson at Screen Daily sums it up: 

Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson star in Halina Reijn’s erotic May-December drama

Halina Reijn’s third feature works better in the bedroom than in the boardroom. Babygirl is an erotic drama about a powerful CEO who embarks on an ill-advised affair with a much younger intern, finally accessing the sexual desires this tightly-wound woman has never permitted herself to enjoy. Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson are excellent as these carnal combatants, each of their characters jockeying for control. But the writer-director’s larger ideas — about sexism in the workplace and the feelings of shame surrounding sexual kinks — fail to burn as hot as the two leads’ fiery chemistry. 

Babygirl opens on Christmas Day in the US and on January 10, 2025, in the UK. If your marriage is in trouble, this might be a good reason to get out of the house during the holidays. Grade: B-

3. One to One: John & Yoko

In 1972, John and Yoko left their estate in England for a tiny one-room apartment on Bank Street in the West Village with a large television set at the foot of the bed. As an uber Lennon fan, I absolutely loved director Kevin Macdonald's original way of presenting a treasure trove of unseen archives, footage, home movies, and telephone conversations.

We relive the time that led up to Lennon's only live performance without the Beatles, the One to One concert at Madison Square Garden in August to benefit the children of Staten Island's Willowbrook institution. 

The review by Sheri Linden at The Hollywood Reporter is excellent:

'One to One: John & Yoko' Review: An Exhilarating and Deeply Political Vision of a Year in the Life

Director Kevin Macdonald combines footage of a 1972 benefit concert with a rich assortment of archival material in his portrait of the former Beatle and his artist wife during their first months in New York.

In its mix of remarkable archival material, the film is both tender and galvanizing, summoning up what New York felt like in 1972 (yes, I would know) and offering a fresh slant on a country’s upheaval and a generation’s countercultural awakening.

I'm in the middle of writing a separate post about the film with more information. I can't find a release date yet. But whenever and wherever it screens, make every effort to see it, no matter how old or young you are. It's a great history lesson. Grade A+

Jude Law in The Order - Photo: Michelle Faye

4. The Order

About 15 minutes into The Order, I started wondering when Jude Law was going to show up. Then I realized he had been on the screen all along -- that's how different this character is from the "matinee idol" -- as one journalist called him -- that we are used to. Based on real events, Law plays FBI agent Terry Husk on the hunt for real-life white supremacist Bob Matthews, who formed an army called The Order in the 1980s whose mission was to make America white again.

The Deadline review by Stephanie Bunbury sums it up with eloquence:

‘The Order’ Review: Jude Law Shines In Justin Kurzel’s Brilliantly-Shot, Sweeping Slice Of Political Americana — Venice Film Festival

The Order was real, the investigation was real; the police characters, however, are not individually real. Terry Husk is hardly an unfamiliar fictional standby — a grizzled veteran cop who drinks too much, focuses on his job with such ferocity that he hasn’t realized his family has left him and is merely inches from being completely washed up: never was a character better named. He could feel like no more than a cliché, but Jude Law brings such a range of nuance to every exchange that he is always fully, complicatedly human.

The Order will get a limited release in the States on December 6, 2024. Amazon Prime Video is distributing it outside the US; I imagine it will eventually make its way into your home. I thought it was riveting, so yes, see it. Grade: A-

Cate Blanchett on the Red Carpet for Disclaimer
Photo: Giorgio Zucchiatti - La Biennale di Venezia ASAC 

5. Disclaimer

I only saw one episode, Chapter 5, of this seven-part Apple TV+ series directed by Alfonso Cuaron starring Cate Blanchett and Kevin Kline, so I can't offer an opinion except to say I was intrigued, but not absorbed. 

Let's hear the opinion of Ben Travers at IndieWire:

‘Disclaimer’ Review: Alfonso Cuaron’s Vicious Apple Series Is an Astute, All-Consuming Thriller 

Venice: Cate Blanchett's latest TV series is a methodical, magnificent mystery of complicity about an acclaimed documentarian whose dark past resurfaces in a vengeful widower's debut novel.

Complicity. Narrative. Form. Cuarón isn’t shy in laying out his thesis, instructing the audience to watch carefully as his seven-episode adaptation of Renée Knight’s 2015 novel plays out. What information do we know, and what information do we only presume to know? Who’s providing it? How are they providing it? These questions are always top of mind, but the four-time Academy Award winner behind “Roma,” “Gravity,” and “Children of Men” trusts in his story — and his team’s storytelling prowess — to sweep you up anyway. Which it does, and they do. “Disclaimer” is a cunning psychological thriller with twists and turns enough to thrive as pure entertainment. But never does it drift from its initial portent, so that when the truth comes crashing down, it levels everyone involved, onscreen and off.

Apple TV+  will release the first two episodes on Friday, October 11 with new episodes each Friday until the finale on November 15. Definitely check it out if you've got Apple TV+. Should you invest in a subscription? Ben Travers grades it A-

George Clooney (with Amal Clooney, center) & Brad Pitt at Sala Grande premiere of Wolfs
Photo: Giorgio Zucchiatti - La Biennale di Venezia ASAC

6. Wolfs

George Clooney and Brad Pitt seem to genuinely enjoy being movie stars, and I genuinely enjoy watching them play off each other. The first time I encountered their witty banter in person was during a press conference back in 2008 for Burn After Reading. It was my very first press conference at the Venice Film Festival for this blog -- I had been there before as a member of the press when I wrote for the International Herald Tribune's supplement Italy Daily, but had never attended a screening of a film, and followed by a press conference. I was like a kid in a candy store. It was exciting, especially because I asked George Clooney a question. 

Now, 16 years later, the stars still have the same vibe. In Wolfs, they both play a fixer hired by two different women to clean up what appears to be a dead body in a penthouse suite of a luxury hotel. 

From my favorite critic, Owen Gleiberman at Variety:

‘Wolfs’ Review: George Clooney and Brad Pitt Are Rival Fixers in a Winning Action Comedy Spiked With Movie-Star Chemistry

The two actors go at each other in Jon Watts's likable throwaway caper, which plays like an exercise in movie-star nostalgia.

These two have been stars since the ’90s, and no one, least of all themselves, is pretending that they’re young. Yet no one makes aging into the new cool more than they do. Clooney is the rare actor who has always worn his gray like the essence of glamour (when you catch a shot of him in the old days, the dark hair looks all wrong), and now, at 63, with a silver beard and hair not just two-tone but marbled, he’s achieved a kind of fine-wine mystique. As for Pitt, a mere spring chicken at 60, he kind of is ageless.

...Clooney and Pitt had this kind of chemistry before, in “Ocean’s Eleven,” where it was in the very detachment of their banter that they found a bond. In “Wolfs,” Clooney and Pitt revel in the crack timing, in the I-truly-do-not-like-you obscene banter, that makes even the most casual insult take wing. As the movie goes on, these two will learn to work together, but the film’s anti-grammatical title is saying that each one is a lone wolf. They have no desire to mesh like wolves. The joke, of course, is that from their stylish leather jackets to their secret Mr. Big to their reading glasses, they’re kind of the same man.

Wolfs will have a limited release in theaters on September 20, then stream globally on Apple TV+ starting September 27. The reason to see it in theaters is to have a fun date night out if you're of a certain age and in a long-term relationship. Otherwise, it might be another reason to subscribe to Apple TV+. Grade: B

7. Master and Commander

Director Peter Weir received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, and I went to the award ceremony because I messed up my reservation for The Room Next Door, which would go on to win the Golden Lion for Best Film. Ethan Hawk gave a warm, wonderful introduction, saying that Peter Weir gave him his first role in Dead Poet's Society, which led to him coming to Venice for his first film festival 35 years ago in 1989.

The award ceremony was followed by a screening of Weir's 2003 film Master and Commander starring Russell Crowe about a brash 19th-century British warship captain who prepares to attack a superior French vessel. It had gotten excellent reviews back in the day so I stayed to watch it. I'm not a fan of naval war battles, and there was only one brief, distant woman with no dialogue in the entire film. So I got bored and left. 

Martin Pengelly at the Guardian reviewed it 20 years later in 2023 and absolutely loved it.  

Master and Commander at 20: a miraculous masterpiece of action cinema

This article is more than 9 months old

Peter Weir’s adventure didn’t find enough of an audience in 2003 but its old-fashioned sturdiness has given it a long life

Master and Commander is an action movie with a brain. Its thrills are never mindless. Weir’s recreation of life in the close confines of a warship in 1805 is meticulous, fascinating and sometimes, rightly, nausea-inducing. Crowe and Bettany’s interpretation of a friendship between two men matches such artistry precisely. As Gabriella Paiella said for GQ earlier this year, much of the film’s lasting appeal springs from that portrayal of male closeness.

It was called an "absolute masterpiece" and scored 85% at Rotten Tomatoes, so apparently I am in the minority. If it sounds like your type of entertainment, you can rent or buy it wherever you get your movies. 

Daniel Craig on the Red Carpet for Queer
Photo: Giorgio Zucchiatti - La Biennale di Venezia ASAC

8. Queer

From the moment we see Daniel Craig as William Lee, he is loud, drunk, obnoxious, but still charming, and definitely not James Bond. Split into three chapters and an epilogue, I loved the first chapter of the film. Later, when we moved to the jungles of South America in search of a drug called Yage that causes telepathy, it lost its focus, yet director Luca Guadgnino kept his originality and creativity. And Daniel Craig was brilliant all the way through.

‘Queer’ Finds Daniel Craig Cruising for Sex, Drugs — and an Oscar

The actor who redefined James Bond goes for broke in Luca Guadagnino's beautiful, filthy, extraordinary take on William S. Burroughs' novel

Whether or not Luca Guadagnino‘s screen adaptation will change the book’s standing remains to be seen — but this sordid, steamy, and exceedingly swooning take on Burroughs’ novel will certainly move you to appreciate how he makes the author’s amour fou tale his own. And it will definitely alter your view of Daniel Craig. The British movie star had already been in the process of shaking off his association with a certain career-defining role, in addition to jogging your memory in regards to his range beyond Bond — his dandy sleuth in the Knives Out movies is worlds away from the antihero employed in her majesty’s secret service. Embodying Burroughs’ alter ego and cycling through Lee’s lust, jealousy, world-weariness, neediness, and bliss, Craig cracks this smitten, doomed romantic wide open. It’s the role of a lifetime if you hold nothing back. So he doesn’t.

Queer doesn't have a wide release date yet, but it will screen at the New York Film Festival on October 6. You don't have to see it on the big screen, but you should definitely see it. Grade: B+ Daniel Craig: A+

Lady Gaga & Joaquin Phoenix in Joker: Folie à deux
 Photo: Giorgio Zucchiatti - La Biennale di Venezia ASAC

9. Joker: Folie à deux

I thought the first third of Joker: Folie à deux was promising, and that it might actually be as great and daring as the first Joker, which won the Golden Lion in 2019. Alas, it is not. It dwindles down into a repetitive courtroom drama with songs. 

From Owen Gleiberman at Variety again:

‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ Review: Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga Star in a Cracked Jukebox Musical — but It Doesn’t Let Joker Be Joker Enough

The concept is audacious but the execution less so in a movie that takes a step back from the danger of "Joker."

...As a critic, I’ve experienced my share of debates, but I have never understood the morally judgmental quality that hung over the criticisms of “Joker.” That the film invited us to have a deep identification with a twisted sociopath wasn’t, in my book, a weakness; it was a strength. (It’s for that same reason that I love “Bonnie and Clyde,” “Taxi Driver,” and “Natural Born Killers.”) The movie was, among other things, an allegory of the Trump era, but it’s almost as if the critics were saying, “We don’t like the movie because Arthur is a nasty incel who leads an uprising just like Trump!” To me, the criticisms of “Joker” were sort of comparable to a studio executive giving notes that basically said, “Jake LaMotta in ‘Raging Bull’ isn’t likable enough.”

Did the critics, with “Joker,” turn into cautious executive scolds? In my opinion, they did. But the upshot is that Todd Phillips, making what I think is a huge mistake, listened to them.

It's sad to watch the world become homogenized again, and Joker along with it. Sure, go see Joker: Folie à deux. Dress up as Joker for Halloween. But don't expect to see the transformational film we saw the first time. Joker 2 is scheduled to be released domestically in the US on October 4. Grade: B-

10. TWST/Things We Said Today

Another Beatles documentary, this time set in 1965 and the build-up to Fab Four's concert at Shea Stadium in August. I was 10 years old at the time. Romanian director Andrei Ujica is four years older than me. It is always interesting to see the impact that the Beatles had on people of that time the world over. 

In order to tell the story, Ujica uses animated drawn teenage figures of real-life New York City budding writer and poet Geoffrey O'Brien and real-life fan girl Judith Kristen who are going to the concert. Then he uses archival material from the era, like the frenzy outside the Warwick Hotel in Manhattan, Watts riots in Los Angeles, Harlem, Jones Beach, and the 1964-65 World's Fair, which I, too, went to with my family. It was interesting to see the footage from my childhood again. And I would actually stay in the penthouse suite at the Warwick Hotel during a Christmas in the city. I enjoyed the nostalgia. 

From Marc van de Klashorst at the International Cinephile Society:

Venice 2024 review: TWST / Things We Said Today (Andrei Ujică)

“An intriguing and original way to look at our past and see how history is shaped once all the dust is blown off.”

The film definitely meanders at times, and while scenes of (predominantly white) people enjoying Jones Beach or shots of workers at New York’s fish market have their function, they do break up the narrative thrust Ujică introduces through his two ‘characters’.

Conceptually, TWST / Things We Said Today is an intriguing and original way to look at our past and see how history is shaped once all the dust is blown off. Its execution is artistically sound, but at times too unfocused to keep its ideas at the forefront. That doesn’t diminish the fact that this is a relevant work, but one can’t shake the feeling that another round of editing might have delivered a tighter film.

For me, the bar was set so high by One to One: John & Yoko, that I couldn't work up the same amount of excitement for this film. The documentary has a release date of September 30, but I'm not sure where. Grade: B-

11. Kjarlighet (Love)

I didn't expect to enjoy this film by writer-director Dag Johan Haugerud from Norway as much as I did. It's conversational and character-driven, and nothing much happens except people experience the joy and sadness of human relationships. What's interesting is that the characters all have unique jobs that we don't often see on film: a straight female urologist and her gay male nurse; a straight male divorced geologist; a married female art historian who works for the city of Oslo.  

From Leslie Felperin at The Hollywood Reporter:

'Love' Review: A Charming and Intelligent Norwegian Dramedy to Win Over Hears and Minds

The film, about two colleagues with very different approaches to sex and romance, is the second in a planned thematic trilogy from writer-director Dag Johan Haugerud.

The unfussy camera setups by DP Cecilie Semec, lit so as to benefit from the low-angle sunlight of Nordic summer nights, unfurl in long languorous takes that just sit back and let the actors do all the work. Fortunately, the cast here is well up to the job, and the dialogue, especially between Hovig and Jacobsen, have a charming musicality about them, like bright duets. Along the way, the film makes some interesting points about friendship as well as romance, especially when it comes to studying the reaction of Marianne’s art historian friend Heidi (Marte Engebrigtsen), who is scandalized by Marianne’s adventures in zipless fucks. Love, to quote that woozy old ballad, is indeed a many-splendored thing that takes many forms — a multiplicity that Love the film is quietly alive to.

Love will be released on December 25 in Norway. At this time, there is no US distribution. I hope the next installment, Dreams, also premieres at the Venice Film Festival. And I'll keep my eye out for the first film in the trilogy, Sex. Grade: B+

Kevin Costner at Horizon: An American Saga press conference - Photo: Cat Bauer

I didn't see either Chapter 1 or the new Chapter 2 of Horizon: An American Saga because it was completely sold out on the last day of the Venice Film Festival. But I did go to the press conference because I wanted to see Kevin Costner. Years ago, around 1975, in Costa Mesa, California, Kevin Costner and I had the same acting coach, Greg Bach, before Kevin became famous. We filmed a scene on videotape (which included a kiss:-) and were part of a screening at someone's posh house in Laguna Beach with our parents as guests.

Kevin seemed an unlikely movie star back then, but he had a quiet intense determination that shone through on the screen. He said he conceived of Horizon way back in 1988. In response to a question from a journalist, he said, "Horizon is not a message to my country. It's a reminder to my country of how difficult it was... that people made this journey across an angry Atlantic ocean to start a new life. America moved by inches."

Kevin said that if a movie is authentic, it will live forever and stand the test of time. "I don't know how I'm going to make Chapter 3 right now, but I'm going to make it."

Until next year.

Ciao from Venezia,

Cat Bauer

Venetian Cat - The Venice Blog