‘Hesitation Wounds’ Review: Tülin Özen‘s Striking Performance Drives Selman Nacar’s Gripping 24-Hour Moral/Legal Drama [Venice]

Christopher Vourlias Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland has remained defiant despite a wave of vicious political attacks and online hate speech as she prepares to release her Venice Special Jury Prize-winning refugee drama “Green Border” in Poland on Sept. 22.

Jessica Kiang In the second half of the 20th century a system of categorizing personalities into “Type A” and “Type B” gained mainstream pop-psychological traction. The obvious limitations of its binary, or at best linear, approach have seen the theory largely fall out of favor but sometimes, like when watching Selman Nacar’s sober, stressful second feature, “Hesitation Wound,” it’s hard not to be reminded of it.

I was the poor schlub who was about to be killed. But, while “Murder On The Orient Express” and “Death On The Nile” were hack-job excuses to force as many disparate and ghastly celebrities onscreen as possible, “Haunting” is an actual, surefooted film with strong performances and a luxurious-yet-frightful tone.Running time: 103 minutes. Rated PG-13 (some strong violence, disturbing images and thematic elements.) In theaters Sept.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic While it’s easy to imagine lawyers screaming “objection, your honor!” to the exaggerated courtroom theatrics of “The Burial,” good luck convincing audiences that this David v. Goliath legal showdown between a small-time Southern funeral home operator and an unethical Canadian billionaire should have played out any other way.

In the world of Agatha Christie adaptations, there’s always a delicate balance to strike between remaining faithful to the source and modernizing the narrative for contemporary audiences. A Haunting in Venice is Kenneth Branagh’s third venture in this territory and may have finally found his rhythm with these films. In addition to Branagh, the film stars Michelle Yeoh, Kelly Reilly, Jamie Dornan, Camille Cottin, and many others.

Holly rings her school to tell them she is staying at home. She isn’t sick. She just can’t bring herself to go. “Bad things are going to happen today,” she says just above a whisper, her voice cracking.

Todd Gilchrist editor An adult-oriented crowd pleaser of the sort that seldom gets made any longer without superheroes being involved, and better than that, is quite entertaining, “A Haunting in Venice” extends 2023’s streak as the Year That Hollywood Lured Grown-Ups Back To Theaters. Less prestigious than practiced in spotlighting the star wattage of its pedigreed cast, Kenneth Branagh’s third Agatha Christie adaptation offers a nimble stopgap between drier art-house fare, traditional studio tentpoles and scrappy genre material leaching ticket sales from their pricier competitors — while satisfying all three potential audiences.

With three competition titles across the last four editions, no contemporary filmmaker has been more present on the Venice Lido than director Michel Franco. 

Sylvia (Jessica Chastain) lives behind an exceptionally well-locked door. Her apartment has three locks of different kinds, keeping out anyone who managed to get past the intercom protecting the front entrance. As a woman living alone with a teenage daughter, perhaps she has her reasons. Just tonight, a man followed her home from her high school reunion, catching the same train, shadowing her from the station and finally sleeping outside her building under a plastic bag. Strangely, she is quite blasé about that: In the morning, she deals with it, demanding this man’s phone and finding someone in his contacts who can come and pick him up.

With Tatami, Golda helmer Guy Nattiv and Holy Spider star Zar Amir have crafted what’s billed as the first feature co-directed by an Israeli and an Iranian. The film, which bowed in the Horizons section here in Venice, is a sports drama with stakes that are far higher than winning or losing a match.

Oscar winner Jessica Chastain and Emmy nominee Peter Sarsgaard are here in Venice today for the world premiere of Michel Franco’s Memory, which on Thursday was officially confirmed for an interim agreement. At the press conference today, Chastain, sporting a SAG-AFTRA On Strike t-shirt, was asked if she had considered not attending amid the ongoing labor action. She began by saying, “Yes, I was incredibly nervous to be here today, and actually there are some people on my team who advised me against it.” However, she opted to come in support of her union.

Marta Balaga Controversy over Venice title “Green Border” continues to heat up as director Agnieszka Holland gave an ultimatum to Poland’s Minister of Justice Zbigniew Ziobro following his comments about her film. According to the statement shared with Variety, Holland has hired the lawyers Sylwia Gregorczyk-Abram and Michał Wawrynkiewicz.

How can one small business stand up to corporations? It might seem an unlikely question for a funeral home, but even that industry faces these issues. Maggie Betts’ “The Burial” looks at what happens when a small funeral home encounters corporate entities determined to corner the market on death care. The film, premiering at the 2023 Toronto Film Festival, finds a skilled acting duo in leads, Tommy Lee Jones and Jamie Foxx.

Not so much beginners as people who never get a fair go, the mixed bag of gay men and women in Australian-Macedonian filmmaker Goran Stolevski’s Housekeeping For Beginners, showing in Venice’s Horizons section, lives on a knife’s edge. Dita (Anamaria Marinca) owns the house where they jostle along together. Her Roma partner Suada (Alina Serban) has a teenage daughter Vanesa and another daughter, Mia, who is only five. Suada is volatile, belligerent and dying of cancer. Death is focusing her mind in alarming ways. Swear to look after the children, she shouts at Dita, holding a knife over her own arm.

Can Finbar Murphy escape his past? “In The Land of Saints and Sinners” presents a mysterious man with a dark past who faces a crisis between doing what’s right and facing his own mistakes. Liam Neeson stars as Murphy, a man searching for solace and redemption; it’s yet another film that sees the actor carefully balance his dramatic roots with his recent success in high-profile action hits.

That Glen Powell is a gem of an actor is nothing new, but twenty years into his career, and after stealing the show in a bunch of films and series, we can all finally stop praying for him to get a leading role worthy of his talents. In “Hit Man,” Powell reunites with his “Everybody Wants Some!!” director Richard Linklater for a part that allows him to be by turns nerdy, sexy, and funny, but at all times almost unbearably charming.

As if to come to the aid of her national cinema after the debacle that was Roman Polanski’s The Palace, Poland’s Agnieska Holland, soon to turn 75, restores some of her homeland’s cultural dignity with a devastating exposé that angrily, and quite brilliantly, questions its humanity and political integrity. At 144 minutes, and in black and white, it is not exactly a Trojan horse, and its moral rigor does not come with a spoonful of sugar. But Green Border earns every second of that running time, and with a focus and energy that belies its directors age. Awards-wise, this may prove to be the international feature to beat.

Richard Linklater’s Hit Man debuts out of competition in Venice this evening, and while the story follows a professional killer, the filmmaker told the press corps today, “I’m pretty sure movies invented hitmen, they aren’t real.”

Time is a relative construct stretched to the limits of elasticity by Saverio Constanzo with the period drama “Finally Dawn.” The bloated 140-minute runtime begins at a cinema in Rome in 1953 as three women watch the final scene of a saccharine war drama, the light of the big screen coming to reveal a mother and two daughters, one donning the beauty of a Hollywood starlet and the other the beauty of a traditional Italian woman, with big blue eyes framed by thick curly hair. Venice Film Festival 2023: The 17 Most Anticipated Movies To Watch The curly-haired girl is Mimosa (Rebecca Antonaci), a shy 21-year-old used to inhabiting the uncomfortable but familiar shadow of her daintier sister, Iris (Sofia Panizzi).

Despite its soft-sounding title, Stefano Sollima’s crime drama is a gripping call-back to the heyday of poliziotteschi movies, a peculiarly Italian genre that dealt with inter-gang wars in a country where the police were often more venal than the bad guys. Adagio, though, takes a unique tack, borrowing from Martin Scorsese’s fatalistic masterpiece The Irishman to portray to tell a story in which a trio of gangsters — one blind, one suffering early-onset dementia, and another with terminal cancer — are forced to reunite against a team of bent cops involved in an elaborate blackmail plan.