‘Hopper/Welles’: The Lost Conversation Between Two Fascinatingly Flawed Legends [Venice Review]

PARIS -- Michael Lonsdale, an enigmatic giant of the silver screen and theater in France who worked with some of the world’s top directors in an acting career that spanned 60 years, died Monday at 89, his agent said.From his role as the villain in the 1979 James Bond film “Moonraker” to that of a French monk in Algeria in the 2011 movie “Of Gods and Men,” Lonsdale acted, often in brilliant supporting roles, under top directors including Orson Welles, Steven Spielberg, Francois Truffaut and Louis

Michael Lonsdale was a French actor whose notable roles included Hugo Drax, the villain in the 1979 James Bond film “Moonraker.”Lonsdale’s acting career took place largely in Europe, where he appeared in dozens of movies, TV shows, and stage productions. Yet he worked with legendary U.S.

Of Gods and Men, 2010), as one of a group of Trappist monks living in rural Algeria. “I’d vowed never to accept another role as a priest,” Lonsdale said, “but I couldn’t resist playing this wonderful, generous character.”It was Orson Welles who first cast Lonsdale as a priest, in The Trial (1962).

Composed of a series of striking tableaux, Gianfranco Rosi’s contemplative documentary, “Notturno,” mines the intergenerational conflict on the borders between Iraq, Kurdistan, Syria, and Lebanon.

Unfurling an entire life of failed artistic ambitions in the span of a two-hour film, Chaitanya Tamhane’s remarkable sophomore feature “The Disciple” is decidedly leisurely in its approach. Executive produced by Alfonso Cuarón, Tamhane’s film centralizes the world of Hindustani classical music, in which singers perform an improvised raga, modulating their voices depending on the singer’s emotional state.

Inching forward on a rocky if deeply felt cinematic path that has rarely strayed far from reflections on himself and his mother, Azerbaijan filmmaker Hilal Baydarov opens up his vistas, somewhat, in the fiction feature In Between Dying (Sepelenmis Olumler Arasinda). It’s beautiful to look at, but the story of a young man on the run who encounters death at every turn of the winding road doesn’t really make much sense even in metaphorical terms.

Jessica Kiang The existential road movie gets an offbeat, elliptical yet peculiarly compelling Transcaucasian makeover in director Hilal Baydarov’s second fiction feature, “In Between Dying.” Set against the striking, often purgatorially stark backdrop of Azerbaijan’s rural landscapes, with their striated mountains, autumn forests, fog-shrouded fields and silvery pebbled lakesides, it’s a film indebted to its influences.

In almost no way does Chloé Zhao‘s quiet, enormous, deep breath of a movie, “Nomadland,” resemble “Blade Runner.” Except there’s this one moment: an outstanding speech in a film as attuned to vast wild silences as to conversation. Fern (Frances McDormand) is talking to her friend and fellow nomad Swankie (played, like many of the other roles by the real person on whom she is based).

“In Between Dying” is a dreamlike story of personal transformation from rising Azerbaijani director Hilal Beydarov. With a fast-growing body of work that blends fiction and documentary, Beydarov is singlehandedly raising the profile of Azerbaijan at film festivals.

Serious discussions on the perpetuated correlation between race and class in Mexico have dominated the country’s collective consciousness over the last few years. Cinema has actively participated in such reckoning, but never before as boldly as in Michel Franco’s “New Order (Nuevo Orden).” Bound to be contentious at home for its brutal depiction of a not-so-implausible and not-so-distant dystopia, the auteur’s latest shocks with blistering purpose.

So somebody somewhere one day had a thought: “What if ‘Die Hard’ except a school shooting?” and not only didn’t they immediately check themselves for other symptoms of lead poisoning but thought, “Yep, that’s a winner” and went on to make the movie.

Mining the well-worn tropes of the crusading journalist, Jing Wang’s “The Best is Yet to Come” is an investigatory look at Beijing in the aftermath of the SARS epidemic.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticDennis Hopper meets Orson Welles: That sounds like an oil-and-water match-up of legendary filmmakers. Welles, for all his renegade gusto, was a defrocked classicist — maybe (or maybe not) the greatest film director who ever lived, and one who became the ultimate high-toned Hollywood dropout.

The scene is nighttime, a rented house in Beverly Hills, the only sources of light a few hurricane lamps and a fireplace blaze. An offscreen interviewer sets the conversation in motion, apologizing for kicking things off with "a real heavy question." The unseen speaker is Orson Welles, his voice booming with authority, and as he spars with Dennis Hopper over the next two-plus hours, there are no light questions, no easy lobs.

An audacious what-if scenario lies at the heart of Regina King‘s poised, well-crafted but conceptually conflicted directorial debut, “One Night in Miami,” a high-minded drama that plays as an all-star real-life Black superhero team-up: What if newly-crowned World Heavyweight Champion Cassius Clay, singer Sam Cooke, NFL record breaker Jim Brown and a Malcom X on the cusp of breaking with the Nation of Islam, spent the pivotal night of February 25, 1964 sparring, bickering and mutually inspiring

First look images from Mank, David Fincher's biopic of Citizen Kane co-writerHerman Mankiewicz, were released Saturday — subsequently the 79th anniversary of "Citizen Kane Day." Mank,the nickname for Mankiewicz,will show a 1930sHollywood re-evaluated through the eyes of the scathing social critic and alcoholic screenwriter as he races to finish the screenplay of Citizen Kane for Orson Welles.

Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane” is generally regarded as one of the best — if not the best — movie ever made, and a new film from acclaimed director David Fincher explores the tumultuous making of the 1941 cinematic classic.