‘Old Henry’: Meat & Potatoes Western With Tim Blake Nelson Has Few Surprises [Venice Review]

Erika Jayne’s Real Housewives of Beverly Hills costars are starting to doubt her after she told another story about Tom Girardi on the Wednesday, September 15, episode of the Bravo hit.

Matt Damon and Penelope Cruz had a run-in in Venice today!

Everyone has their own truth, as they say, but some of those truths are considerably truer than others. Old pals Matt Damon and Ben Affleck join forces with established indie filmmaker Nicole Holofcener to adapt a true story – that of Marguerite de Carrouges, a 14th century French noblewoman who was raped by an old friend of her husband’s – and tell it from three different angles in Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel.

In shades of the gunmetal gray that has become the grading palette of choice for Serious Historical Epics — possible because arterial blood spray shows up so nice and red against it —Ridley Scott‘s starry, surprisingly engaging “Rashomon“-inflected “The Last Duel” opens on the wintry December day of the duel in question.

The talent and influence of Italian composer Ennio Morricone, who died in 2020 aged 91, is undeniable. Synonymous with Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns and the instantly-recognizable “wah-wah-wow” theme-tune to “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly,” the extent of his output was phenomenal at over 500 film scores.

Where to begin with “Freaks Out,” a Nazisploitation fantasy caper with circus trappings and a tin-ear for taste. The puzzling thing about Italian director Gabriele Mainetti’s feature set in 1943 in German-occupied Rome is that, rather than embracing tastelessness a la John Waters, it guns for earnestness despite not having a thoughtful bone in its body.

Jamie Lang VMI Worldwide has closed several major territory sales for western “Old Henry” from Shout! Studios and Hideout Pictures. Sales buzz reached its fever pitch as the film premiered at the Venice Film Festival on Tuesday evening.So far, VMI has closed deals in Italy (Blue Swan), the U.K.

Character actor Tim Blake Nelson may have found his niche in memorable turns recalling the heyday when Westerns ruled the roost in Hollywood. Or at least in Venice, where this film festival once again has shown a fondness for the star in a genre that rarely gets much of a closeup anymore.

The Western is a film genre that has exerted an irresistible pull over the decades to filmmakers interested in action and adventure.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticTim Blake Nelson is a highly skilled and versatile actor (not to mention a terrific director), but for years now there has been one character he owns: the yokel, the snaggletoothed redneck runt, the leering hillbilly bumpkin who never met a big vocabulary word he didn’t like to chew on like tobacco.

“True Things” is a “romantic” drama that is not romantic in the slightest. In the tradition of films like Catherine Breillat’s “Romance” and Adrian Lyne’s “9 ½ weeks,” the focus is on what is revealed about a female protagonist by how much she is willing to sacrifice to briefly experience passion with an unreliable yet sexy man.

After last year’s explosively angry New Order, the prolific Mexican director Michel Franco returns to the Venice Film Festival with Sundown, the minor-key story of a man who decides to abandon his life in favor of getting drunk and shacking up with a cheerful local woman in Acapulco. It is his second collaboration with British actor Tim Roth who plays Neil and who sinks into hazy irresponsibility with the ease of a backpacker who has mastered getting into a hammock.

Like finding a grubby, balled-up bill in your spangly g-string and uncrumpling it to discover doughy old Ben Franklin staring benignly back at you, Ana Lily Amirpour‘s third feature is a sweet, scuzzy surprise made all the sweeter/scuzzier because you don’t know quite what you did to deserve it.

Anyone familiar with the work of Mexican director Michel Franco, whether they be admirers or detractors, can attest to the “this is not going to end well” sentiment his sordid cinematic provocations instill. With a pensive angle, “Sundown” – a reteaming between the filmmaker and his “Chronic” star Tim Roth – upholds that tension of expecting the worst to come the characters’ way.

A journey of discovery rooted in questions about faith, fate, and mortality, “Miracle” offers up revelations like slow drips from a faucet, building to a staggering conclusion that synthesizes all of the film’s narrative ingredients. Part two of director Bogdan George Apetri’s Romanian trilogy, the film is self-contained as a piece, yet features characters from 2020’s “Unidentified” along the edges, expanding the tapestry of this world while germinating an entirely new story.

“The Peacock’s Paradise” is one of the worst types of films to watch and review. Ineffectual in its style, but inoffensive in its content and execution, Laura Bispuri’s most recent directorial effort fails to move beyond the rudimentary elements that comprise the average movie.

A poetic meditation on film, history, and loss, “Three Minutes – A Lengthening” gives a glimpse into a lost world and then unpacks just how much can be learned from that brief fragment. While on a grand tour of Europe in 1938, David Kurtz, a Polish-American man, traveled to Nasielsk, the town of his birth, and brought with him a 16mm camera filled with Kodachrome, a novelty at the time.

Guess it had to happen sometime, but it’s a shame that the previously-thought-to-be inexhaustible energy resource of Edgar Wright’s omnivorous, giddy cinephilia should finally be showing signs running out right now, just when a jaded, weary, pandemic-drab world could use it most.