‘The Hand Of God’: Paolo Sorrentino Touches Divinity With An Evocative Coming Of Age Magnum Opus [Venice Review]

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.

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.

“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.

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.

“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.

“Why does it take so long to break up? Why does no one talk about the fact that [divorce] is endless trauma?” Jessica Chastain asks in a heartbreaking moment from HBO’s devastating marital and breakup mini-series “Scenes From A Marriage.” A modern adaptation of Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman’s brutally emotionally honest 1970s series, now written, directed, and executive produced by Israeli filmmaker Hagai Levi, (“Our Boys,” “The Affair,” and “In Treatment”), this new HBO version is intimate,

There are shades of Ruben Ostlund’s “The Square”, if it were remade to target the film world, in Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat’s crowd-pleasing Spanish comedy “Official Competition” starring Penélope Cruz and Antonio Banderas. Controlled pacing, visual punchlines, and an insider knowledge of the varied pretensions within filmmaking make this a consistently amusing – if never downright hilarious – vehicle for the well-honed comic sides of two of Spain’s most famous exports.

Benedetta star Virginie Efira plays a woman leading a double life in drama Madeleine Collins which premiered in the Venice Days section of the Venice Film Festival today. Also doubling up in Venice by serving on the competition jury, Efira puts in a terrific performance in Antoine Barraud’s taut relationship pic that veers into thriller territory.

Ruth Wilson puts in a riveting performance in Venice Film Festival Horizons entry True Things, an impressive follow up to director Harry Wootliff’s debut Only You. Wilson and Jude Law are also among the producers for this intense story, based on the novel True Things About Me by Deborah Kay Davies.

Near the town of Cerchiara, in a valley nestled within the Pollino massif of mountains on the border between the Calabria and Basilicata regions of lushest Italy, there is a hole. It’s not the biggest hole, but at the time of its exploration, it was the second-deepest.

Given the tendency of music documentaries to do little more than bring a Wikipedia page to life, it’s not exactly an encouraging sign when Bernard MacMahon’s “Becoming Led Zeppelin” begins with the band’s members literally listing off their date and place of birth. The film isn’t a complete rundown of their life and work – just a partial one, focusing on the group’s influences and early success from 1969-1970.

“A great man doesn’t seek to lead; he is called to it,” Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac) says somberly to his son Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet), in Denis Villeneuve’s dynastic epic space odyssey “Dune.” The Duke speaks to duty, purpose, and destiny, but the words are laced with burden and uncertainty for Paul, seemingly undecided about his future. When Villeneuve (“Sicario,” “Prisoners”) once spoke about making “Dune” as a “’Star Wars’ for adults,” he wasn’t kidding.

With “The Lost Daughter,” director Maggie Gyllenhaal wears melancholy like a second skin.

“A great man doesn’t seek to lead; he is called to it,” Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac) says somberly to his son Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet), in Denis Villeneuve’s dynastic epic space odyssey “Dune.” The Duke speaks to duty, purpose, and destiny, but the words are laced with burden and uncertainty for Paul, seemingly undecided about his future. When Villeneuve (“Sicario,” “Prisoners”) once spoke about making “Dune” as a “’Star Wars’ for adults,” he wasn’t kidding.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentFremantle, which is at Venice with two films in competition –– Paolo Sorrentino’s “The Hand of God” and “America Latina” by Damiano and Fabio  D’Innocenzo –– is ramping up its film side.The RTL Group-owned company “that everyone used to associate with [TV franchise] ‘Got Talent’ is becoming one of the biggest independent film production studios in Europe” says its COO Andrea Scrosati.It’s rising power in feature films isn’t being noticed because of

“I don’t really feel like it’s going anywhere,” a character in Paul Schrader’s The Card Counter laments at one point, and for a good long time one is inclined to feel this way about the film itself. Like the titular low-end professional gambler, Schrader here plays the long game, winning as often as not by studying patterns, conservatively abiding by carefully calculated odds and not acting on impulse.

What if you’ve paid your debt to society, but the spiritual weight of what you truly owe for your past actions can never be repaid in full? Following the terrific comeback reception to “First Reformed” and the spartan, Bresson-ian transcendental style employed within, feeling good about his chances, filmmaker Paul Schrader doubles down on austere slow cinema again in “The Card Counter,” a movie about the moral balance a man can accrue.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticFabietto (Filippo Scotti), the autobiographical hero of Paolo Sorrentino’s “The Hand of God,” is a teenager growing up in the 1980s in the bustling port metropolis of Naples, and he keeps a watchful gaze on just about everything. He’s like the eye at the center of a storm of avidly impassioned but overstated filmmaking.