Venice Review: Jane Campion’s ‘The Power Of The Dog’

TORONTO – The filmmaking partnership of Scott McGehee and David Siegel has forged what can only be described as an unexpected path. After their 2001 breakout indie thriller “The Deep End” the duo found creative success in family dramas such as “Bee Season” and “What Maisie Knew.” Now, after an eight-year break following “Maise,” they return with “Montana Story,” a strangely thin melodrama held together by Haley Lu Richardson’s captivating performance.

Are you old enough to remember when Netflix was an underdog in international film festivals? When trepidation towards the future of film distribution was enough to keep streaming titles from winning in major film competitions? With all due respect to the Cannes Film Festival, those days certainly seem to be coming to an end. The Venice Film Festival has announced its lineup of winners, and Netflix has made quite a show for itself in the major categories.

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.

Clayton Davis The streaming platforms are gearing up for another attempt to win the Academy’s affections. Though a streamer has yet to win the big best picture prize, Netflix has assembled a strong slate this year, at least judging by the reception at the Telluride Film Festival.

“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.

Benedict Cumberbatch is opening up about his new movie The Power of the Dog.

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.

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.

“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.

“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.

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.

Jane Campion believes the #MeToo movement has been a true game-changer.

The ghost of a legendary cowboy named Bronco Henry haunts “The Power of the Dog,” an evocative, sensory psychodrama set in the American West of the 1920s. While Bronco is long gone and never seen on the screen, his spirit is felt everywhere in this soulful exploration of masculinity and repressed love, one that is equal parts untamed and delicate and wholly gorgeous.

Co-stars Kirsten Dunst and Benedict Cumberbatch pose for photos together at the photo call for The Power of Dog on Thursday (September 2) in Venice, Italy.

Ramin Setoodeh Executive EditorJane Campion, only the second woman to ever been nominated for an Oscar for directing, has been encouraged by the efforts she’s seen to get more women in the director’s chair.“All I can say is since the #MeToo movement happened, I feel a change in the weather that’s substantial,” Campion said on Thursday morning at a press conference at the 78th annual Venice Film Festival.