Guy Lodge: Celebs Rumors

Guy Lodge Film Critic Not many films hit an emotional crescendo around the publication of a Pitchfork review, but Bill Pohlad’s “Dreamin’ Wild” is sufficiently sincere and embedded in musical nerdery to make it work. As onetime brother act Donnie and Joe Emerson huddle with their family around a 30-years-late evaluation of the album they recorded as teenagers, one particular critical reference sends them giddily reeling: “To twist a Brian Wilson phrase,” it reads, “[the album] is a godlike symphony to teenhood.” For fortysomething Donnie, who has spent his whole adult life scrambling for anyone to listen to his music — let alone love it — the mere mention of his musical hero in relation to his work is a crowning triumph: Donnie, as played by a typically disheveled, downcast Casey Affleck, looks briefly, guardedly happy for a moment, and this often melancholic film is suddenly suffused with well-being.

Guy Lodge Film Critic Gianni Amelio was in his late sixties when he came out as gay a few years ago. The announcement preceded the release of his documentary “Happy to Be Different,” which worked toward an overriding sunniness in contemplating the trials and challenges of being gay in Italy at various points in the 20th century. In turning to a gay-themed narrative project, Amelio narrows the focus and dims the mood: “Lord of the Ants” takes as its subject the gay Italian author Aldo Braibanti, and the social and legal opposition he faced over his sexuality in mid-1960s Rome. Solemn, stately and perhaps a little stifled, it’s the kind of queer statement you might expect from a veteran filmmaker who wasn’t until relatively recently out and proud, and is rather poignant for that.

Guy Lodge Film Critic Even the most solidly founded of marriages can be strained and shattered by the death of a child. For handsome, wholesome Japanese couple Taeko and Jiro, however, that tragedy shows up all the fault lines that were already in their young relationship, and that’s before living ghosts of the past show up for both partners. Koji Fukada’s “Love Life” unabashedly embraces melodramatic contrivance in its examination of modern middle-class love tested as much by social prejudices as by personal demons; it just does so with such pallid, polite reserve that its sentimentality never becomes transcendently moving. As such, this agreeable but overlong pic finds the Japanese writer-director still struggling to regain the form of his jolting 2016 Cannes prizewinner “Harmonium.”

Guy Lodge Film Critic Friendships can be as changeable and temperamental and outright dramatic as grand romances, though they tend to get a bland rap on screen — with friends, for most screenwriters, merely convenient constants, there to support protagonists through matters of supposedly more consequence. If substantial platonic relationship studies are rare, ones about men are rarer still. And if that comes down to a social convention rather than a cinematic one, that’s integral to the power and poignancy of Martin McDonagh’s searing “The Banshees of Inisherin,” a film that traces the tortured breakup between two best pals in remote rural Ireland with all the anguish and gravity of the most charged romantic melodrama — its high, unleashed emotions all the more startling in a world where men don’t speak their feelings.

Guy Lodge Film Critic “L’Immensità” is director Emanuele Crialese’s first feature film in 11 years, and only his fifth in a quarter-century: The gifted Italian, best known to international audiences for his splendid, richly felt Ellis Island immigrant saga “Golden Door,” has never been one for unconsidered or impersonal projects. At first glance, then, one might wonder what drew him out of hibernation for a film that, with its trim runtime and small-scale domestic narrative, belies a title that translates as “immensity.” This 1970s-set story of a 12-year-old navigating his gender identity while his mother battles mental health demons is too palpably pained and heartfelt to be called slight, but it’s sensitive and peculiar in ways that feel fragile — occasionally splintered and swamped by an elaborate setpiece, or the outsize star magnetism of arguably its secondary lead, one Penélope Cruz. 

Guy Lodge Film Critic While waiting to pick up five-year-old Leila from judo practice, personable 40-ish schoolteacher Rachel introduces herself to another parent as Leila’s stepmom, before backtracking to awkwardly correct herself. Later, when a kindly stranger on a train remarks on the resemblance between the two, Rachel doesn’t bother clarifying, merely accepting the benign compliment. Her relationship to Leila is both unremarkably simple and complicated by an absence of clear language for it: She’s dating the girl’s father, and the attachment between woman and child has grown perhaps stronger than the relationship on which it depends. It’s the kind of delicate everyday situation that rarely occupies the centre of a film, and in the superb “Other People’s Children,” writer-director Rebecca Zlotowski negotiates it with warm intelligence and compassion.

Guy Lodge Film Critic Rather like the arc of the moral universe, “Argentina, 1985” is long, but bends toward justice. Effectively dramatizing the country’s landmark Trial of the Juntas, history’s first instance of a civilian justice system convicting a military dictatorship, Santiago Mitre’s broad, sprawling, heart-on-sleeve courtroom saga may draw from the same nightmarish period of history that has informed much of Argentine cinema’s most essential, haunting works — from 1985’s Oscar-winning “The Official Story” to last year’s “Azor” — but eschews any subtle arthouse stylings for a storytelling sensibility as robustly populist as anything by Sorkin or Spielberg. Small wonder, then, that Amazon Studios has boarded a film clearly aiming to be both a domestic smash and an international crossover hit — buoyed by the reliable star power of Ricardo Darín, his signature suaveness tempered by a walrus mustache and boxy ‘80s frames as Julio Strassera, the dogged prosecutor who took on this charged, against-the-odds case. Though a warmly received premiere in competition at Venice will set it on the right path, “Argentina, 1985” is, appropriately enough, a people’s film about people’s justice, balancing tear-jerking historical catharsis with touches of droll domestic comedy, and set to draw crowds on enthusiastic word of mouth.

Guy Lodge Film Critic Six decades into a career of over 40 films, the last thing you might request of a new feature from 92-year-old documentarian Frederick Wiseman is that it surprise us. Yet after a run of expansive, richly process-oriented observations of mostly American institutions and communities, his new film, “A Couple,” upends expectations of his work in what feels an almost mirthfully perverse number of ways. For starters, it’s laser-focused on just one person, not a heaving collective of human labor and activity. It’s short — very much so, in fact, barely stretching past an hour. Also, lest we be burying the lede, it’s not a documentary. Wiseman’s first ever narrative feature sees him collaborating with French actor-writer Nathalie Boutefeu on a biopic of sorts: a portrait of Leo Tolstoy’s anguished wife Sophia, dramatizing her marital dissatisfaction and psychic pain with with a lyrical, literate ear.

Guy Lodge Film Critic Just before director Christopher Nolan’s upcoming “Oppenheimer” plants a fixed image of Ted Hall in the popular imagination, along comes Steve James’s sensitive, studious documentary “A Compassionate Spy” to preemptively set any records straight. Unpacking the life and work of the prodigious teenage Manhattan Project physicist who passed key information about the endeavor to the Soviet Union — cuing an adulthood dogged by suspicion and secrecy — the film demonstrates its director’s characteristic nose for strong material and knack for gripping, straightforward storytelling. If the filmmaking is more televisual than in James’s best work, with its flourishes limited to some unnecessary dramatized passages, that should be no impediment to “A Compassionate Spy” commanding a sizable audience on multiple platforms. 

Guy Lodge Film Critic The political activism of pop stars is, as a rule, on the restrained side. Those who make their allegiances clear still tend to keep all factions in their fanbases sweet by limiting divisive rhetoric, or filtering their politics through broadly palatable humanitarian causes; those who speak a little more frankly still risk the wrath of the public, the internet and their record labels alike. Yet for Ugandan singer Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu — better known to his adoring fans as Bobi Wine — there’s both everything and nothing to lose by getting a little more directly involved in national politics than most such celebrities would dare. Entering a presidential election against corrupt, long-ruling incumbent Yoweri Museveni is, he knows, both a folly and a necessary symbolic stand — a certain path to honorable defeat that “Bobi Wine: Ghetto President” documents with angry urgency and bitter gallows humor.

Guy Lodge Film Critic “Gigi & Nate” begins with two leaps. The first is out of terror, when Gigi, a capuchin monkey at a sad-sack roadside petting zoo, tries to steer clear of her “caretaker.” The second is the sweet leap of boy-joy that 17-year-old Nate Gibson takes off a rocky ledge and into a pond. In this amiable, if unnecessarily manipulative, movie about the human-animal bond — as well as the different forms resilience can take — that fateful second leap will lead the young man and the monkey to each other.Gigi is rescued by a woman who works for an organization that provides service animals to people with disabilities.

Black Lightning actress Charlbi Dean has died at the age of 32 following a sudden illness.The star died in New York on Monday 29 August, however an exact cause of death has not been confirmed.The up and coming star has a starring role in this year’s dark comedy The Triangle of Sadness, where she played Yaya, one half of a model couple who are invited on a trip on a yacht for the ultra-wealthy, before things head downhill. In a recent Instagram post, Charlbi’s partner Luke Volker wrote how “proud” he was of his girlfriend for the role in the Palme D’Or winning film.

Guy Lodge Film Critic“Rule 34,” a challenging and sexually explicit film from Brazilian director Julia Murat, has emerged as the surprise winner of the Golden Leopard award at this year’s Locarno Film Festival — an edition where typically audacious and formally ambitious work dominated the program.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentItaly’s True Colours has sold Mario Martone’s Naples-set Cannes competition drama “Nostalgia” to Curzon Film for the U.K. and Ireland, among other new territories.The deal, negotiated by True Colours sales manager Francesca Tiberi and Curzon acquisitions executive Eleonora Pesci, marks the first partnership between the companies.At the Italian Screenings market event recently held in Lecce, Southern Italy, the Rome-based sales company also sealed fresh deals on several other films, including pre-sales on upcoming Locarno title “Delta,” which is a revenge drama with a contemporary Western vibe.Martone’s “Nostalgia,” which has been praised by Variety critic Guy Lodge as the prolific Italian auteur’s “most rewarding film in years,” stars Pierfrancesco Favino as the middle-aged Felice Lasco, who returns to the bustling port city after having lived in Egypt for 40 years.

Guy Lodge Film Critic“America” is a burdensome title for Israeli director Ofir Raul Graizer’s bright, frangible new film, casting expectations of continent-sized import onto a more individual, interior study of immigrant unrest. Visually iridescent and unexpectedly buoyant even when dealing with matters of plunging personal tragedy, this study of a Chicago-based swimming coach returning to his native Israel after his father’s death — setting off a chain of both present-tense misfortunes and disinterred traumas — braids blunt melodramatic storytelling with a softer, more searching look at conflicted identity, both cultural and sexual.

IFC Films has nabbed North American rights to “Corsage,” Marie Kreutzer’s bold costume drama starring Vicky Krieps as the Empress Elisabeth of Austria known as Sissi. Represented in international markets by MK2 Films, the movie world premiered at Cannes’ Un Certain Regard and earned unanimous praises.

Guy Lodge Film Critic“One Fine Morning” sounds an innocuous title for a grownup relationship drama — destined, perhaps, to be confused on streaming menus with the George Clooney-Michelle Pfeiffer romcom “One Fine Day” — and in a sense, the mellow, melancholic cinema of French writer-director Mia Hansen-Løve is its own kind of comfort viewing. But as with many facets of her filmmaking, there’s a smarter, sadder, more literary undertow to the title’s sunny simplicity.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media ReporterNicolas Cage is back… not that he went anywhere.The actor’s latest movie “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent,” a meta comedy in which he plays a fictionalized version of himself, is one of several films opening nationwide over the weekend. It’ll compete against director Robert Eggers’ Viking epic “The Northman” and Universal and DreamWorks’ animated family film “The Bad Guys,” as well as last weekend’s champion “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore.”Unless ticket sales crash in week two, “The Secrets of Dumbledore,” the third chapter in the “Harry Potter” spinoff series, should retain the domestic box office crown.

Guy Lodge Film Critic“Atlantide” is the Italian name for Atlantis, the fictional island utopia imagined by Plato, supposedly cursed by the gods and swallowed by the sea. It’s a pointed legend to evoke in a film about Venice, the sinking city that, real as it is, feels like a place we collectively dreamed into being, that could somehow be taken from us at any moment.

Guy Lodge Film Critic“Fire” begins in water: a wide, rippling expanse of Mediterranean blue under a cloudless sky, displaced and disrupted by two whirling human bodies. Sara (Juliette Binoche) and Jean (Vincent Lindon) tussle in the otherwise empty ocean as though they’ve just discovered weightlessness, while Eric Gautier’s camera lingers on skin touching skin under the shimmer.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media ReporterNational Geographic Documentary Films has acquired “The Territory,” a timely look at indigenous-led land defense in the Amazon rainforest, following its premiere at the virtual Sundance Film Festival.The company plans to release “The Territory” theatrically later this year before the film heads to its streaming platforms.Alex Pritz directed “The Territory” in his feature film debut. Using verité-style footage captured over three years, the documentary tells the fight of the Indigenous Uru-eu-wau-wau people against rapidly approaching deforestation brought by illegal loggers and nonnative farmers in the Brazilian Amazon.In Variety’s review of “The Territory,” which screened in the world cinema documentary competition, film critic Guy Lodge described the doc as “riveting and despairing in equal measure.” “Dual forces of climate change and cultural genocide overlap to devastating effect in “The Territory,” threatening not just a native community but a wider ecosystem — and cheered on by the actively hostile powers that be,” Lodge wrote.Darren Aronofsky, the Oscar-winning director of “Black Swan,” “The Wrestler” and “Requiem for a Dream,” served as a producer on “The Territory.” The film has been co-produced by the Indigenous Uru-eu-wau-wau community, with activist Txai Suruí on board as an executive producer.

Guy Lodge Film Critic“Dying to Divorce” begins and ends with an onscreen counter, ticking over as rapidly as a zealous taxi meter — if only it were measuring anything so banal. Instead, it’s a representation of Turkey’s appalling rate of femicide over recent years, the screen below the counter filling up with the names of women murdered by their partners, as the number above queasily rises.

Guy Lodge Film Critic“Fever dream” has lately become an overused term in film marketing and criticism alike, often generically applied to anything faintly strange or surreal with fractured storytelling trickery and a lick of gauzy ambience.

Guy Lodge Film Critic“It’s not that Mama doesn’t like this house — this house doesn’t like Mama,” explains Tsidi to her young daughter Winnie about the roomy, comfortable Cape Town pad in which they’ve recently taken up residence. Tsidi knows the place well.

Guy Lodge Film Critic“Leave No Marks” would be a more apt translation from the Polish title of “Leave No Traces,” referring as it does to a horrifying command from one police officer to another, heard early on in this marathon fact-based drama: “Hit the stomach so you leave no marks, not on the back.” They’re in the middle of administering a merciless, unprovoked beating — a hard rain of combat boots and handheld batons — to a very soft target in 18-year-old student Grzegorz Przemyk, holding nothing back but acute physical evidence of their ire, even as the victim’s stunned best friend looks on.

Guy Lodge Film Critic“I’ve never liked artists who have more fun offstage than onstage,” says Italian comic star Eduardo Scarpetta (played by Toni Servillo) in “The King of Laughter.” If that was indeed Scarpetta’s belief, he would have thoroughly approved of Mario Martone’s big, brash, garishly frosted celebration cake of a biopic, in which everyone involved seems to be having the very best of times, tumbling onto screen with the breathless energy of a community theater crew given a very generous spotlight. How much fun viewers will be having with them is open to question.

Guy Lodge Film Critic“We are all brothers in Islam. Anyone with a problem can come to talk.” With these words, a local imam offers supposed comfort and counsel to troubled single mother Amina (Achouackh Abakar Souleymane), not considering that addressing her as his “brother” might not be the most welcoming invitation.

Guy Lodge Film CriticMany a chef will tell you that fish and cheese don’t go together, but “Blue Miracle” says otherwise. Based on the true, headline-making story of an amateur Mexican team who won the world’s richest fishing tournament in 2014, Julio Quintana’s likable family film misses nary a cornball trick in Hollywood’s underdog-drama playbook, and just about pulls it off.Viewers can see precisely where Quintana and co-writer Chris Dowling have embellished the saga of Cabo orphanage proprietor Omar Venegas, who led a handful of his teenage wards to that unlikely victory: “Blue Miracle” is awash with 11th-hour peril and contrivance, reducing characters to stock figures to make plain sailing of its crowd-pleasing narrative.

Guy Lodge Film Critic“Paper Spiders” opens on a dynamic played out in countless American coming-of-age stories, as bright-eyed high school senior Melanie (Stefania LaVie Owen) and her doting single mother Dawn (Lili Taylor) tour the USC college campus on which the former has her heart set. As Melanie gawps in wonder, Dawn surveys the place with a critical eye, asking neurotic, embarrassing mom questions about campus security and the like: California is, after all, practically a whole country away from their Erie Canal, and she’s not quite ready for her only child to fly that far from the nest.

Guy Lodge Film Critic“Take your broken heart, turn it into art,” said the late Carrie Fisher, distilling a sentiment that has fueled much essential political and protest art across history. Yet the time and headspace to create art is a hard luxury to come by when daily survival is itself a challenge.

Guy Lodge Film Critic“I think you have to go back to therapy. It wasn’t enough,” says Isabella Rossellini, drily and only somewhat jokingly, to her nephew Alessandro, as he interviews her on some hard family truths.

Guy Lodge Film Critic“Only in our forest can you sleep in peace,” says Davi Kopenawa, a shaman and elder of the Yanomami community — the indigenous population of the rainforest terrain on the Brazilian-Venezuelan border. His words, enticing as they sound, aren’t an invitation to visitors, but a warning to his own.

Guy Lodge Film Critic“Dying isn’t simple, is it?” That question is asked at three separate points in “I Was a Simple Man,” and with each repetition, it sounds slightly less rhetorical, less worldly-wise, more loaded with anxious uncertainty. Christopher Makoto Yogi’s hushed, ruminative study of an elderly man’s last days in Oahu doesn’t quite settle on an answer either.

Guy Lodge Film Critic“Democrats,” Camilla Nielsson’s superb 2014 documentary about the tortuous construction of Zimbabwe’s 2013 constitution, was most riveting as a snapshot of a country still trying democracy on for size, wary of what it saw in the mirror.

Guy Lodge Film Critic“You’ve been commissioned to write a 90-page screenplay, not ‘War and Peace.'” With these airy words, in the opening minutes of “Blithe Spirit,” exasperated trophy wife Ruth (Isla Fisher) admonishes her first-time screenwriter husband Charles (Dan Stevens) as he twitchily battles writers’ block. Then she adds a kicker: “How can it be so difficult to adapt a story you’ve already written?” If her frustration with the whiny, self-absorbed Charles is hardly misplaced, her assumptions about screenwriting are nonetheless off-base.

Guy Lodge Film Critic“I have already lived my death — all that’s left is to make the movie.” So says celebrated Argentine-Brazilian filmmaker Héctor Babenco in a documentary that, sure enough, attempts to bring closure to a life already concluded. After three decades of living with cancer and related complications, Babenco passed away in 2016 aged 70; directed by his widow Bárbara Paz, “Babenco: Tell Me When I Die” movingly serves as both valedictory and valentine, channeling and preserving the spirit of an artist who vocally feared that his life’s work hadn’t been completed.