This year’s Venice Film Festival is about to fire the starter gun on another bumper – or endless, depending on your perspective – awards season. But even if the whole six-month Oscar prognostication thing isn’t for you, it’s worth keeping an eye out for the new films premiering on the Lido from September 2-12. There’s a wealth of headline-grabbing movies that will be filling cinemas in the months ahead, from Robert Pattinson’s true-crime thriller Primetime to Steven Knight’s new Oasis doc.
will be there with reviews of all the big releases, so check back for the first word on new films from Danny Boyle, Martin McDonagh, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Lee Chang-dong and other elite auteurs. Here’s five to look out for.
1. Ink (dir. Danny Boyle)
The impact of Rupert Murdoch on western politics and society over the past decades is close to immeasurable. Danny Boyle is plunging into a key part of his origin story in a film that charts the media mogul’s purchase of Britain’s biggest-selling newspaper, The Sun, in 1968. Guy Pearce plays the acquisitive Aussie, while James Bond front runner Jack O’Connell is Larry Lamb, the man Murdoch hired to edit the paper. James Graham adapts his own play into a true-life drama that’ll hopefully make a bigger splash than Boyle’s under-appreciated Jobs.
2. Bucking Fastard (dir. Werner Herzog)
Werner Herzog brings his mordant humour, deep philosophising and unique visual stamp to the Biennale again this year. His latest brings sisters Kate Mara and Rooney Mara together to play twin siblings who speak in unison and even dream the same dreams. One of those dreams is to fall for Orlando Bloom, an obsession that spirals out of control and leaves them facing a court case. The great German auteur’s latest was overlooked for a competition spot at Cannes, but it will be one of the big guns vying for a Golden Lion in Venice.
3. Everest: The Other Side (dirs. Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin)
Free Solo directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin pack their crampons and ice axes for another exhilarating journey to the top of the world. Their new doc does for mountaineers what Fire of Love did for volcanologists, following a love story that plays out in extremis. Jim Morrison – not the Doors one – and Hilaree Nelson fall in love and share a dream scale the north face of Everest and skiing down the other side. That’s 12,000 feet. Sounds barmy, right? Chin has called it the ‘skiing equivalent of free-soloing’. Prepare your adrenaline glands accordingly.
4. Wild Horse Nine (dir. Martin McDonagh)
From Bruges and Inisherin to Easter Island, Martin McDonagh’s sideways view of life will be back in abundance in a film that pairs Sam Rockwell and John Malkovich as CIA agents dispatched to Chile’s Pacific island in 1973 for wry ruminations, bitchy backchat and some geopolitical scheming. McDonaugh has a Beckettian command of this sort of existential hangout movie. He’s got Tom Waits, Parker Posey and Steve Buscemi to help propel to this one into the awards chatter.
5. Primetime (dir. Lance Oppenheim)
With The Drama and The Odyssey behind him and this already very viral media thriller ahead, Robert Pattinson is midway through owning the internet this year. In Primetime, he plays Chris Hansen, the American investigative journalist whose efforts to make TV history in 2006 by (en)trapping pedophiles on his segment of NBC’s Dateline show will take us to some deeply unsavoury places. Hansen is already lobbing bricks at Lance Oppenheim’s film and Pattinson’s portrayal of him, which only makes it more of a must-see. Skyler Gisondo, Phoebe Bridgers and Severance’s Merritt Wever co-star.
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