Best of the Fall Fests: THR’s Critics Picks

VENICE, TORONTO

Documaker Gianfranco Rosi returns to his native Italy for this stunningly shot look at life at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, then and now. The film surveys Pompeii’s prized ruins; ventures into the tunnels beneath them, dug by tomb robbers selling antiquities on the black market; hovers over the Gulf of Naples to reveal a region in danger if Vesuvius ever erupts again; visits a call center as residents fear the worst after an earthquake; and hops back outside to find local youths setting fire to the streets. It’s a portrait of a place forever on the brink of disaster. — JORDAN MINTZER

VENICE, TELLURIDE, TORONTO

Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus’ doc brings prominent investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, still going strong at 88, into exhilarating focus. The film moves between past and present with a fitting sense of discovery and momentousness, Maya Shenfeld’s score pulsing with suspense. Hersh himself is thoroughly engaging — by turns charming, surly and vulnerable — while evocative vintage footage helps illuminate his key areas of revelation, among them the CIA’s domestic spying, Watergate and the Iraq War. — SHERI LINDEN

TORONTO

The overcrowded “unraveling woman” subgenre gets a shot in the arm with this lush, hypnotic character study from Swiss-Argentinian filmmaker Milagros Mumenthaler. Conjuring the troubled inner life of a young, beautiful and successful Buenos Aires fashion designer with an uncommon mix of stylistic rigor and feeling, the film frays your nerves. But it also stirs your emotions, deploying bold colors, an immersive soundscape that mingles a spectrum of ambient noise with surges of classical music and a lead performance of riveting translucency. — JON FROSCH

VENICE

Jim Jarmusch has been doing his idiosyncratic thing for so long, we sometimes take him for granted. But then he comes along with a film as delicate and lovely, as singular and perfectly realized as this one (winner of the Golden Lion) and quietly floors you. What makes the triptych of thematically connected snapshots — set in the Northeast U.S., Dublin and Paris — so memorable is its deftly unfussy observation of the unknowability that can endure among people who share the same bloodlines. The superb ensemble includes Adam Driver, Cate Blanchett, Tom Waits and Indya Moore. — DAVID ROONEY

VENICE, TORONTO

Guillermo del Toro’s sumptuous adaptation of Mary Shelley’s novel is, of course, a film of heady sensorial pleasures. But it also has a dazzling emotional force thanks in large part to its two leads. Oscar Isaac plays the titular scientist with the intensity of a tortured artist, his arrogance steadily consumed by remorse; and Jacob Elordi, as the Creature, gives a revelatory performance notable for its expressive physicality but even more so for its innocence, its deep yearning and the crushing sense of emptiness that follows as he comes to understand who and what he is. — D.R.

VENICE, TELLURIDE

Paolo Sorrentino imagines the final days in office of a fictional Italian president (a marvelous Toni Servillo, Venice’s best actor winner) in this exquisite character study. The absence of corruption and scandal makes it a revitalizing break from real-world concerns, without in any way veering into sappy idealism. By the director’s standards, this is a sober, distinctly mature film, but it still boasts the customary creative arias, the witty humor and visual delights that have distinguished his best work. — D.R.

TELLURIDE, TORONTO

Chloé Zhao’s adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel, a fictionalized account of Shakespeare and his wife as they fall in love, start a family and face unexpected tragedy, is a gorgeous tearjerker. Paul Mescal is wonderful as the Bard, underplaying when one might expect him to go big — which makes the moments he does explode all the more impactful. But it’s Jessie Buckley who really stuns as Agnes, grounding a character who could have seemed too ethereal in raw feeling. Zhao’s eye for natural grandeur shines through, as does her attention to detail. — ANGIE HAN

VENICE

Kathryn Bigelow’s unrelenting choke-hold thriller is so controlled, kinetic and immersive that you stagger out at the end wondering if the world is intact. Capturing from multiple perspectives the White House response to an unattributed missile launch headed for a major U.S. city in the 20 minutes until projected impact, the film is of a piece with Bigelow’s later-career gut punches, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty. The ensemble, featuring Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, Jason Clarke and Greta Lee, has no weak link. — D.R.

VENICE, TORONTO

The superb first nonfiction feature from Argentinian director Lucrecia Martel focuses on the killing of an Indigenous community leader by white landowners in northwest Argentina. It’s a searing, detailed chronicle of murder, bigotry and robbery on a massive scale. It’s also — and this is rare for a true-crime doc — filled with flashes of visual splendor, as the camera rises to a bird’s-eye view to reveal the scope of the land in question, reminding that what’s at stake is not only an entire people’s culture but nature itself. — J.M.

VENICE, TORONTO

Mads Mikkelsen brings a deadpan look and lots of grace to his role as a psychologically troubled man who insists he’s John Lennon in the latest from Denmark’s Anders Thomas Jensen. It’s an absurdist black comedy that’s also a heist story marked by bloody violence, knockabout slapstick and a theme of family bonds. Few would be able to juggle genres and navigate shifts in tone as fluidly as Jensen does; on paper, none of it should work, but the film is consistently entertaining, weird and ultimately touching. — CARYN JAMES

TORONTO

John Early’s goofy yet poignant directorial debut, about a woman chef (played by Early himself) who hides her eating disorder from her husband and friends, is like a Lifetime movie made by Comedy Central, marrying a somber premise with playfully absurd twists. Via visual gags, a cast of gifted comic actors and a script that pulls both from ’80s and ’90s TV movies and screen classics like Suddenly, Last Summer and The Children’s Hour, Maddie’s Secret straddles the line between comedy and melodrama, creating a wholly unique cinematic experience. — JOURDAINSEARLES

VENICE

Picture Brokeback Mountain crossed with a gruesome episode of Narcos: Mexico, then filled with enough sex and nudity to earn an NC-17 rating, and you’ll get an inkling of David Pablos’ transgressive genre flick. As tough as that pitch may sound, what’s most surprising about this Mexican film (Diego Luna is a producer) is how tender and moving it is. The setting is a long highway to hell, yet amid the violence, blood and other bodily fluids lies a deeply felt romance about two men who find each other in a very dark place. — J.M.

VENICE

This profound, piercing documentary from 78-year-old Ross McElwee, like most of his work, juxtaposes two seemingly unrelated things: his son Adrian’s battles with addiction and mental health, resulting in his death from an overdose in 2016; and a Hollywood director trying to turn McElwee’s 1985 doc, Sherman’s March, into a feature-length comedy. Both strands are about legacy — about what you create and leave behind — and the viewer gradually realizes that McElwee is reflecting on the impossibility of getting to remake your own life. — J.M.

VENICE, TORONTO

The third feature from Macedonian director Tamara Kotevska (Honeyland) — part nature film, part parable, part ground-level snapshot of downward-spiraling economies — is a doc set in a village where farmers, whose numbers have been dwindling, coexist with the largest white stork population in North Macedonia. An absolute charmer, the film is an affecting look at the human-avian bond, with all its mysteries, warmth and ungainly practicalities. — S.L.

VENICE, TORONTO

In her soul-shaking film, Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania dramatizes the hours of Jan. 29, 2024, when Palestine Red Crescent volunteers tried to calm a terrified 6-year-old girl and get an ambulance to her in Gaza as Israeli tanks surrounded the car she was in. Ben Hania lights a connective fuse between documentary and drama, using the actual recordings of the panicked girl and the emergency workers — the latter played by actors who hold the screen with pulsing immediacy. — S.L.

This story appeared in the Sept. 10 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.