Venice 2025: “Bugonia”

A banal chamber-piece whose broad critiques of corporate greed, tech-based paranoia, ecological disaster, and humanity’s overall uselessness as a species feel tired and dated on arrival, Yorgos Lanthimos’ Bugonia sits in some gray middle zone of his filmography, merging the uncomfortable humor, off-kilter realities, and distressing violence of his early films (Dogtooth, The Lobster) with […]

Venice 2025: “La Grazia”

Who owns our days? That question is posed by Dorotea (Anna Ferzetti) to her father, Mariano De Santis, the President of the Italian Republic (Toni Servillo), about a quarter of the way through Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grazia, and— following the Italian filmmaker’s established pattern— is repeated several more times throughout the film’s runtime. Sorrentino has […]