Venice 2024: Best of the Fest – Brady Corbet’s ‘The Brutalist’ By a Mile

Venice 2024: Best of the Fest – Brady Corbet’s ‘The Brutalist’ By a Mile

by Alex Billington
September 16, 2024

2024 Venice Film Festival

Each year, I am honored to have a chance to return to the beautiful city of Venice in Northern Italy to attend the Venice Film Festival and catch the latest films premiering there. This year’s festival ended up being a mostly low-key, fairly uneventful event. Much like Cannes earlier in the summer, most critics went home wondering why it was such an unimpressive year. it’s time to present my picks of my favorite films from Venice 2024. I’ve chosen only 6 of the best of the fest films that deserve to be highlighted – it’s just not a “Top 10” year for fests. This was my eighth year returning to Venice, and I’m always glad to be back, even if there aren’t a ton of great films. In total, I watched around 34 films at Venice this year, unfortunately only a handful of them were worthy. Brady Corbet’s epic The Brutalist is the best film by a mile – nothing else is even remotely close to being in its league. It’s a towering, monumental, majestic masterpiece and I’m glad we had the chance to experience it together at the festival during its initial unveiling. I always do my best to watch as many films as I can, hoping to find any hidden gems and breakout hits amidst the global selection.

As always, I keep my Letterboxd page updated with screenings and comments daily. And I have also been posting thoughts, photos, and more updates on my main Twitter account @firstshowing during the fest. And I’ve been writing reviews for a number of the films, already published over the last few weeks. Digging into the 2024 selection, there are a few more that deserve to be mentioned here. Andres Veiel’s documentary Riefenstahl is a doozy (my review) – unquestionably clear in showing the truth about her. The time capsule doc One to One: John & Yoko is also very good. The French film My Everything (Mon Inséparable) starring Laure Calamy is also a winner, along with the charming Familiar Touch (which won a bunch of awards). I also enjoyed both The Order and Babygirl, but neither one made the cut for this list. So many let downs: Queer, 2073, Pavements, Joker: Folie à Deux, Stranger Eyes, Wolfs, Harvest, and Apocalypse in the Tropics were not that good. I missed September 5 but will catch it later. I’m always up for chatting about any of the films from the festival, even the ones I didn’t like can be discussed further anytime. Here we go…

Below are my Top 6 films from the 2024 Venice Film Festival; these are the films that I enjoyed the most, or those that I couldn’t stop thinking about, and I hope everyone else gives them a look, too. My favorites:

The Brutalist – Directed by Brady Corbet

Venice - The Brutalist

The Brutalist is a masterpiece. An irrefutably magnificent film. Everything you could want out of cinema and beyond. An exhilarating, entrancing, grandiose cinematic experience – shot on VistaVision 35mm film, printed on 70mm, projected like they used to in the old days. There’s an intermission but it’s in the middle of this story and it felt like I was holding my breath for 15 minutes waiting for it to continue so I could see what happens next to László. Co-written by Brady Corbet and his wife Mona Fastvold, directed by maestro Brady Corbet, The Brutalist stars Adrien Brody in a better-than-ever role as Holocaust survivor László Tóth, who is also a famous architect. After the war ends he arrives in America, and tries to find work, barely getting along thanks to greed and xenophobia. This powerful film also features an all-timer score by Daniel Blumberg. Brody also gives an all-timer performance that is so deep and profound. He is matched by Guy Pearce as Harrison Lee Van Buren, a wealthy industrialist who becomes his employer as they try to build a magnificent building together. Nothing else at Venice came close to matching how phenomenal this film is…

The Room Next Door – Directed by Pedro Almodóvar

Venice - The Room Next Door

Even though this seems to be getting mixed reviews from most critics (huh), I enjoyed it. I have been saying this since the premiere at the festival – perhaps one reason I enjoyed it so much is because it’s not the same as most of Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar’s previous films, and not just because it’s his first fully English-language feature film. Some critics are claiming he won the Golden Lion for this film because they finally wanted to give him one after all of his other great films over the years (which didn’t win). However, I really do think this is a lovely film that shows us that it is still important to find joy and happiness even with darkness and death is approaching. This is key with the two exceptional lead performances by Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton as old friends. The film also really won me over because it’s so obviously about climate change yet not as doom & gloom as most stories and that is quite refreshing to encounter these days.

Boomerang – Directed by Shahab Fotouhi

Venice - Boomerang

Easily one of the best discoveries in the entire Venice 2024 selection! Not enough people are talking about it! The least I can do is bring more attention to it and hopefully more people will watch it. Shahab Fotouhi’s Boomerang has it all: an Iranian Timothée Chalamet (played by Ali Hanafian as the boy named Keyvan), an amazing electro soundtrack enhancing the vividness of the city, meticulously composed cinematography of Tehran, a few fun dance scenes, amusing arguments, clever comedy, and so much more. This is top notch filmmaking, a rejuvenating work of art that represents an optimistic future for Tehran that is so needed. I really loved discovering this film and cannot wait get my hands on this funky cool electro music in it. There’s a score by Panagiotis Mina that is so distinct and catchy that I’m still humming the songs, hoping one day I can listen to the album over and over. Keep an eye out for this little film whenever it shows up in your area.

Happyend – Directed by Neo Sora

Venice - Happyend

Even if this isn’t one of the best films this year, I’m still thinking about this film all these days later. I can’t get it out of my head – which usually means there’s something to it. Mainly it’s because of the people in it. This cast and this group of friends are the best. I think the film gets a bit messy in the second half, losing its focus, but I like the vibes, I really dig the modern cinema freshness of it all. The car prank is hilarious, the soundtrack is rad (always more techno in films!!) and the main performances are fantastic. The camaraderie and dynamic between these main group of actors really makes this film work: Hayato Kurihara, Yukito Hidaka, Yuta Hayashi, Shina Peng, Arazi, and Kilala Inori. This movie is made by a clearly talented filmmaker who will keep making better and better films with each new one he makes. A good start (his first narrative feature film after a bunch of Ryuichi Sakamoto docs) but let’s see what he will cook up for us next.

Cloud – Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Venice - Cloud

One of my favorite “WTF am I watching?!” experiences at the Venice Film Festival. Mostly because when it starts up, you have no idea where it’s going next – which seems to be the signature of the storytelling from acclaimed Japanese filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Cloud is written and directed by Kurosawa and it’s his second film out this year following the cult favorite Chime. Cloud followers a rather careless young Japanese guy named Ryôsuke Yoshii, played by Masaki Suda, who resells high value items online to make money. Things start to get weird when some of the angry buyers show up to confront him. There’s an incredible 25-minute action sequence at the end of this that I was not expecting at all, and the ending brings it all together in a really fascinating “ohh shit!” moment. What a picture. This one kept me intrigued, impressed me, and left me wanting to jump right into applause at the end. We need more vigorous distinct filmmaking like this.

Kill the Jockey – Directed by Luis Ortega

Venice - Kill the Jockey

Aki Kaurismäki by way of Argentina! Another favorite encounter. Yet another delightful surprise in the Main Competition line-up at the 2024 Venice Film Festival. The latest film from Argentinian filmmaker Luis Ortega, Kill the Jockey (aka El Jockey) follows a horse racing jockey named Remo – starring the superbly talented Nahuel Pérez Biscayart in this dynamic lead role. One of the best parts of this festival discovery is all of the classic Argentinian songs used throughout – from musicians like Nino Bravo, Leo Dan, Sandro, and Palito Ortega. Along with a few breakout dance scenes that made me want to breakout into applause. This clever, stylish film is a minimalistic exercise in cinematic storytelling that excels in almost every way. It may skip a few beats at the end, but it still rocks the rest of the time. Best of all – it’s a brisk 96 minutes that doesn’t waste any time racing along, making it a breezy, entertaining, satisfying South American experience.

Recapping the entire festival, it was a pretty bad year overall. One of the most unexciting & unimpressive line-ups in the 8 years I’ve been attending. Even with Pedro Almodovar’s film winning the Golden Lion, I still don’t think that was the right choice. I’m partial to The Brutalist – which is a real masterpiece and a major moment in cinema. It will have a much, much greatest impact on cinema than The Room Next Door. In fact, I’m sure with time everyone is going to look back at 2024 and think “how did they not give the Golden Lion to The Brutalist, of all years?!” How could this happen? I’m not sure either… I bet even the rest of jury will appreciate it more with time (and maybe with another rewatch). Yes it’s a very long film, but it is majestic and grand – it will live on side-by-side next to There Will Be Blood as one of the greatest works in American cinema. As for the rest of the films, there will be plenty that end up finding audiences & achieving success outside of Venice. And I’m glad that there were a handful of great films to discover. But something is really off with film festivals this year. Something is wrong with their line-up, the vibes, the hype, and it’s hard to properly discuss because most people ignore this truth. They just want to watch some good films and as long as they see a few there’s nothing to complain about. Not me. I’m still happy to be back to Venice, I’m always happy to have this opportunity to watch so many exciting new films – I just wish they were better…

And that’s it for Venice 2024 (aka #Venezia81), wrapping up our updates from the fest for this year. As already mentioned before, Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door won the Golden Lion – check the full list of 2024 awards winners here. My coverage wraps up with this list of favorites and final thoughts on the films this year. I’m very much looking forward to returning to Venice again in 2025, one of the best festivals in the world. I’m always ready to spend more time in this iconic Italian city and immerse myself in the latest films.

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