‘First Man’ soars as the Venice International Film Festival opens

Erik Anderson August 29, 2018

The 75th Venice International Film Festival kicked off with the world premiere of First Man from Academy Award winner Damien Chazelle. The film is his follow-up to his Best Director-winning La La Land.

Reviews came in and were largely positive, if a bit more on the sheer spectacle and audacity of the film’s look and structure than the performances.

So FIRST MAN is basically a ‘respectable’ dad-udrama with solid technical specs and the occasional bubble of something more, but to those falling all over to praise it, I ask — how many of you would ever pay to see it a second time?
— Ben Croll (@becroll) August 29, 2018

Those unfashionably human-centred studio movies for grownups that we keep calling for? FIRST MAN reports for duty. Canny blend of dizzy-making astro-spectacle and humble domestic drama, with Gosling deftly playing against his own charisma.
— Guy Lodge (@GuyLodge) August 29, 2018

Damien Chazelle’s #FirstMan desperately tries to inject human drama into the Moon landing saga, but doesn’t quite stick the landing #Venezia75 https://t.co/ArW6UijjlO
— Little White Lies (@LWLies) August 29, 2018

Timed for the film’s premiere, here is a brand new trailer for First Man.

Vanessa Redgrave, with her Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement

Academy Award-winning actress Vanessa Redgrave received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. The prize coincides with a screening of her newest film, The Aspen Papers, directed by Julien Landais. Landais directed the film from a script he wrote with Jean Pavans and Hannah Bhuiya, which is based on Pavans’ adaptation of the novella by Henry James. Poppy Delevingne, Jon Kortajarena and Lois Robbins co-star alongside Morgane Polanski, Barbara Meier, Alice Aufray, and Nicolas Hau.

Cohen Media will release the film in the U.S.

This is the second Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement of the 75th Venice Film Festival. As already announced, the Golden Lion to a director has been awarded to David Cronenberg. Each year La Biennale assigns two Golden Lions for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Film Festival: the first is awarded to a director, the second to an actor or actress.

“I am astonished and especially delighted to be awarded by the Venice Film Festival for a life’s work in film,” said Redgrave. “Last summer I was filming in Venice in The Aspern Papers. Many many years ago I filmed La vacanza in the marshes of the Veneto. My character spoke every word in the Venetian dialect. I bet I am the only non-Italian actress to act an entire role in Venetian dialect! Thank you a million times, dear Festival!.”

Author
Recent Posts

Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.