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George Clooney, Brad Pitt are Lone 'Wolfs' at Venice

George Clooney attends a special screening of "The Boys in the Boat" in New York on Dec. 13, 2023. (AP)
George Clooney attends a special screening of "The Boys in the Boat" in New York on Dec. 13, 2023. (AP)
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George Clooney, Brad Pitt are Lone 'Wolfs' at Venice

George Clooney attends a special screening of "The Boys in the Boat" in New York on Dec. 13, 2023. (AP)
George Clooney attends a special screening of "The Boys in the Boat" in New York on Dec. 13, 2023. (AP)

Hollywood's two top leading men -- George Clooney and Brad Pitt -- promise to set the Venice Film Festival alight on Sunday with the premiere of their new film "Wolfs".
The action comedy, pitting one professional "lone wolf" fixer against another, is one of the highlights of the 10-day festival, where it is playing out of competition on the glamorous Lido, AFP reported.
Fans will be sure to await the arrival of the dashing movie stars by water taxi from Venice, with a world premiere scheduled for Sunday evening.
The 81st edition of the world's oldest film festival has been awash with stars this year, with Clooney and Pitt following on the red carpet Nicole Kidman, Cate Blanchett and Angelina Jolie -- Pitt's ex-wife.
Expected Monday will be Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton, starring in a new film from Spain's Pedro Almodovar, while Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix will dominate Wednesday's festivities with the premiere of the sequel to "Joker", "Joker: Folie a Deux".
In the Apple TV+ production from US director Jon Watts, Clooney and Pitt play professional "lone wolf" fixers forced to work together when both are called in to clean up after a high-profile crime.
More than colleagues, Clooney and Pitt are accomplices, with an easy rapport and self-deprecating humor that the Coen brothers tapped in 2008's "Burn After Reading", or on display in the trilogy of heist films "Ocean's Eleven" (2001-2007).
With "Wolfs", the characters "find their night spiraling out of control in ways that neither one of them expected", explains the production, which has already announced a sequel.
Watts comes to "Wolfs" after directing the "Spider-Man: Homecoming" trilogy starring Tom Holland and Zendaya.
The film will have only a limited theatrical release before going to streaming around the world on Apple TV+ September 27.
Sunday's offerings also include the premiere of "The Brutalist" from US director Brady Corbet, a three-and-a-half-hour film that sees Adrien Brody play a Hungarian Jewish architect embarking on a life-changing project.
On Monday, Almodovar returns to the Lido with his first full-length film in English, "The Room Next Door", with Moore and Swinton, while Daniel Craig is the star of Tuesday's premiere of "Queer", an adaptation of the William Burroughs novel set in 1940s Mexico City.

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Movie Review: Coon, Olsen and Lyonne Await a Father’s Death in ‘His Three Daughters’ 

This image released by Netflix shows, from left, Elizabeth Olsen, Carrie Coon and Natasha Lyonne in a scene from "His Three Daughters." (Netflix via AP)
This image released by Netflix shows, from left, Elizabeth Olsen, Carrie Coon and Natasha Lyonne in a scene from "His Three Daughters." (Netflix via AP)
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Movie Review: Coon, Olsen and Lyonne Await a Father’s Death in ‘His Three Daughters’ 

This image released by Netflix shows, from left, Elizabeth Olsen, Carrie Coon and Natasha Lyonne in a scene from "His Three Daughters." (Netflix via AP)
This image released by Netflix shows, from left, Elizabeth Olsen, Carrie Coon and Natasha Lyonne in a scene from "His Three Daughters." (Netflix via AP)

Death isn’t like it is in the movies, a character explains in “His Three Daughters.” Elizabeth Olsen’s Christina is telling her sisters, Katie (Carrie Coon) and Rachel (Natasha Lyonne), a story about their father, who became particularly agitated one evening while watching a movie on television in the aftermath of his wife’s passing.

It’s not exactly a fun memory, or present, for any of them. This is, after all, also a movie about death.

The three women have gathered in their father’s small New York apartment for his final days. He’s barely conscious, confined to a room that they take shifts monitoring as they wait out this agonizingly unspecific clock. But even absent the stresses of hospice, tensions would be high for Christina, Katie and Rachel, estranged and almost strangers who are about to lose the one thread still binding them. Taken together, it’s a pressure cooker and a wonderful showcase for three talented actors.

Writer-director Azazel Jacobs has scripted and filmed “His Three Daughters,” streaming Friday on Netflix, like a play. The dialogue often sounds more scripted than conversational (except for Lyonne, who makes everything sound her own); the locations are confined essentially to a handful of rooms in the apartment, with the communal courtyard providing the tiniest bit of breathing room.

Jacobs drops the audience into the middle of things, dolling out background and information slowly and purposefully. Coon’s Katie gets the first word, a monologue really, about the state of things as she sees it and how this is going to work. She’s the eldest, a type-A ball of anxiety, the mother of a difficult teenage daughter and the type of person who can barely conceal either disappointment or deep resentment.

Katie also lives in Brooklyn, not far from her father, but rarely ever visited. Caretaking duties were left to Lyonne’s Rachel, an unemployed stoner who never left home, likes to bet on football games and is poised to inherit the apartment – to the not-so-subtle resentment of her sisters. The youngest is Christina, a head-in-the-clouds, conflict averse yogi and Grateful Dead follower who lives across the country and has had to leave her 3-year-old for the first time.

Jacobs is unafraid of allowing both drama and humor to coexist, to seep into moments unexpectedly. There is an undeniable absurdity to the act of writing an obituary for a loved one in a fraught time like hospice that actually captures a life and a person and doesn’t sound like a laundry list of biographical facts and positive attributes. Add to that the fact that Katie is also frantically trying to get a medical professional to the apartment to witness a DNR order. The women are torn in premature grief, wanting him to stay alive but also go quickly.

They’re all richly drawn and perfectly mysterious too, even to themselves; Jacobs is too smart and attuned to how humans are to give anyone a simple, straightforward explanation. Everyone is making assumptions about others — many of them are wrong, or, at the very least misguided. Coon, with her booming, theatrical voice, is particularly suited playing this slightly terrifying, massively judgmental perfectionist. Lyonne, so good at cool deflection, gets to use that otherworldliness to hit a different kind of note: quiet heartbreak. And Olsen, playing a character, really shines in her non-verbal choices: A reaction, a moment alone that she doesn’t know is being observed. It won’t be surprising if any or all get some recognition this awards season (unfortunately in a system that is uniquely ill-equipped to fete small ensembles with three leads).

There are some movies that die quiet deaths on streaming-first (this did receive a bit of a theatrical run), but “His Three Daughters” is one that seems right on Netflix just for its ability to reach a larger audience than it would stand a chance to at the multiplex. It’s never not riveting watching it all unfold, even with the temptation of the phone nearby. Whether you make it a solo viewing experience or a group one might have everything to do with your own relationship with family members.

And to that initial indictment about movies not getting death right? It’s still probably true. But movies like “His Three Daughters” might help us all make a little bit more sense of the inevitable.