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Highlights of Venice as Film Festival Wraps Up

Julia Roberts made more of an impact on the red carpet than on screen. Tiziana FABI / AFP
Julia Roberts made more of an impact on the red carpet than on screen. Tiziana FABI / AFP
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Highlights of Venice as Film Festival Wraps Up

Julia Roberts made more of an impact on the red carpet than on screen. Tiziana FABI / AFP
Julia Roberts made more of an impact on the red carpet than on screen. Tiziana FABI / AFP

The Venice Film Festival wraps up Saturday with an awards ceremony during which the prestigious Golden Lion for best film will be handed out.

Here are some of the highlights and main talking points of the 11-day festival as chosen by AFP:

Gaza drama

A film about a five-year-old Palestinian girl killed by Israeli troops while fleeing Gaza City last year got the biggest audience reaction of all the premieres -- 23 minutes of applause and audible sobs throughout.

"The Voice of Hind Rajab" from French-Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania premiered on Wednesday just days after thousands of protesters shouting "Stop the genocide!" marched to the gates of the festival in a peaceful demonstration.

- Playing Putin -

Vladimir Putin may profess to be unaware of the film about him starring Jude Law, but the British actor said he had been obsessively watching the Russian leader for his role in "The Wizard of the Kremlin" by French director Olivier Assayas.

Bearing an uncanny resemblance to a younger Putin, Law copies his distinctive walk as well as his trademark deadpan expression -- the "mask" that made the daunting role even harder, the 52-year-old admitted.

Bigelow's bombs

As if the world didn't have enough to worry about, "Zero Dark Thirty" director Kathryn Bigelow wants to remind everyone that we are only a misstep away from nuclear Armageddon.

Her political thriller "A House of Dynamite" put Venice viewers on the edge of their seats, prompting the Hollywood Reporter to write: "You stagger out at the end of it wondering if the world will still be intact."

Stone's shave

Chained up and bloodied for much of her role in sci-fi satire "Bugonia", Oscar winner Emma Stone was pushed to some uncomfortable places by director Yorgos Lanthimos, including a scene in which her head is shaved.

Asked about having a buzzcut on camera -- her hair is now starting to grow out -- the actress said it had its upsides: "It's so much easier than any hairstyle."

The Rock's range

Best known as a muscle-bound action hero in films like the "Fast & Furious" franchise, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson revealed his tender side with a moving performance in "The Smashing Machine" by Benny Safdie.

The wrestler-turned-actor admitted to wanting to stretch himself with the role as a troubled pioneering late-1990s mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter -- and many critics were floored by his success.

Hollywood misfires

Two of the biggest stars on the Venice Lido this year were Julia Roberts, making her first appearance at the Italian festival, and George Clooney.

They certainly brought A-list glamour to the red carpet, but both their films -- unwieldy #MeToo drama "After the Hunt" by Luca Guadagnino and saccharine showbiz study "Jay Kelly" by Noah Baumbach -- fizzled.

Black-and-white beauty

An adaptation of Albert Camus's 1942 novella "The Stranger" by French director Francois Ozon brought the blinding sun and dark shadows of French colonial Algeria into full relief as one of a trio of high-profile black-and-white premieres.

If "Sotto le Nuvole" (Below the Clouds), a sumptuous documentary about Naples by Italy's Gianfranco Rosi, was a feast for the eyes, Julian Schnabel's uneven and -- mostly -- monochrome "In the Hand of Dante" left many scratching their heads.

Veterans honored

Two lifetime achievement awards were bestowed this year, the first on the opening night to eclectic German director Werner Herzog, 83, for his body of more than 70 movies, including his latest documentary "Ghost Elephants".

Hitchcock heroine Kim Novak, the blonde star of "Vertigo", now aged 92, was honored with her own golden gong and a new documentary -- "Kim Novak's Vertigo" -- which revealed how she turned her back on the Hollywood studio system after rising to stardom in the 1950s and '60s.

Best of the rest

Netflix subscribers will soon be able to judge Mexican director Guillermo del Toro's big-budget adaptation of "Frankenstein" for themselves, but critics gave it mostly positive marks.

Hungarian filmmaker Ildiko Enyedi delivered a quietly compelling look at humanity's attempt to understand the natural world, while madcap and darkly satirical Danish drama "The Last Viking" featuring Mads Mikkelsen was a buzzy out-of-competition entry.

South Korean director Park Chan-wook's "No Other Choice", about a job-seeking paper company employee who kills his potential competitors for a new position, also had many fans on the waterfront Venice Lido.

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Entertainment

Anya Taylor-Joy Is Bloodied and Battling in Apple TV’s Crime Thriller ‘Lucky’

This image released by Apple TV shows Anya Taylor-Joy in a scene from "Lucky." (Jessica Brooks/Apple TV via AP)
This image released by Apple TV shows Anya Taylor-Joy in a scene from "Lucky." (Jessica Brooks/Apple TV via AP)
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Anya Taylor-Joy Is Bloodied and Battling in Apple TV’s Crime Thriller ‘Lucky’

This image released by Apple TV shows Anya Taylor-Joy in a scene from "Lucky." (Jessica Brooks/Apple TV via AP)
This image released by Apple TV shows Anya Taylor-Joy in a scene from "Lucky." (Jessica Brooks/Apple TV via AP)

Anya Taylor-Joy finds herself in a familiar setting this summer: In the desert, fighting to stay alive.

She did it in “Furiosa” and the upcoming “Dune: Part Three.” Now she's under the blazing California sun for “Lucky,” a propulsive Apple TV crime thriller that has her trading blows with goons, bloodying her otherworldly face.

“Listen, I’ve been to the desert so many times at this point it’s kind of unreal. I don’t look like a desert creature, and yet I’m always there and I love it,” says the actor. “People like to see me struggle, and they like me to survive. And, luckily, I enjoy doing it, too, so it works out.”

Taylor-Joy plays the title character in an adaptation of Marissa Stapley's novel about a con artist who wakes up in a hotel room and realizes she's been betrayed by a close ally and is forced on the run.

Lucky is soon pursued by both the FBI and a ruthless crime boss over a missing $10 million. Her widowed father isn't much help: He raised her to be a criminal but is now behind bars, only helping from a phone call.

“She’s at an inflection point when we meet her in the book and in the show where she’s got to chart her own course. She’s got to take things into her own hands, and she’s got to really decide how she wants to live her life,” says Lauren Neustadter, an executive producer.

The seven-episode series premieres Wednesday, and even in the first episode, Lucky has to fight her way out the closed trunk of a car and slam a screwdriver into the neck of a bad guy, finding herself alone in the desert. “How can someone so small cause so much trouble?” a goon asks.

“We see this character evolve from beginning to end. She starts off being all about the con, and the question is, ‘Where will that go? How will she evolve and who will she become?’ And I think that it’s one of the things that makes this show so special,” says Neustadter.

The series co-stars Annette Bening, Drew Starkey and Timothy Olyphant, with a female-centric soundtrack that includes a stirring theme song by Fiona Apple and tunes by Sleater-Kinney and Siouxsie Sioux.

Bening plays a cold-blooded mob leader who gets stuck between trying to save her son and tangling with her brutal boss and former lover. She's as likely to order a killing as be executed herself.

“She is an abused woman and she’s an abuser,” Bening says. “So, she’s so intriguing. I thought the writing was really good. And I did want to play this kind of borderline sociopathic woman.”

Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine media company approached Taylor-Joy with the book, asking her to not just consider leading the series as an actor but also offering to make her debut as an executive producer.

“I remember crossing my fingers and thinking, ‘God, I really hope I like this book.’ And then I did and I fell in love with Lucky and I felt that I had something to contribute in this space, which I think if you’re coming on as an executive producer is the feeling that you want to have,” says Taylor-Joy.

The show — created by Jonathan Tropper and written and showrun alongside Cassie Pappas — is a crime thriller but with a family drama at its heart, one that prompts Lucky to wonder if there's another way to live.

“Thematically, that’s what Jonathan and I were really drawn to, is this idea of how much does family affect who you are versus how much can you break that path and write yourself a new one,” says Pappas.

Lucky has grown up grifting with her dad, stealing money-filled envelopes at birthday parties and faking injuries to get free hotel rooms. Now on the run, she leans into those skills to survive but also yearns for a better life.

“We all struggle against sort of the restraints of our past and the baggage we were given by even good parents and getting to a point where we can figure out who we are,” says Tropper. “Hers just has much higher stakes because the act of her trying to figure that out could get her killed.”

For Taylor-Joy, in addition to leaping off trucks, dodging killers and stealing cars onscreen, she got to make casting decisions and advise on the look and sound of the show behind the camera.

“I think we had a wonderful time making it, and I think you can feel that on the screen, despite the screwdrivers through the head,” she says with a laugh.

Entertainment

'Jurassic Park' Star Sam Neill Dies Aged 78

FILE PHOTO: Sam Neill attends a premiere of the television series 'Apples Never Fall', in Los Angeles, California, US March 12, 2024. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Sam Neill attends a premiere of the television series 'Apples Never Fall', in Los Angeles, California, US March 12, 2024. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni/File Photo
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'Jurassic Park' Star Sam Neill Dies Aged 78

FILE PHOTO: Sam Neill attends a premiere of the television series 'Apples Never Fall', in Los Angeles, California, US March 12, 2024. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Sam Neill attends a premiere of the television series 'Apples Never Fall', in Los Angeles, California, US March 12, 2024. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni/File Photo

Sam Neill, a smoothly elegant and versatile actor whose career moved from art film to blockbuster as he dodged velociraptors in “Jurassic Park” to playing Holly Hunter’s husband in “The Piano,” has died. He was 78.

In 2023, Neill disclosed he had been diagnosed with angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma, a rare type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Neill died on Monday in Sydney, according to a statement posted to the actor’s social media page.

His death was “sudden and unexpected,” the statement said, adding that he “remained cancer free” when he died. A cause of death wasn’t specified.

“Sam was surrounded by family and passed with the dignity that has characterized his whole life,” his family wrote.

Neil was one of a host of actors and directors who achieved international fame after an explosion of Australian films that began in the late 1970s, a list that includes Paul Hogan, Mel Gibson, Geoffrey Rush, Russell Crowe, Jane Campion, Peter Weir and Gillian Armstrong. His range was remarkable, playing opposite Helena Bonham Carter in the Alan Ayckbourn comedy “Sweet Revenge” to chopping off Hunter’s finger in “The Piano” to poking his own eyes out in the sci-fi horror “Event Horizon.”

In “Omen III: The Final Conflict,” he played Damien the Antichrist and he also played Cardinal Thomas Wolsey in “The Tudors.”

The actor first came to the attention of international audiences in Armstrong’s 1979 film “My Brilliant Career,” which also introduced Judy Davis. He later appeared in Phillip Noyce’s “Dead Calm,” a classy thriller set at sea and co-starring the then-relatively unknown Nicole Kidman.

Neill twice co-starred with Meryl Streep, in Australian director Fred Schepisi’s “Plenty” and — again for Schepisi — in “A Cry in the Dark,” a film about the sensationalized aftermath of a dingo killing a baby in the Australian Outback.

He earned an Emmy nomination for his performance in the title role of the 1998 mini-series “Merlin” and another as narrator of 2017’s “Wild New Zealand.”

But perhaps he achieved his highest level of fame in “Jurassic Park” playing paleontologist Alan Grant, who is summoned to an island off Costa Rica where a theme park has been built to house herds of cloned dinosaurs. He co-starred alongside Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum and Richard Attenborough.

His character was thoughtful and reasonable, a scientist who warned the mastermind of the theme park before the chaos: “Dinosaurs and man, two species separated by 65 million years of evolution have just been suddenly thrown back into the mix together. How can we possibly have the slightest idea what to expect?”

Grant survived the harrowing events when the creatures get loose, but didn’t return for “The Lost World: Jurassic Park II” in 1997. He came back for the third episode in 2001 and “Jurassic World: Dominion” in 2022.

“It’s probably a little late to learn these things,” he told the Daily New of New York in 2001, “but I finally feel I’ve worked out how to be an action hero. I’m happier with Grant this time. He’s gnarly and grizzled, but he looks like he knows what he’s doing.”

Born in 1947 in Northern Ireland, Neill emigrated to New Zealand at the age of 7. His family settled in Dunedin on the South Island and he was sent to boarding school in Christchurch. After college, he took the lead in “Sleeping Dogs” in 1977, the first feature made in New Zealand in more than a decade.

Neill’s other film roles included playing a Soviet submarine officer who memorably dreams of a home in Montana in “The Hunt for Red October” and an investigator in director John Carpenter’s “In the Mouth of Madness.”

On the small screen, Neill played the malign Chester Campbell in TV’s “Peaky Blinders” and Thomas Jefferson in the four-hour CBS miniseries, “Sally Hemings: An American Tragedy.” On Apple TV+, he was on “Invasion,” playing Oklahoma Sheriff John Bell Tyson, a man late in his career searching for his purpose. In 2024 he starred opposite Annette Bening in the Peacock series “Apples Never Fall.”

His memoir “Did I Ever Tell You This?” came out in March 2023 and he was awarded a knighthood in recognition of his “outstanding contribution to film,” a title approved by the late Queen Elizabeth II.

“I can’t pretend that the last year hasn’t had its dark moments,” Neill told The Guardian in 2023, referring to his cancer diagnosis and treatment. “But those dark moments throw the light into sharp relief, you know, and have made me grateful for every day and immensely grateful for all my friends.”

Entertainment

'Moana' Crashes to Shore with Underwhelming Splash at Box Office

Executive producer Auli’i Cravalho attends the world premiere for the film Moana at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, California, US July 7, 2026. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni
Executive producer Auli’i Cravalho attends the world premiere for the film Moana at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, California, US July 7, 2026. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni
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'Moana' Crashes to Shore with Underwhelming Splash at Box Office

Executive producer Auli’i Cravalho attends the world premiere for the film Moana at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, California, US July 7, 2026. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni
Executive producer Auli’i Cravalho attends the world premiere for the film Moana at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, California, US July 7, 2026. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni

The Walt Disney Company’s live action “Moana” may be the No. 1 movie at the domestic box office, but it did not make a big splash in its first weekend in theaters.

The movie, which cost a reported $250 million to produce, earned just $43 million from ticket sales in the US and Canada, according to studio estimates Sunday.

Internationally, it earned $52 million from 50 markets, adding up to a $95 million global debut, The Associated Press reported.

The studio bet big on “Moana,” one of its most popular franchises. The 2016 animated film is the most watched movie on Disney+. Its sequel, which was stitched together from a planned streaming series, made over $1 billion and scored a Thanksgiving record when it opened with $225 million in 2024.

“Moana 2” was also released just 19 months ago.

This latest “Moana,” directed by Thomas Kail, brings Dwayne Johnson back as the demigod Maui and introduces Catherine Lagaʻaia as the adventuring Polynesian princess. Despite praise for Lagaʻaia, the film set sail on a wave of dismal reviews from critics for being essentially a shot-for-shot remake of the original.

It’s currently sitting at a 34% on Rotten Tomatoes. Audiences, the majority of whom were women (66%), were less negative: According to PostTrak, 63% said they would “definitely” recommend the film to their friends. Parent reactions were even stronger, with 78% saying they would recommend it to other parents. It also got a promising A- CinemaScore.

Disney’s live action remakes of beloved animated films, new and old, have had their share of successes and disappointments. Some have made over $1 billion, including “Lilo & Stitch,” “The Lion King” and “Beauty and the Beast.” Others have floundered, most notably last year’s “Snow White,” which made only $205 million worldwide.

Paul Dergarabedian, the head of marketplace trends for Rentrak, said “Moana's” debut could also be a product of PG-rated oversaturation in the marketplace: Universal’s “Minions & Monsters” was in second place with $20.5 million and “Toy Story 5” was close behind in third place with $18.5 million.

“Families love going to the movies, but right now there are three of them,” Dergarabedian said. “That’s a lot of competition.”

PG-rated films outgrossed others in 2024 and 2025, so “Moana's” performance may not be a case of “family movie fatigue,” he said, but simply shows there can be a ceiling. Families have to make a choice, and after four weekends, “Toy Story 5” is still going strong with a running global total of $879.1 million.

There also are signs that these movies might not sink or swim based on the opening weekend alone. Although “Minions & Monsters” opened below expectations over the Fourth of July holiday, it also had a modest 45% drop this weekend. Its running domestic total is currently sitting at $108.3 million

The weekend’s other big new opener was definitely not PG: The R-rated horror “Evil Dead Burn,” a Warner Bros. release, opened to $13.7 million and landed in fourth place.

Angel Studios’ George Washington movie “Young Washington” rounded out the top five in its second weekend in theaters, with $6.4 million.