Clockwise from top right: 'The Currents,' 'A House of Dynamite,' 'Cover-Up' and 'Hamnet.' Courtesy of TIFF; Eros Hoagland/Netflix; Agata Grzybowska/FOCUS FEATURES Share on Facebook Share on X Share to Flipboard Send an Email Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Print the Article Post a Comment Below the Clouds VENICE, TORONTO Documaker Gianfranco Rosi returns to his native Italy for this stunningly shot look at life at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, then and now. The film surveys Pompeii's prized ruins; ventures into the tunnels beneath them, dug by tomb robbers selling antiquities on the black market; hovers over the Gulf of Naples to reveal a region in danger if Vesuvius ever erupts again; visits a call center as residents fear the worst after an earthquake; and hops back outside to find local youths setting fire to the streets. It's a portrait of a place forever on the brink of disaster. - JORDAN MINTZER Related Stories Movies 'Adulthood' Review: Alex Winter's Dark Family Satire Is Not Exactly an Excellent Adventure Movies 'Ghost Elephants' Review: Werner Herzog Remains Our Most Intrepid Interdimensional Explorer in Beguilingly Spiritual Nature Doc Cover-Up VENICE, TELLURIDE, TORONTO Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus' doc brings prominent investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, still going strong at 88, into exhilarating focus. The film moves between past and present with a fitting sense of discovery and momentousness, Maya Shenfeld's score pulsing with suspense. Hersh himself is thoroughly engaging - by turns charming, surly and vulnerable - while evocative vintage footage helps illuminate his key areas of revelation, among them the CIA's domestic spying, Watergate and the Iraq War. - SHERI LINDEN The Currents TORONTO The overcrowded "unraveling woman" subgenre gets a shot in the arm with this lush, hypnotic character study from Swiss-Argentinian filmmaker Milagros Mumenthaler. Conjuring the troubled inner life of a young, beautiful and successful Buenos Aires fashion designer with an uncommon mix of stylistic rigor and feeling, the film frays your nerves. But it also stirs your emotions, deploying bold colors, an immersive soundscape that mingles a spectrum of ambient noise with surges of classical music and a lead performance of riveting translucency. - JON FROSCH Father Mother Sister Brother VENICE Jim Jarmusch has been doing his idiosyncratic thing for so long, we sometimes take him for granted. But then he comes along with a film as delicate and lovely, as singular and perfectly realized as this one (winner of the Golden Lion) and quietly floors you. What makes the triptych of thematically connected snapshots - set in the Northeast U.S., Dublin and Paris - so memorable is its deftly unfussy observation of the unknowability that can endure among people who share the same bloodlines. The superb ensemble includes Adam Driver, Cate Blanchett, Tom Waits and Indya Moore. - DAVID ROONEY Frankenstein VENICE, TORONTO Guillermo del Toro's sumptuous adaptation of Mary Shelley's novel is, of course, a film of heady sensorial pleasures. But it also has a dazzling emotional force thanks in large part to its two leads. Oscar Isaac plays the titular scientist with the intensity of a tortured artist, his arrogance steadily consumed by remorse; and Jacob Elordi, as the Creature, gives a revelatory performance notable for its expressive physicality but even more so for its innocence, its deep yearning and the crushing sense of emptiness that follows as he comes to understand who and what he is. - D.R. La Grazia VENICE, TELLURIDE Paolo Sorrentino imagines the final days in office of a fictional Italian president (a marvelous Toni Servillo, Venice's best actor winner) in this exquisite character study. The absence of corruption and scandal makes it a revitalizing break from real-world concerns, without in any way veering into sappy idealism. By the director's standards, this is a sober, distinctly mature film, but it still boasts the customary creative arias, the witty humor and visual delights that have distinguished his best work. - D.R. Hamnet TELLURIDE, TORONTO Chloé Zhao's adaptation of Maggie O'Farrell's novel, a fictionalized account of Shakespeare and his wife as they fall in love, start a family and face unexpected tragedy, is a gorgeous tearjerker. Paul Mescal is wonderful as the Bard, underplaying when one might expect him to go big - which makes the moments he does explode all the more impactful. But it's Jessie Buckley who really stuns as Agnes, grounding a character who could have seemed too ethereal in raw feeling. Zhao's eye for natural grandeur shines through, as does her attention to detail. - ANGIE HAN A House of Dynamite VENICE Kathryn Bigelow's unrelenting choke-hold thriller is so controlled, kinetic and immersive that you stagger out at the end wondering if the world is intact. Capturing from multiple perspectives the White