Hey, did you get that I kinda liked “Black Swan?”
I hope you did, because it’s really the only thing to write home (or, indeed, to you) about from my first official day at the Venice Film Festival – a day that looked better on paper than in practice, owing a little each to the films themselves, scheduling overlaps in the programme and my own neglect and/or incompetence. (I willingly sacrificed one screening slot to write my “Black Swan” review, but the next was less sensibly given over to a red-herring panic attack over a missing passport that, as it turned out, was merely out on an errand.)
Having missed Robert Rodriguez’s “Machete” for the less stupid of those reasons, I attempted to catch up with it at its midnight show an hour ago, but after spending 30 minutes standing in a motionless queue for a screening that was already running significantly late, I concluded that while there are some films I’d be willing to go to bed at 3 a.m. for, one directed by Mr. Rodriguez doesn’t really fit that description, however much fun several critics say it is. Hey, I tried. (Here’s Anne Thompson’s enthusiastic take on it.)