This week, with Ryan Lattanzio covering Venice International Film Festival, David Ehrlich joined in “Screenpat“Co-Host Anne Thompson from the mountains of TelluridColorado to discuss the 60 feature line-up for Labor Day Celebration of Cinema.
David gives us early reviews of several films that are already breaking in Venice: he liked Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Bugonia,” With her usual suspected Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons, but wants to see the director become more ambitious next time. He also liked Noah Baumbachs “Jay Kelly,” Where George Clooney plays a version of himself, but would have wanted Adam Sandler to have more to do.
At Telluride, Anne and David are happy to see two book adaptations: Chloé Zhao’s tears “Harbor” with Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley, and Philippa Lowthorpes “H is for Hawk”, with Claire Foy, which is about sadness for a lost child and a father respectively. There are many films from the UK, to some extent to fill in for lack of American titles, and as usual many films that already met at Cannes and Sundance and Berlin.
Anne loved the Sundance title “If I Had Ben I’m I’Med You”, whose star Rose Byrne is one to beat in the best actress Oscar Race. As far as best actors are concerned, Ethan Hawke moves inaccessible in one of two Richard Linklater movies in Telluride, “Blue Moon.” The other is Cannes title “New wave.” It is the first time of the Austin director here.
Other new titles that debut in Telluride are “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere”, starring Jeremy Allen White as the New Jersey rocker during the creation of “Nebraska” and Edward Berger’s “Ballad of a small Player”, with Colin Farrell as a down-and-out-player.
Anne and David agree that the Spate of Cannes titles will play well at Telluride on their path to Oscar, as they did last year, including prize winners “Sentimental Value” from Joachim Trier; “It was just an accident,” from Jafar Panahi; “The Secret Agent”, from Kleber Mendonça Filho; And “Urchin”, from Rookie Harris Dickinson. Frank Dillane also deserves consideration for his performance as an uneven man in Dickinson’s debut for function director.
Is it a strong range? David points out that Venice landed many of the juicy new titles, including Laura Poitra’s documentary “Cover-Up”, about the investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, and wonders why neon has not already acquired it. That movie comes to Telluride. One we still have to wait for? Kathryn Bigelow’s “A House of Dynamite”, traveling to the New York Film Festival next month.
Listen to this week’s section “Screen Talk” below.
