North America's fall festival season is in full swing in the Rockies, which means the moment of truth has arrived for many of the fall movies that are hoping to stir up some awards buzz.
The Toronto International Film Festival doesn’t kick off until Thursday, but the Telluride Film Festival finished its four-day run on Monday, with sneak previews of a number of films that will soon make their way to Canada.
Early verdicts: Tom Hooper’s “The King’s Speech” is the kind of high-class acting showcase almost guaranteed to be a major contender … Danny Boyle’s “127 Hours” is gripping and tough … and Peter Weir’s “The Way Back” deserves a 2010 qualifying run rather than the planned 2011 release.
A roundup:
In the New York Times, A.O. Scott delivers a Telluride summation that includes kind words about “127 Hours” (“jarring, thrilling and weirdly funny”), “The Way Back,” left (“an old-fashioned gravity and grandeur”) and Michaelangelo Frammartino’s “Le Quattro Volte,” for which he reserves his most fulsome praise: “Mr. Frammartino’s eye for both comedy and mystery produces compositions that are so strange and memorable that they seem to reinvent the very act of perception.”
Kris Tapley’s Telluride report, meanwhile, include reviews of “The Way Back” (he loved it) and “The King’s Speech,” which by all accounts is one of the most rapturously-received films of the current festivals. “A wonderful, touching story well told,” says Tapley.
In fact, Pete Hammond has all but guaranteed a Best Picture nomination for the Weinstein Company release: “Harvey’s back in the Oscar game with this one, no doubt.”
“127 Hours,” meanwhile, has been drawing strong reactions from festivalgoers, particularly some who get queasy at what viewers say is a harrowing depiction of the lengths to which hiker Aron Ralston went to free himself when his arm was trapped beneath a boulder. Thompson on Hollywood correspondent Meredith Brody reports that paramedics were called to attend to patrons at two Telluride screenings, in scenes that reminds her of the good old days when moviegoers “were vomiting in the lobby during ‘The Exorcist.’”
Another tough sit, perhaps, is “The Way Back,” the story of an escape from a Soviet gulag in 1940 and the first film from Australian director Peter Weir in seven years. Eugene Novikov wonders if the movie is too grim and graphic to appeal to audiences or voters, but approves anyway: “For those with the fortitude to take the plunge, it offers an intense, morally thorny exploration of the limits of human endurance.”
On the other hand, Tapley jumped into the fray to say that Novikov's review completely misrepresents the movie, which he says is not sadistic, not harrowing and not too painful to endure. "It's nothing you haven't handled before," he tells prospective viewers, and awards voters.
One of the most divisive films of the early festival-going is Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan,” which has wowed many viewers but also found some who think its deliberate melodrama is a bit overheated. Pete Hammond thinks that the Telluride reaction (hearty applause, though not the standing ovation it received in Venice) was telling: “‘Black Swan’ continued steamrolling through this early awards season with its ‘unofficial’ North American premiere Sunday afternoon.” But Tapley was less persuaded: while he praises the film, he warns, "There’s an inherent danger in the material that leaves you at the risk of falling into the precipice of camp, to be frank."
On the other hand, Fox Searchlight – which is releasing “Black Swan” – seems to have an even more polarizing film on its plate: “Never Let Me Go,” Mark Romanek’s adaptation of the Kazuo Ishiguro novel and a film that mixes the pastoral look of a British chamber drama with unsettling sci-fi elements. Gregory Ellwood falls on the negative side of the divide: “the picture's tone is so sad and morose it hinders any real connection for the characters.” But David Poland finds purpose and poignancy in that tone: “It is smart and demanding and emotional and rigorous and profoundly artful.” (For the record, I’m with Poland.)
Catching up with a lower-profile screening in Telluride, Greg Ellwood won’t say too much about Errol Morris’ documentary “Tabloid,” because he doesn’t want to “spoil the fun.” But he definitely thinks this one deserves a distribution deal — which it will likely get after Telluride, when Morris takes his film to Toronto.
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