The Big Picture · Top Five · Discussion · Rankings
September 6, 2023/ 99 min/ Sean Fennessey · Amanda Dobbins
Two festival dispatches and a bet on the season. Amanda works her first European fest at the 80th Venice (Campari, boats, reserved seats) and brings back a ranked five. Sean does four days of altitude and tents at Telluride and brings back his own. Then ten way-too-early Oscar predictions and a best-picture top ten that's mostly still unreleased.
34 films across 6 segments.
AI-generated This episode was transcribed and analyzed with AI models. The matches aren't perfect — expect the occasional misheard title or a link to the wrong film.
Amanda's Venice Fivethe 80th Venice International Film Festival, favorite last
No. 1. Sofia Coppola's Elvis-marriage film with Cailee Spaeny and Jacob Elordi. Amanda extended her trip for the red-carpet premiere and admits she's fully in the bag: vintage Coppola in the Marie Antoinette / Virgin Suicides vein, done well.
No. 2. David Fincher's hitman movie, adapted by Andrew Kevin Walker from the graphic novel. Amanda found it very funny and kept thinking of Sean, a guy in a half-zip with his tunes, trying to get the job done.
No. 3, held back so she and Sean could take it together. Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone's fourth collaboration; both loved it.
No. 4 and the first film Amanda saw. Michael Mann with Adam Driver as Enzo Ferrari and Penélope Cruz; the racing scenes are the draw. Italian festivalgoers were unconvinced by Driver's accent.
No. 5. Bradley Cooper's Leonard Bernstein film. Amanda was moved to tears in stretches, cooler on others, and suspects she liked different things in it than most of the raves did.
The rest of Amanda's Veniceoutside the ranked five
Ryusuke Hamaguchi's follow-up to Drive My Car, a quiet chamber piece and a change of pace after the festival's louder competition titles. Recently passed over as Japan's international feature submission.
Bertrand Bonello's three-timeline film with Léa Seydoux and George MacKay, one of the most acclaimed titles of the festival. Amanda found it Lynch-derivative and didn't connect, but wanted credit for sitting through the whole thing.
Wes Anderson's Roald Dahl short, out of competition. Anderson picked up the Cartier-sponsored Glory to the Filmmaker Award. Classic Wes, and, Amanda argues, correctly not stretched to a feature.
Sean's Telluride Fivethe 50th Telluride Film Festival, favorite last
No. 1 and the best thing Sean saw. Jonathan Glazer's first film in a decade, an Auschwitz-adjacent domestic snapshot loosely off the Martin Amis novel. Harrowing and hard to talk about, possibly the most avant-garde movie ever to land a Best Picture nod.
No. 2. Tran Anh Hung's 19th-century French food romance with Juliette Binoche, one of the more sensual movies made about cooking, filed beside Babette's Feast and Big Night. The emotional inverse of Zone of Interest.
No. 3 and the movie of the festival season, discussed jointly. A hard, big-laughs comedy that lands every swing, with a scene-stealing Mark Ruffalo. Emma Stone already the odds-on Best Actress favorite.
No. 4 and the first film Sean saw. Jeff Nichols's motorcycle-club rise-and-fall with Tom Hardy, Austin Butler, and Jodie Comer's aggressive Chicago accent. Indebted to Scorsese: Goodfellas on motorcycles, reductively speaking.
No. 5. Andrew Haigh's grief drama with Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Claire Foy, and Jamie Bell. The big weepy of the year, though it didn't quite get Sean there. He singles out Jamie Bell.
The rest of Sean's Telluridehonorable mentions and the ones he's mixed on
Kitty Green's outback thriller with Julia Garner and Jessica Henwick as two travelers working a shit-kicker bar in the middle of nowhere. Sean's biggest surprise: a tense, conventionally entertaining movie with a couple of really good ideas.
Alexander Payne back to basics, reuniting with Paul Giamatti for the first time since Sideways as a teacher stuck at a boarding school over the holidays. Softer than Payne's best because he didn't write it; newcomer Dominic Sessa is a discovery.
Emerald Fennell's Oxford class thriller with Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, and a great Rosamund Pike. Gorgeous and wildly indebted to The Talented Mr. Ripley, but, like Promising Young Woman, some script choices left Sean confounded.
George C. Wolfe's biopic of civil-rights organizer Bayard Rustin, with Colman Domingo the reason to watch. Conventional, right-down-the-middle Academy stuff, on Netflix soon.
Free Solo directors Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi's narrative debut, with Annette Bening as the long-distance swimmer and Jodie Foster as her coach. Sean liked learning the sport more than he liked the choices.
Errol Morris's John le Carré documentary, built on le Carré's last-ever interview. Sean says the double-agent theme comes through effectively.
Alice Rohrwacher's film, which Sean liked, good enough that he calls out Josh O'Connor. It screened alongside Rohrwacher's Silver Medallion, one of three handed to directors this year because of the strikes.
The Way-Too-Early Best Picture Top 10Sean's ranking as of September 6, seven of the ten still unreleased
No. 1, and still the Best Picture favorite despite a weekend of festival raves.
No. 2. Played Cannes, goes wide October 20 with no preview screenings; Apple turned down Telluride's request for it.
No. 3. Feels like a nine-or-ten-nomination movie, with Emma Stone out front for Best Actress.
No. 4. The predicted haul narrows to screenplay, Best Actress, and a near-certain Original Song.
No. 5 and the shakiest of the top five: a deeply personal Bradley Cooper movie that Netflix can't campaign while the strikes hold.
No. 6. Played very well to the older Telluride crowd; Sean has notes, but it's the Academy.
No. 7, and the vehicle for Sean's Andrew Scott Best Actor prediction.
No. 8, one of Sean's international picks he treats as a firmer lock than the domestic titles above it.
No. 9. Already released and campaigning, which is exactly why it feels safer than the unseen movies.
No. 10. Neon's Cannes winner, out in October; Sandra Hüller already on the cover of The Hollywood Reporter.
The acting racespredictions built around movies still to come
Anthony Hopkins for Sony Pictures Classics, a Best Actor wild card you never count out.
Cord Jefferson's debut; Jeffrey Wright reportedly excellent, still sight-unseen for both hosts.
Todd Haynes's new one, with Charles Melton hotly tipped in the supporting race.
Named among the contenders still to arrive, alongside a stack of unreleased studio bets.
Also mentioned raised along the way
Still-unseen Best Picture threats The Color PurpleNapoleonSpider-Man: Across the Spider-VerseThe Boys in the Boat
At the festivals, not reviewed WildcatDaddioTuesday
Last year's predictions, revisited Women TalkingAll Quiet on the Western FrontGlass Onion: A Knives Out MysteryTop Gun: MaverickBones and AllCloseSaint OmerHappeningTitaneElvisThe WhaleBardoWhite NoiseEmpire of LightMarriage StoryJojo Rabbit
Comps and touchstones Lost in TranslationMarie AntoinetteThe Virgin SuicidesHouse of GucciDrive My CarUnder the SkinBirthSexy BeastAsteroid CityThe FavouritePromising Young WomanBabylonGone GirlThe Talented Mr. RipleyBabette's FeastBig NightMa Rainey's Black BottomFree SoloThe RescueGoodfellasDownsizingSidewaysElectionNebraskaA Star Is BornGreen BorderThe AssistantMoonlightLady BirdThe MatrixMidnight Cowboy
Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads
TV The GreatThe BearEuphoriaFleabagFormula 1: Drive to SurviveSuccession
Books The FlamethrowersBrideshead Revisited
Ads Netflix FIFA World CupBoar's HeadThe Ringer NFL ShowFanDuelCarvana