A Streamer's Guide to Fall Fests

Prep for the season's premieres

By the time this newsletter goes out, the fall film festival will be underway. my compatriots in Venice will be starting their press and industry screenings, the closely guarded (yet open secret) Telluride lineup will drop, and we’ll be off to the races for the home stretch of a very weird movie year. There will probably be less hubbub around red carpets this year given the SAG-AFTRA strike, though some productions have secured waivers for promotion given their funding outside the AMPTP.

But that’s no reason to tune out! I will join you in having festival FOMO this September (I’m skipping Venice this year in favor of a dear friend’s wedding), so we’re very much in the same boat as we can look to prep for what’s coming down the pipeline. If you can’t be on the Lido in Venice, on a gondola in Telluride, or riding the giant Scotiabank escalators in Toronto, you can stream the previous works of directors looking to strike it big in 2023.

Nikolaj Arcel, The Promised Land (Venice/Toronto)

I normally wouldn’t get too jazzed for an 18th-century Danish period piece like The Promised Land, but the last time Nikolaj Arcel teamed up with Mads Mikkelsen, they gave us A Royal Affair. I am historically averse to costume dramas, but this torrid love triangle really got me. Mikkelsen features as a liberal reformer who woos the king and beds the queen (played by a then-upstart Alicia Vikander). I found it a very engaging political and romantic drama whose concerns don’t feel tied up in mothballs.

A Royal Affair is available on Max.

Bertrand Bonello, The Beast (Venice/Toronto/New York)

I asked someone in the know what movie they thought was most poised for a breakout on the festival circuit, and their answer was Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast. Anything with the versatile Léa Seydoux deserves our attention, and doubly so when it’s a sci-fi melodrama spanning over a century. I’m always a bit intrigued by Bonello’s work, if not fully enthralled. Perhaps the closest I’ve come to “getting” him is in his polarizing Nocturama, the oddest teen hangout movie you’ll ever see. It might seem odd to make a vibes movie about young radicals committing acts of terrorism in contemporary Paris and not present much in the way of context, but it totally works here — Bonello allows you to fill the spaces and surfaces with all your thoughts about what he’s deliberately withholding.

Nocturama is available to rent.

Sofia Coppola, Priscilla (Venice/New York)

I was still trying to shake the Bazmatazz out of my eyes from last year’s Austin Butler-starring biopic Elvis that I didn’t even process what it meant for Sofia Coppola to be making Priscilla, a film about his first wife. Thanks to my newsletter guest Hannah Strong for connecting the dots for me earlier this summer when we discussed The Bling Ring: “There will be elements of On the Rocks with a troubled marriage, the antiquated South with The Beguiled, fame and infamy with The Bling Ring […] I'm really happy she's revisiting that subject.”

The Beguiled is available on Netflix.

Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Nyad (Telluride/Toronto)

I stand in solidarity with

Hunter Harris

that the role that should win Annette Bening the Oscar she deserves is playing Elizabeth Warren, specifically at this moment. But she’s going to make a strong run for the trophy this year with Nyad, a story of a sexagenarian swimmer who completed an improbable journey from Cuba to Florida. If it sounds like classic Oscar bait, I will float that it is directed by the documentary team behind Free Solo! I doubted the movie could be as good as hyped for months, and I was totally blown away not only by how they filmed athletic achievement but also by how they got into the psychology of what might inspire someone to undertake such an effort in the first place.

Free Solo is available on Disney+ and Hulu.

Michel Franco, Memory (Venice/Toronto)

Were it not for the recent Oscar win and the ability to punch her ticket for seemingly anything, I’d probably think twice about getting too excited for the Jessica Chastain-starring Memory. Knowing what I know about Michel Franco, the prolific Mexican director who I would not hesitate to declare a sadist and miserabilist, there’s probably some dour twist to the story of a social worker who sees her life upended by an encounter with an old high-school classmate played by Peter Sarsgaard. I’m mostly just putting Franco’s New Order on here to troll a friend with whom I’ve vociferously argued about this film (and who somehow still values my opinions even so), but I’ve only *really* been willing to buy into his often punishing worldview. This is a compact, furious burst of utter social collapse that will show you nothing short of humanity’s utter depravity … and where those impacts will hit hardest. Hint: it’s not the rich.

New Order is available on Hulu.

Andrew Haigh, All of Us Strangers (Telluride/New York)

I have multiple confirmed sources who have told me that we should all be preparing to cry our eyes out at Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers, a queer-tinged ghost story. I don’t really want to know much more, frankly, because Haigh’s work from Weekend to Lean on Pete routinely knocks me sideways. It took me somewhat longer to warm up to his two-hander domestic drama 45 Years, a film about a couple celebrating an odd milestone anniversary due to one member quickly declining from dementia. I don’t want to spoil the key plot driver (much less the ending), but this is one of those movies where the final scene will completely change the way you think about everything that comes before. You won’t need to watch it a second time so much as you’ll want to.

45 Years is available on Criterion Channel.

Pablo Larraín, El Conde (Venice)

After giving us the Eras Tour of trapped political spouses with Jackie and Spencer (plus a dancing detour with Ema), Pablo Larraín is so back on his favorite beat: the long shadow of dictator Augusto Pinochet in his native Chile. El Conde features the authoritarian as … a vampire?! Heck yes. We won’t have to wait long at all for this one as Netflix will release it on September 15, but in the meantime, check out his thorny ensemble drama The Club. This chamber drama about a secluded house where the Catholic Church shoves its disgraced priests is a widely resonant, yet culturally specific, look at how societies try to compartmentalize the shames of the past.

The Club is available for free with ads on Tubi.

Ladj Ly, Les Indesirables (Toronto)

“My film is first and foremost an alarm bell calling out politicians: those who are responsible for the system put in place and that they have allowed to rot,” Ladj Ly told me of his Oscar-nominated debut feature Les Misérables. “They just allow this system to stay in place, and they know full well it doesn’t work.” Talk about a perfect follow-up with Les Indésirables, a story of a young mayor clashing with a local activist over how to handle the poverty in their neighborhood. I’m glad filmmakers like Ly are expanding the world’s view of France beyond the Champs-Élysées.

Les Misérables is available on Amazon Prime Video.

Michael Mann, Ferrari (Venice/New York)

Vroom vroom! Michael Mann’s Ferrari biopic has been three decades in the making, which is enough time for several of his movies to have undergone entire cycles of appreciation. I was definitely in the camp that didn’t see much value at all in his Miami Vice movie in the 2000s. While I stop short of the outright masterpiece claims made by some, getting to see it on the big screen last summer did help me see some of its merits. I mean, how bad can a movie that begins with a smash cut into a club scene blasting “Numb / Encore” really be?

Miami Vice is available on Netflix.

Christian Sparkes, The King Tide (Toronto)

I feel I should close on a film that isn’t necessarily primed for a big awards run because, well, festivals also exist for such films to be discovered! Toronto’s Platform section, designed specifically to elevate early career filmmakers in need of a boost to the next level, is a really exciting section to find such films. I’m curious about the modern-day miniature messiah film The King Tide based on the strength of the last film by its director, Christian Sparkes. I watched Hammer during the content doldrums of peak COVID and was thoroughly impressed by this sparse, tense familial drama between a father and his wayward son. If you always wanted to see more from Coach Yoast in Remember the Titans, this is the movie for you.

Hammer is available for free with ads on Tubi.

You can always keep up with my film-watching in real-time on the app Letterboxd. I’ve also compiled every movie I’ve ever recommended through this newsletter via a list on the platform as well.

I really enjoyed The Big Picture’s August mini-series “Do We Get to Win This Time?” about the history of Vietnam War movies. It’s now wrapped for you to binge!

This is what to read if you’ve ever entertained the idea that the writers and actors on strike are just whiny and greedy rich people.

Also, shout-out to The New Yorker’s Richard Brody for making the persuasive case for why you should still own physical copies of movies.

For /Film, I reviewed the delightful Sundance-winner Scrapper. (Subscribers may remember this film from my roundup of the festival back in the winter.)

For Decider, I said stream it to How to Blow Up a Pipeline on Hulu.

Subscribers got this fun conversation with Hoai-Tran Bui about Korean director Park Chan-wook in honor of his groundbreaking film Oldboy returning to theaters for a 20th-anniversary run.

OLDBOY, New Tricks

You can keep track of all the freelance writing I’ve done this year through this list on Letterboxd.

Adieu! I’ll be flying out for a big fat Greek wedding today and pre-scheduling some posts through next weekend.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding, 2002. © IFC Films

Yours in service and cinema,
Marshall