Big news from the Telluride Film Festival last night.
The Bruce Springsteen movie, “Deliver Me from Nowhere,” won raves. Jeremy Allen White stars as The Boss, directed by Scott Cooper.
“Deliver Me” is not a biopic. It’s about how when Springsteen, at a low point, retreated to write the “Nebraska” album in 1981. The album has many devotees and over the years has become considered a classic. Once it was finished, Springsteen went on to make “Born in the USA,” and his whole career changed.
Peter DeBruge wrote in Variety: “It requires a star to play a star, and an actor to access the Boss’s more introspective side, and “The Bear” sensation Jeremy Allen White slips easily into the worn denim and sleeveless T-shirts that were Springsteen’s signature.”
The raves were echoed in The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline.com, and The Wrap.
Meantime, Chloe Zhao, who won Best Picture and Director for the remarkable “Nomadland,” is back in form. Her “Hamnet,” about William Shakespeare writing “Hamlet,” wowed everyone in Telluride.
Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley star in what sounds like a bookend to “Shakespeare in Love.”
Bilge Ebiri of New York Magazine led the huzzahs. “[Hamlet] is about as unimpeachable as a work of art can be. And yet, here is a movie that dares to explore its inception. The attempt itself is noble, and maybe a little brazen; that it succeeds feels downright supernatural.”
Angie Han wrote in The Hollywood Reporter: “Just as her William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) turns the pain of being caught between [joy and fear, love and loss] into the masterpiece that is Hamlet, Zhao harnesses those elements into something gorgeous and cathartic.”
Meantime, Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein” is opening as we speak in Venice.
And here’s a little twist: Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Regina Hall, and Benicio del Toro will screen this coming week in New York just as the Toronto Film Festival begins. Also screening this week in New York: “Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale.”
Movie season is here!
