2024 Fall Film Festival Winners and Losers

09/19/24 • 128 min

For movie nerds and, more fervently, awards season nerds like me, fall is a wonderful time of year because it is nothing but possibility and potential. Like Schrodinger’s cat, movies are both good and bad until you actually see them for yourself. As I impatiently wait to do that, though, there are some indicators: reactions from critics and journalists attending film festivals, awards given by festivals, and whether films without a home score a deal with a big distributor.

In this episode of The Long Take Review, Greg, P.T., and I process and analyze all these indicators coming out of three festivals that have recently concluded: Venice (yes, the one in Italy), Telluride (that’s in Colorado), and Toronto (a.k.a. TIFF). We present our conclusions by listing a set of “winners” and “losers,” though we introduced the idea of “soft” and “hard” losers and it got complicated from there. Listen to find out which movies we’re more excited to see, which we can almost certainly dismiss, and who, if anyone, has emerged as a frontrunner in this early, but very real, phase of the Oscar race.

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Image Credit: Deadline

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You can listen to The Long Take Review on Substack, Spotify, Apple, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Image Credit: Deadline

All music licensed through Epidemic Sound.

Logo art: Illustration 73265080 © Worldofvector | Dreamstime.com

Get full access to The Long Take at thelongtake.substack.com/subscribe

Previous Episode

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Review

Box office, box office, box office! Tim Burton’s long-awaited sequel to his 1988 hit has conjured a successful opening weekend at $111 million domestic. This may indicate that audiences show no sign of fatigue for nostalgia-laden sequels (which is good news for Gladiator 2, perhaps?). But how does Beetlejuice Beetlejuice fare as a 36 years later follow-up to one of Burton’s best? Does it contain clunky fan service moments like Alien: Romulus? Or is it more of a fun, don’t-think-about-it-too-hard hang like Deadpool & Wolverine? How well does the Beetlejuice ethos jive with 2024 sensibilities?

These are the questions we try to answer on this week’s episode of The Long Take Review. Greg, P.T., and I share what parts of the film entertained us most, as well as try to devise a thesis for the film. Later in the episode, we fancy ourselves armchair screenwriters, offering up some suggestions for restructuring and recentering the story. Along the way, P.T. breaks multiple pieces of bad news to Greg while Greg regales us with his movie set looky-loo-ing. Take a number and have a seat because we might be a while...

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Image Credit: New York Times

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Logo art: Illustration 73265080 © Worldofvector | Dreamstime.com

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Next Episode

Megalopolis Review

When legendary artists have really made it, they should be able to do anything, right? Their creativity unfettered and untethered from pleasing others or financial concerns. By this margin, Francis Ford Coppola is living the dream. He became an icon for classics such as The Godfather (1972) and Apocalypse Now (1979). And for forty years he has been working on his magnum opus called Megalopolis. He funded the entire film — $120 million — by taking a line of credit out on his own winery No one could put a damper on his creative vision.

And the result, suffice it to say, is unlike anything any of us have ever seen. But is that a good thing? Is this film going to change cinema forever because it’s so experimental? Or is this more of an emperor’s new clothes situation? On this episode of The Long Take Review, Antonio, Greg, P.T., and I share our fairly unanimous response to the film, and then go on to try to make sense of its themes, socio-political commentary, and stylistic choices. You’ll have to hear us talk about it to believe it!

We go into SPOILER MODE pretty quickly on this one, around the 14:51 minute mark.

You can listen to The Long Take Review on Substack, Spotify, Apple, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Image Credit: Vanity Fair

All music licensed through Epidemic Sound.

Logo art: Illustration 73265080 © Worldofvector | Dreamstime.com

Get full access to The Long Take at thelongtake.substack.com/subscribe