Fall Film Festival Recap: The Best & Worst of TIFF, Telluride and Venice

by Jason Dietz, Metacritic Features Editor
and Keith Kimbell, Metacritic Film Editor – September 17, 2017

The fall film season kicks off each year with a trio of prestigious festivals: the just-completed Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), the Venice Film Festival (now in its 74th year), and the smaller but no less interesting Telluride Film Festival in Colorado. It is at these festivals where many of the year's Oscar contenders typically make their debuts. (Last year, five best picture nominees—including eventual winner Moonlight—had their world premieres at one of these festivals.) And this year's crop includes promising upcoming releases from Guillermo del Toro, Greta Gerwig, Aaron Sorkin, Joe Wright, and Armando Iannucci ... as well as more divisive films from the likes of Alexander Payne, George Clooney, and Louis CK.

Below, learn more about the critical response to these and other notable films (and TV shows) debuting at the three festivals in 2017.

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80 Lean on Pete

The latest from Andrew Haigh proved to be more divisive than his previous two features, 45 Years and Weekend. An adaptation of Willy Vlautin’s 2010 novel, “this is a compassionately observed story told with unimpeachable naturalism and without a grain of sentimentality, propelled by a remarkable performance from Charlie Plummer that's both internalized and emotionally raw,” writes David Rooney of THR.

Plummer won the Marcello Mastroianni Award for Best Young Actor at the Venice Film Festival for his performance as Charley, a 15-year-old who flees his impoverished life with his only friend, a racehorse named Lean on Pete. But Variety's Peter Debruge finds Haigh's style too distant and "austere," resulting in a "frustrating" watch.

Lean on Pete