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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79 Brawl in Cell Block 99

Coming to theaters October 6th, writer-director S. Craig Zahler’s follow-up to Bone Tomahawk stars Vince Vaughn as a low-level drug dealer who must fight his way through the prison system to save his wife (Jennifer Carpenter) and unborn daughter. Don Johnson plays the dangerous warden, and Udo Kier is a henchman for a Mexican drug cartel. As with his debut, Zahler has made an ultra-violent film a majority of critics like (despite some grumbles about its excessive length). CineVue’s John Bleasdale calls it a “midnight movie to relish.”

Brawl in Cell Block 99