Obsessing about the Telluride Film Festival and the film awards season since 2008!
"The best blog out there for predicting what will be going to Telluride."-Matt Neglia, Next Best Picture
"The Nostradamus of Telluride"
-Tim Appelo, Movies for Grownups
We started with last Thursday's post to transition from predicting the films that would play Telluride to focusing on which TFF #52 films might be players in the 2025-26 awards season. We began with Scott Feinberg of The Hollywood Reporter and today we look at the Best Picture predictions from Variety's Clayton Davis, senior awards editor. Here are Davis's current top ten picks to get nominated for best Picture (TFF 352 films are in bold and are listed in order of most likely to less likely:
1) Hamnet
2) One Battle after Another
3) Sinners
4) A House of Dynamite
5) Wicked: For Good
6) Sentimental Value
7) Marty Supreme
8) Frankenstein
9) The Secret Agent
10) Bugonia
Other TFF #52 films in the Top Twenty are:
13) It Was Just an Accident
15) Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere
17) Jay Kelly
So in this scenario five TFF #52 films would be Best Picture nominated which would be a first for that to occur.
From Netflix this morning, the release of a new trailer for Noah Baumbach's Jay Kelly starring George Clooney, Adam Sandler and Laura Dern. Jay Kelly is in theaters on Nov.14th.
We've made the run of post-festival ratings with the reportage of results from my annual poll of the People, the Professionals and then the Composite of both together. Hamnet did very, very well...as it should. So, as has become the custom here at MTFB, we turn the page to what happens now in awards season to the films that made up the TFF #52 lineup.
EARLY LINE ON OSCAR BEST PICTURE NOMINEES
I did quick inventory of a variety of Oscar prediction websites in search of an early line on the Best Picture competition. The quick line looks like this:
1) Hamnet
2) One Battle After Another
3) Sinners
4) Sentimental Value
5) A House of Dynamite
A few other TFF #52 films could also be in play such as The Secret Agent, It Was Just an Accident, Bugonia and Jay Kelly.
This far out, however, some contenders haven't been considered as they haven't been seen by anyone yet. That list of films would include: Wicked: For Good, Avatar: Fire and Glass, Marty Supreme and Is This Thing On?.
Additionally Gold Derby has assessed the early race this way:
Finally, checking in some specific Oscar prognosticators, here's where Scott Feinberg of The Hollywood Reporter is on Best Picture:
Frontrunners:
1) Hamnet (Focus)
2) Sentimental Value (Neon)
3) Sinners (Warner Bros.)
4) A House of Dynamite (Netflix)
5) The Secret Agent (Neon)
6) Jay Kelly (Netflix)
7) It Was Just An Accident (Neon)
8) Bugonia (Focus)
9) Train Dreams (Netflix)
10) Roofman (Paramount)
And again, to point out, Feinberg does not add films to the list until he's actually seen them. At the time of this post that included One Battle After Another among others.
Sony Pictures Classics released character posters from Richard Linklater's Blue Moon featuring Ethan Hawke, Margaret Qualley, Andrew Scott and Bobby Canavale: Here they are:
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We cap off the run of posts that highlight the way people rated the films at Telluride today with what I call The Composite Telluride in which I add up a film's ratings from both The People and the Pros. This year 11 films had enough responses from both groups to make this list. There are three films that made one list but didn't make The Composite because they failed to get enough people to see them from one group or the other. Those were Nouvelle Vague which didn't make the People's list and If I Had Legs I'd Kick you as well as A Private Life which weren't seen by enough Pros.
So, here's the Composite. Each title is listed with it's composite rating (on a scale of 10) and its positions on the Pro list then the Peoples list.
1) Hamnet 9.19 [1-1]
2) Sentimental Value 8.79 [2-3]
3) It Was Just an Accident 8.58 [3-4]
4) Bugonia 7.85 [9-2]
5) Jay Kelly 7.79 [4-8]
6) The History of Sound 7.67 [5-7]
7) [TIE] Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere 7.30 [8-6]
7) [TIE] Tuner 7.30 [10-5]
9) Blue Moon 7.12 [7-10]
10) Frankenstein 6.64 [12-9]
11) Ballad of a Small Player 6.11 [11-13]
After these additions the All Time Composite Top Ten looks like this:
1) (TIE) 12 Years a Slave (9.25) 2013 (Won Best Picture)
1) (TIE) Argo (9.25) 2012 (Won Best Picture)
3) Roma (9.20) 2018 (Won Best Foreign Language Film)
4) (TIE) Moonlight (9.19) 2016 (Won Best Picture)
4) (TIE) Hamnet (9.19) 2025 (???)
6) Birdman (9.18) 2014 (Won Best Picture)
7) Parasite (9.11) 2019 (Won Best Picture)
8) Stories We Tell (9.10) 2012
9) Poor Things (9.04) 2023 (Nominated Best Picture)
10) (TIE) Tim's Vermeer (8.97) 2013
10) (TIE) Anora (8.97) 2024 (Won Best Picture)
So Chloe Zhao's Hamnet lands tied with Moonlight for the fourth best Composite score of all time.
An expanded list of The Composite and updated All Time ratings for all three categories (Pros, Peeps and Composite) can be found on the "Film Ratings from Past Fests" page. The tab for that is above.
One last thing. The top 10 films that were most viewed as a percentage of the total number of people who rated films for The People's Telluride.
Here's my compilation of film ratings from TFF attendees for TFF #52. Respondents were asked to rate each film they saw on a 1-5 scale with 1 being not-so-good and 5 being "way good". Over 60 attendees responded to the poll. The traditional requirement for inclusion is that a film had to have been seen by a third of the respondents. 13 films met that criteria. Here they are in order of their average rating:
1) Hamnet 4.55
2) Bugonia 4.37
3) Sentimental Value 4.30
4) It Was Just an Accident 4.23
5) Tuner 4.16
6) Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere 3.80
7) The History of Sound 3.79
8) Jay Kelly 3.78
9) Frankenstein 3.77
10) Blue Moon 3.43
11) If I Had Legs I'd Kick You 3.42
12) A Private Life 3.35
13) Ballad of a Small Player 3.22
So, essentially universal agreement between the Peeps and the Pros regarding Hamnet, Sentimental Value and It Was Just an Accident. Pretty big differences between the two groups on Bugonia, Tuner and Frankenstein.
The Composite Telluride is coming on Monday as well as updates to all three categories all time top ten films.
RIP ROBERT REDFORD 1936-2025
Robert Redford died on Tuesday. He was 89. He was also a giant having amassed a bevy of great performances in great films, as well proving himself a fantastic director and producer. And, of course, he was the founder of the Sundance Institute and the Sundance Film Festival.
He was an Oscar winner for directing Ordinary People. He was also nominated five other times:
Producer for Ordinary People, Direction and Producer for Quiz Show and Best Actor for The Sting.
A partial list of notable films in which he acted:
Barefoot in the Park (1967)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
Jeremiah Johnson (1972)
The Candidate (1972)
The Way We Were (1973)
The Sting (1973)
Three Days of the Condor (1975)
All the President's Men (1976)
The Electric Horseman (1979)
The Natural (1984)
Out of Africa (1975)
A River Runs Through It (Narrator) (1982)
The Horse Whisperer (1998)
All Is Lost (2013)
There were many more.
Direction:
Ordinary People (1980)
The Milagro Beanfield War (1988)
A River Runs Through It (1992)
Quiz Show (1994)
The Horse Whisperer (1998)
And others.
I was fortunate enough to catch his Q+As in 2013 for All Is Lost for which Redford received the Telluride Silver Medallion and then again in 2018 for The Old Man and the Gun.
Robert Redford at his TFF Tribute in 2013.
Like I suspect many of you, I have spent the last couple of days re-watching some of his films: All the President's Men, A River Runs Through It, The Great Waldo Pepper. I've got more to do.
It's really difficult to adequately describe how much of a effect he had in the film world. As I wrote above; he was a giant. The film industry would have been a a vastly different place without his career. We also owe him an immense amount gratitude for his environmental activism.
As always in cases like this, we are lucky to have his body of work to remind us of his greatness.
NEW TRAILER FOR SPRINGSTEEN
We have a new trailer released for Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere. Here it is from YouTube:
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They're back. It's time to reveal the results of MTFB's annual poll of film industry professionals who agreed to rate the films on a 1-5 scale and allow me then to collate and average those scores. The pros are a mix of critics, awards experts and other industry insiders. To make the list this year a film had to be rated by at least half of the Pros. That threshold allowed a dozen films to make the list.
Here are the Pros for TFF #52:
Erik Anderson/Awards Watch
J. Don Birnam-Jorge T/SplashReport.com
Josh Bis/Seattle Film Critics Society and TheSunBreak.com
Christina Jeurling Birro/Pop Culture Confidential
Clayton Davis/Variety
Scott Feinberg/The Hollywood Reporter
Mark Johnson/The Awards Alchemist
Dave Karger/Turner Classic Movies
Scott Kernan/Awards Daily
Tomris Laffly/Film Critic and Journalist
Joey Magidson/Awards Radar
Ryan McQuade/Awards Watch
Will Mavity/Next Best Picture
Clarence Moye/The Contending
Matt Neglia/Next Best Picture
Christopher Schiller/ScriptMag.com
Chris Willman/Variety
Anonymous
And here are your Professionals average ratings:
1) Hamnet 4.64
2) Sentimental Value 4.49
3) It Was Just an Accident 4.35
4) Jay Kelly 4.01
5) The History of Sound 3.88
6) Nouvelle Vague 3.76
7) Blue Moon 3.69
8) Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere 3.50
9) Bugonia 3.48
10) Tuner 3.14
11) Ballad of a Small Player 2.89
12) Frankenstein 2.87
Just missing out on making the list because they were one pro shy of the threshold were The Secret Agent, La Grazia and A Private Life.
Historically, Hamnet's 4.64 will put it in the Professionals all time top ten at #7 and because there is a tie for the 10th spot, no film drops out of this top ten.
New all time PROs Top Ten Films
1) Moonlight (4.87) (16) (Won Best Picture)
2) Parasite (4.75) (19) (Won Best Picture)
3) Roma (4.73) (18) (Nominated Best Picture)
4) Birdman (4.72) (14) (Won Best Picture)
5) 12 Years a Slave (4.70-tie) (13) (Won Best Picture)
6) Central Park Five (4.70-tie) (12)
7) Hamnet (4.64) (25)
8) Foxcatcher (4.63) (14)
9) La La Land (4.58) (16) (Nominated Best Picture)
10) Poor Things (4.53) (23) (Nominated Best Picture)
10) Anora (4.53) (24) (Won Best Picture)
TELLURIDE WINS TORONTO
The Toronto International Film festival's People's Choice Award for 2025 was won by Chloe Zhao's Hamnet. Guillermo Del Toro's Frankenstein was second and Rian Johnson's Wake Up Dead Man took third.
As you can see above, Hamnet scored well with the Professionals at Telluride and we'll reveal The People's Telluride results on Thursday.
This is the final call for film ratings from The People. You folks who watched films at TFF #52. The deadline to rate is 5:00pm PDT this evening. Email them to me at mpgot@gmail.com.
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You've have a few days left to get your ratings in for The People's Telluride. At the moment we're at about half the respondents (maybe a bit more) that normally participate each year. Additionally, the Pros are doing their part and I plan to have the The Professionals ratings up a week from today.
Again, email me a list of the films you saw and rate each on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 means it was very bad, 5 means you thought it was terrific. Decimals are fine.
Report your ratings to: mpgort@gmail.com
The deadline for this year to turn in your ratings will be Sept. 15th.
EMAIL: mpgort@gmail.com
X (Twitter) @TheMTFB OR @Gort2
Bluesky: @gort2.bsky.social
MTFB's Facebook Page
MTFB is published on Mondays and Thursdays
If you would like to be added to the MTFB e-mail list send an email to mpgort@gmail.com
You've got a week left to get your ratings in for The People's Telluride. At the moment we're at about half the respondents (maybe a bit more) that normally participate each year. Additionally, the Pros are doing their part and I plan to have the The Professionals ratings up a week from today.
Again, email me a list of the films you saw and rate each on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 means it was very bad, 5 means you thought it was terrific. Decimals are fine.
Report your ratings to: mpgort@gmail.com
The deadline for this year to turn in your ratings will be Sept. 15th.
MANY TRAILERS
During and after the fest there were a number of teasers/trailers released for TFF #52 films. Here are some of those from YouTube:
MEGADOC
THE SECRET AGENT
BUGONIA
HAMNET
URCHIN
THE FILM STAGE'S 50 FILMS
The Film Stage published a list of 50 films to see this fall along with their release dates. As you might expect a number of TFF #52 films made the list. Here are those that did in chronological order:
It is time. If you haven't already sent in your ratings for TFF #51 films that you saw, now's the time. A reminder about the process. Email me a list of the films you saw and rate each on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 means it was very bad, 5 means you thought it was terrific. Decimals are fine.
Report your ratings to: mpgort@gmail.com
The deadline for this year to turn in your ratings will be Sept. 15th.
I'll compile all of your responses and post those a few days after the festival.
MTFB AND THE BETS
MTFB went 23/25 on the "Final Bets" missing on the inclusion of The Young Mothers' Home and Resurrection. Also, I had only one "possible" that made the lineup and that was Megadoc.
"Bets" I was proud about making predictions for:
*Blue Moon and A Private Life and predicting them despite contradictory premiere designations.
*Urchin which I snuck in at the last minute.
As I have alluded to, this year seemed to be the toughest to crack in a long, long time.
Statistically, this year was my least successful since I started doing the expanded "Final Bets" back in 2016.
2024: 25 0f 25
2023: 24 of 25
2022: 24 of 25
2021: 24 of 25
2020: No fest
2019: 24 of 25
2018: 25 of 25
2017: 24 of 25
2016: 20 of 20
Additionally, the first stab at "Bets" back in June was fairly successful going 7 of 10. The films that screened that appeared on my very first "Bets" are in Bold below:
1) It Was Just an Accident/Panahi
2) Blue Moon/Linklater
3) Bugonia/Lanthimos
4) The Love That Remains/Palmason
5) Sentimental Value/Trier
6) The Young Mothers' Home/Dardennes
7) The Secret Agent/Filho
8) Hamnet/Zhao
9) Deliver Me from Nowhere/S. Cooper
10) The Ballad of a Small Player/Berger
Here's the track record of initial bets going back to 2011:
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