The festival premieres just keep on coming. This year’s Telluride Film Festival seems to be missing noteworthy films. There’s been championed films, “Nickel Boys,” “Conclave” and “Saturday Night,” but all of them seem to have their own fair share of passion detractors. Then there’s the films that have landed with a major thud …
The world premiere of Malcolm Washington’s “The Piano Lesson” was met with mixed responses at Telluride. Many are citing Danielle Deadwyler’s performance, but the film itself seems to be a little too stagey for its own good. Apparently, Samuel L. Jackson is mostly in the background, throughout the film. There's a very good reason why Netflix was confirmed to be prioritizing "Emilia Perez" over this one during awards season, and we now have confirmation as to why that is the case.
Meanwhile, Joshua Oppenheimer’s “The End” is also getting mixed reviews out of Telluride. If you remember, this is the film that was turned down by Cannes and Venice. Oppenheimer is a great documentary filmmaker (“The Act of Silence”) but “The End” spells a turbulent transition into narrative feature filmmaking for him. “The End” is getting mixed responses from Slant, THR, The Wrap and Variety. David Ehrlich’s A- review for IndieWire seems to be the only rave.
Finally, there’s Michael Gracey’s Robbie Williams musical, “Better Man,” which premiered 48 hours ago, but has barely been able to get any buzz going for it. Only one measely review has been published for the film, and it’s a 5/10 pan. The user ratings on Letterboxd are even worse, with lots of 1 and 2-star reactions. Williams is said to portray a CGI-monkey for most of the film.