Team Experience's Most Anticipated Fall Festival Films

Oscar season is upon the horizon, dear readers. And the (un)official starting siren for the race ahead is the fall festivals. Venice kicks off tomorrow, overlapping with Telluride and Toronto in September, the comes New York and Chicago before the AFI Fest in November.

Our host Nathaniel will be heading out to Toronto in a few short days, so expect to see his responses during those days. While we can't all take in the glut of a major film festival, the fun of watching from home is hearing how the films on your radar are being received. So to let you know what we'll be waiting for, Team Experience has rallied our:

Top 15 Most Anticipated Films of the Fall Festivals

Films narrowly missing the list included Una, Voyage of Time, Loving, American Pastoral, and The Salesman. On our list you'll find five films directed by women and nine from non-US directors. We weren't at Cannes or Sundance, so not everything on our list is a world premiere (and we know you're still looking forward to those as well). Let's just say our #1 made like Katie Ledecky at the Olympics or Mo'Nique at the Oscars, but the list is still bursting with enticements. You can see previous posts on the festival lineups here and here. Chicago is just beginning to announce and Telluride doesn't announce their lineup until the start of the festival.

See what made our list and the festivals they will play after the jump...

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Ang Lee's 'Billy Lynn' to Launch at NYFF

By Chris Feil

Though New York Film Festival has already announced its splashiest titles for opening (Ava DuVernay's documentary The 13th), centerpiece (Mike Mills's 20th Century Women), and closing (James Gray's The Lost City of Z) galas, they still have another big world premiere up their sleeves. The fest has announced they will also host the first premiere of Ang Lee's high-tech satire Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk.

NYFF was a successful launching pad to Lee's Life of Pi a few years back, so the hope for repeated success is evident. Curiously, the film is premiering outside of the fest's three big slots but this could be a last minute addition. The initial whispers were that the film wouldn't be ready to play the festivals at all thanks to the post-production constraints of Lee's 120-frames-per-second lensing.

The premiere will also be the launching pad for the high frame rate speed, which is even faster than Peter Jackson's attempts with The Hobbit that went over quite poorly with the public. Lee's concept here is to use the medium to heighten the harsh realities of war and contrast that against life back home. This more emotional approach to technical innovation has us hoping that Lee gives us more Pi than Hulk, and the trailer sets the stage for potential weepy, hyper-real highs.

We'll find out if the risk pays off better than it did for Jackson at NYFF's world premiere on October 14 and when the film opens on November 11 - but how many theatres will be able to even show the film in Lee's intended format?

Review: Spa Night

by Sean Donovan

In Andrew Ahn’s feature length debut Spa Night, our main character David is introduced hunched over in a dimly lit sauna, a towel draped over his head. The sound mix emphases his heavy, sighing breath, which is audible but blocked by the weight of the towel. In this 2016 Sundance competition film, towels become a provocative motif, suffocating expression and concealing desire.. At the intersection of his existence as a second generation Korean American and a fledgling queer man exploring his sexual desires, pressure hits at David from multiple angles. The admiring but unenthusiastic praise which has greeted Spa Night’s release is a recognition of Ahn’s exciting early command of framing and craft, but fails to truly meet this remarkable film on its own level, that of a profoundly emotional, and refreshingly serious point of view. Jump on in! The water’s fine...

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Elisabeth Moss Rocks The Bleeder

by Murtada

A clip should give us a small taste that makes us want to see the movie it’s from. Unlike trailers, clips can’t be manipulated with mood and music, which is why sometimes they are jarring and don’t work out of context. But not this clip.

This clip from The Bleeder has it all. It’s like a short film with a complete story. Even if you knew nothing about the movie, you’d still get a full portrait of two of its character. One is a philandering husband (Liev Schreiber), the other is his wife (Elisabeth Moss) catching him in flirting with another woman in a diner. We know the setting because of the spot on accent from Moss. And watching Moss talk we understand a lot about this marriage.

The Bleeder is a biopic of boxer Chuck Wepner who is the real life  inspiration behind Sylvester Stallone's Rocky Balboa. Schreiber is Wepner, Moss is one of his wives, Naomi Watts is another. The director is Philippe Falardeau (Monsieur Lazhar). The film will be playing both Venice and Toronto film festivals in the coming few weeks. However before this clip it was very low on my radar of upcoming movies. Now I really want to see it. If only to spend more time with that intriguing character Moss plays. Let's hope there's much more of Moss insulting Schreiber and telling it like like it is in that fabulous accent.

This clip rocks, and it did its job well selling the movie. Are you now sold on The Bleeder as well?

Venice Film Festival Lineup Announced

What do Spotlight and Birdman have in common? Apart from being Oscar Best Picture winners starring Michael Keaton that is. They both debuted at the Venice Film Festival, that's what. The 73rd annual Venice Film Festival line-up has been announced, with the potential of another Best Picture winner in its midst.  As was previously announced, La La Land is opening the festival, and if you've  been watching the trailer on loop like us, it’s hard to get excited about anything else. But let’s take a shot...

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