Both the Venice Film Festival and the Telluride Film Festival are underway right now, with Toronto coming shortly. As a result, several high-profile world premieres are seemingly taking place each day for the next week or two.
However, so far, very few of the films seem to be going over great with reviewers, with one notable exception. That exception is Chloe Zhao’s “Hamnet,” a fictional story of how the death of Shakespeare’s child inspired “Hamlet”.
With 10 reviews, it sits at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes and a jaw-dropping 94/100 on Metacritic, which would put it up there as a serious contender for film of the year. Vulture’s Bilge Ebiri dubs it “the most devastating film I’ve seen in years”.
That’s slightly better than the biopic “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere” starring Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen. That film has scored a strong 100% from 10 reviews on RT as well, but a much more middling 69/100 on MC.
The Colin Farrell-led “Ballad of a Small Player” from “Conclave” director Edward Berger so far has more notably more positive reviews than negative ones and while some have misgivings with the film overall, almost all seem to praise Colin Farrell for his performance.
Finally, “The Wizard of the Kremlin” has just debuted and while there are no aggregate scores yet, reviews from the trades are decidedly mixed/negative with The Guardian giving it a 2/5 and THR saying it’s a “six-hour miniseries screened at 1.5x speed”.
