The 10 Best Movies at the Telluride and Venice Film Festivals. Plus: Nathan Fielder’s Stunning Elizabeth Holmes Doc.

Key takeaways

• Fielder and Lance Oppenheim's untitled Elizabeth Holmes documentary was the event of Telluride and Sean's favorite film of the year so far. It screened once as an unannounced "TBA" after two days of festival-wide guessing, staff bagged every phone for nearly five hours, and the three-hour cut splits in two: a Fielder-style portrait of Holmes in her final days before federal prison, then a second half that veers somewhere stranger the filmmakers admitted they were still processing onstage. Sean argues it takes apart both the authorized celebrity doc and the Netflix true-crime formula, and calls it the rare title that survived being overhyped. A24 releases it in October, with a viral teaser already out.
• Martin McDonough's "Wild Horse Nine" topped or nearly topped both lists. Sam Rockwell and John Malkovich play CIA agents in 1970s Chile who travel to Easter Island after the Allende coup. Malkovich is already treated as the Best Actor frontrunner, though Sean contends Rockwell carries the emotional weight as an aging operative reckoning with his record. Both hosts compare it to "In Bruges," flag a mid-film reveal they refuse to spoil, and expect criticism of a Chile story centered on two white Americans.
• Robert Pattinson anchors Oppenheim's other big title, "Primetime," out September 25. The narrative feature dramatizes Chris Hansen and "To Catch a Predator," with Pattinson delivering a wildly heightened performance opposite Skyler Gisondo, who arguably co-leads. The hosts debate whether a supporting-category campaign would help voters accept it. It premiered only at Venice, partly because European audiences are less familiar with the source and less bothered by its sleaze; Jeff Zucker has a cameo.
• Julianne Moore looks like the Best Actress frontrunner for Jesse Eisenberg's "The Debut." She plays a woman turning 40 who auditions for a community-theater musical run by Paul Giamatti's character, in a film more absurdist and Kaufman-like than the crowd-pleaser Sean expected. A coached monologue drew a near standing ovation in the middle of the screening.
• Danny Boyle's "Ink" landed as good, not great, for both. The Netflix film tracks editor Larry Lamb and a young Rupert Murdoch remaking Fleet Street tabloid journalism, with a freight-train Jack O'Connell turn and loud music covering for a thesis it states repeatedly but never fully lands. Boyle's admission that he used generative AI for animated archival photos and some mice drew criticism; Amanda says the effect looks like a filter Instagram keeps pushing.
• Two nonfiction films split the hosts between awe and discomfort. "Everest: The Other Side," from the "Free Solo" team, follows climber and skier Jim Morrison up the north face and made both weep while questioning whether it should exist and how it frames Sherpa labor. The Oasis tour documentary "Don't Look Back in Anger" shows Noel and Liam Gallagher holding hands onstage and reduced Amanda to tears at a morning screening.

Notable moments

• Fielder and a jet-lagged Oppenheim downplaying their own premiere before Emma Stone moderated the Q&A, which Sean calls "classic Telluride shit."
• The phone-bagging policy: "that's never happened to me in film festival history."
• Amanda pouring a gin-free spritz into a water bottle to get through part two of Alex Gibney's four-hour Musk documentary, which narrates itself through a CGI Musk avatar in a gaming chair.
• Amanda singing along and crying at an 8:45 a.m. screening of the Oasis doc.
• "Malkovich gets the Oscar. Sorry, Matt Damon," as the recurring frontrunner joke across both festivals.
• Amanda refusing to approach Robert Pattinson at the A24 party: "I'm a podcaster. I'm a mom... I'd rather die."
• Her Venice Negroni sold premixed in a plastic bag inside a paper envelope.
• Honorable mentions: Carrie Coon in the cult drama "The Liberation," the Mara sisters in Werner Herzog's "Bucking Fastard," Andrew Scott as Ian Charleson in the disjointed "Elsinore," and Lee Chang-dong's "Possible Love," South Korea's Oscar entry, which Amanda says has a didactic "whiteboard problem."
• Sean's No. 4, Mike Leigh's reportedly final film, a bleak portrait of a woman turning 40 as her parents decline.

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