WILD HORSE NINE (Martin McDonagh) — North American Premiere

Goddamnit, I didn’t think Martin McDonagh’s mode of black humor could get darker. Here, a story of CIA friends taking one last trip together to Easter Island (the indigenous people call it Rapa Nui) seems bleak as it confronts topics like terminal cancer and mysteriously dead quadrupeds … and that’s before it gets into US meddling in geopolitics. John Malkovich is tremendous as an aging special agent with a history of some very successful missions whose illness has loosened his lips; Sam Rockwell is ever-phenomenal as his younger pal torn between split loyalties. The scenery is gorgeous and McDonagh’s script gives them hilarious yet affecting material to chew on. With all the pieces coming together, I’m fully wrecked. Film fests are so fun.

Ink (Danny Boyle) — North American premiere

No amount of trademark Dutch angles and overly aggressive smash cuts can rescue a movie that steadfastly refuses to address the question of “why” about the starting pistol of the news business’s race to the gutter. Guy Pearce plays a version of Rupert Murdoch as he’s buying his way into Fleet Street publishing. He flits in and out of the picture with motivations so underdeveloped that one suspects lawsuit avoidance edits. Other characters are similarly opaque, with no one quite stepping up as the conscience of the film (Claire Foy comes the closest as Jules, but never quite gets enough attention to ascend beyond philandering female journalist willing to compromise standards). Worst of all, the film wastes what should have been a decent performance from Jack O’Connell as hyper competitive news editor Larry Lamb with an incoherent mess that hangs all of its drama on a sensationalized kidnapping plot involving characters we barely know, let alone care about.
A surprising disappointment from a filmmaker usually so surehanded at delivering entertainment value.

Elsinore (Simon Stone) — World Premiere

Shot with clear-eyed immediacy, Andrew Scott is instantly credible in an astonishing performance as Ian Charleson summiting the role of a lifetime in the darkest days of the HIV/AIDS crisis. We enter the scene just as Daniel a day Lewis is famously walking off the stage (and out of live performance forever) in the National Theater’s production of Hamlet. This creates an opening for Charleson, famous for “heterosexual masquerades” like Chariots of Fire, most memorable for a theme song that follows him like a ghost around gay London. The role of a lifetime comes just as his HIV is taking a turn toward AIDS in the days before effective antiretrovirals. We follow his against-the-advice of firm-but-empathetic clinician (Olivia Colman) to once again tread the boards. Scott makes great use of the National’s brutalist architecture to create a stirring backdrop for Scott’s nervy work to build an all time performance (as an actor giving what’s thought of as the definitive performance) to create a sense of immediacy to the physical and emotional work of acting.

I had a nickel for every time Telluride world premiered an emotionally ravaging drama that leaves the audience sobbing along with the onstage death of Hamlet and the tremendous power of art and community … well, I’d have at least a couple of nickels.