Notes from Friday at Telluride.
Author: Josh
Telluride 2026: Wild Horse Nine; Ink; Elsinore
Notes from Friday at Telluride.
Telluride kicks off 53rd SHOW with lineup drop, tribute announcements
Telluride announces the lineup for the 53rd Show.
Coyote vs. Acme gets its day in court
Based on a satirical essay by Ian Frazier in the New Yorker with a screenplay by Samy Burch (May December), the film opens in an ominous factory where a troubled scientist with a strong resemblance to Peter Lorre attempts an act of whistleblowing before being chased and imprisoned in a classic cartoon hole. Back in the modern-day desert outside of beautiful Albuquerque New Mexico, we find Wile E. Coyote well into his seventh decade of fruitless pursuit of the Road Runner.
With Tony, Matt Johnson brings Bourdain the man, the chef, the bildungsroman to the screen
Tony, a new biopic about the celebrated chef, author, and travel documentary auteur Anthony Bourdain, Matt Johnson gets almost all of the answers of how to make a good biopic just right. Eschewing the Walk Hard treatment and working from a screenplay from Seattleite Todd Bartels and co-writer Lou Howe, the movie considers a single summer on Cape Cod that shaped the course of Bourdain’s life and career.
Teenage Sex & Death at Camp Miasma indulges Jane Schoenbrun’s sweet tooth
In Jane Schoenbrun’s latest film, an auteur and aging starlet are intertwined in a fantastical journey of self-discovery inspired by an imaginary 1980s slasher franchise about a psycho killer with a metal HVAC block for a head, a twin-tipped sea spear for a weapon, and the provocative nom de sangre The Little Death.
The Death of Robin Hood insists on dismantling the idea of legend
Michael Sarnowski’s grimy new historical-adjacent thriller dares to ask audiences to consider a deeply uncomfortable question. What if Robin Hood was not, in true fact, a sexy swashbuckling animated fox? Let alone one who stole from the rich to give to the poor? Or to unite with his band of affable outlaws who communed in the forest of Sherwood to thwart the avaricious overreaches of a swishy spoiled despot king?
Leviticus literalizes the horror of conversion therapy
The metaphors run hot and heavy in this down under horror story about the trauma of gay awakenings. Still, small abandoned conservative towns, spooky religion, and the overwhelming potency of teenage lust remain creepily effective tools when deployed this stylishly.
Like its hero, Tuner has perfect pitch
Amid festivals clogged with so many films with “prestige” ambitions, it’s a thrillingly welcome jolt when a really fun movie executes on a clever concept and is impeccably entertaining from top to bottom. And that was exactly the case when the good word of Tuner started rippling through queues at Telluride before putting on the full charm offensive in Toronto a week later. Making the transition from pulse-pounding documentary filmmaking to small-stakes crime romance, Daniel Roher does exactly that with a film that just moves from the jump and never lets up until the closing credits.
In Silent Friend a tree bears witness to a century of academic longing
A collection of loosely intertwined stories of isolation and connection, this one ostensibly follows a trio of academics whose foibles play out, separated by decades, in the general vicinity of a magnificent gingko tree on a German college campus.