For movie nerds and, more fervently, awards season nerds like me, fall is a wonderful time of year because it is nothing but possibility and potential. Like Schrodinger’s cat, movies are both good and bad until you actually see them for yourself. As I impatiently wait to do that, though, there are some indicators: reactions from critics and journalists attending film festivals, awards given by festivals, and whether films without a home score a deal with a big distributor.

In this episode of The Long Take Review, Greg, P.T., and I process and analyze all these indicators coming out of three festivals that have recently concluded: Venice (yes, the one in Italy), Telluride (that’s in Colorado), and Toronto (a.k.a. TIFF). We present our conclusions by listing a set of “winners” and “losers,” though we introduced the idea of “soft” and “hard” losers and it got complicated from there. Listen to find out which movies we’re more excited to see, which we can almost certainly dismiss, and who, if anyone, has emerged as a frontrunner in this early, but very real, phase of the Oscar race.

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Image Credit: Deadline

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