fall picks from telluride | joe morgenstern

Joe Morgenstern is the Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic of the Wall Street Journal, and his weekly podcast for NPR station KCRW is one of my favourites. Here are a couple films I'm eager to see since hearing Joe rave...

Every year I go to the Telluride Film Festival with the same fervent hope: to put the summer’s junk behind me and recharge my enthusiasm for the fall and winter. This year I got super-charged. It was a wonderful program with all sorts of treats that will be showing up in the weeks and months to come.

The hands-down standout was a film called The King’s Speech, with a magnificent performance by Colin Firth as King George VI, the father of the current Queen Elizabeth, and beautifully comic counterpoint by Geoffrey Rush as an irreverent Australian speech therapist who treats the king’s paralyzing stutter. It’s a rare combination of crowd pleaser and consummate artistry. The director, Tom Hooper, works from a script by David Sidler. . . Remember, you heard it here first: a film that will make your spirits soar.

An Israeli documentary called Precious Life is about a Palestinian baby who was born in Gaza three years ago with a severe immune deficiency, then treated in Israel by Israeli doctors. . . . As of now, the only thing I can imagine standing in the way of an Oscar for Precious Life is peace breaking out before the ballots go in the mail.

Morgenstern's full article about his Telluride discoveries is here