Anyone who had doubts about “The Bear” star Jeremy Allen White’s ability to carry a movie as the Boss can put them away. Scott Cooper’s “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere” focuses on the period after Springsteen’s rise to fame in 1981 when he settles in a lakehouse in New Jersey to create the album “Nebraska,” laying down tracks by himself with new technology that was far from professional level.
The movie traces his fraught early years with his alcoholic father (Stephen Graham) and the counterbalancing gentle support coming from his manager Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong). The movie has some performances, but mostly Cooper and White are looking inside Springsteen, as he faces depression and fights for his album to be realized the way he hears it: Spare, intimate, echoey. He sets aside obvious hit tracks like “Born in the USA” and “Glory Days” for a later recording, the eventual album smash “Born in the USA.”
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Who does that? Bruce. This movie could be a commercial success for Disney’s Twentieth Century Pictures, and proves that White is a star. Acting award nominations, certainly, are in the offing, as reviews are otherwise mixed.
Opening night also brought Edward Berger’s return to Telluride a year after “Conclave,” which went on to eight Oscar nominations and an adapted screenplay win. “Ballad of a Small Player,” adapted by Rowan Joffe from the Lawrence Osborne novel, is a meticulously mounted, gorgeous jewel of a movie set in the glittering gambling palaces of Macau. For all its showy camera moves, the movie centers on its tortured protagonist, a seedy gambling addict who is running out of time. Sporting a mustache, cravat, bright velvet jackets, and yellow gloves, Colin Farrell as con man “Lord Doyle” runs the gamut of sweaty emotions as he wins, loses, and faces desperate thoughts. The hotel is chasing him for his bill, and a private detective (Tilda Swinton) is chasing him for stealing money from a wealthy old woman. How far will his addiction take him?
Farrell could win some support from the Academy actors branch for taking on this moral steeplechase where the outcome is far from clear. We root for him to find his way, as the exit door gets smaller and smaller. Netflix is pushing the film for awards.
Next up: Chloe Zhao’s “Hamnet” screens Saturday as well as the first arrival from Venice, Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Bugonia.”
