The Academy Awards may be a distinctly American tradition, but Oscar tracking increasingly begins in Europe. After recent **Palme d’Or-to-Best Picture success stories like Parasite and Anora, Cannes has reemerged as an early predictor. Still, the primary launching pad for awards season is the Venice Film Festival, which opened its 82nd edition with a parade of big stars — George Clooney, Julia Roberts, and Emma Stone — gliding down the red carpet in front of the global press.
Early reviews and reactions are already shaping the awards narratives that will follow each film to Telluride, Toronto, and the New York Film Festival. Those narratives may shift as movies play for different audiences, but the collective memory of a first Venice screening often looms large — for good and ill.
Stone stans
The first wave belonged to Yorgos Lanthimos’s Bugonia, the latest collaboration between the director and his Favourite muse, Emma Stone. Venice buzz crowned it the first fall-festival title with a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score out of the gate (based on an initial ~15 reviews, later climbing past 20). Critics reached for words like “visionary,” “powerful,” and “idiosyncratic,” placing it alongside prior team-ups like Poor Things, which made a major splash at Venice 2023 before winning multiple Oscars. Stopwatch culture also returned: the standing ovation reportedly ran six to seven minutes.
But beneath the fresh-score glow, some critics questioned how general audiences will respond to the film’s transgressive elements, and whether its visual palette will attract less below-the-line support than the storybook world of Poor Things. On several industry leaderboards, Bugonia’s odds ticked down slightly in Best Picture and Best Director, while Emma Stone saw a modest gain in Best Actress. Net-net: a strong Venice launch that heads to Telluride without any deep holes to climb out of.
Jay-walking and -talking
In contrast, Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly — pairing him with George Clooney for the first time and Adam Sandler for the second — drew more openly mixed notices. While the stars earned praise, some reviews cited sentimental excesses and “toothless” characters. (The film currently hovers in the mid-80s on Rotten Tomatoes.) Headlines celebrated an eight-to-ten-minute ovation, technically longer than Bugonia’s, but the awards implications were less rosy: a 5% dip in Best Picture odds, -8% for Baumbach in Best Director, and flat movement for Clooney in Best Actor.
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For Baumbach at Venice, this outing lands between the universal raves of Marriage Story (2019) and the muted reception for White Noise (2022). Jay Kelly isn’t widely disliked, but it isn’t widely adored either, leaving its fate dependent on star-driven momentum — particularly Clooney’s red-carpet charisma. A reported illness may keep him from Telluride, but he’ll likely be front and center at the NYFF premiere, fresh off his Tony-nominated Good Night, and Good Luck run in New York.
What’s next in the canon
Beyond those two headline titles, Venice also premiered Mike Figgis’s Megadoc (a making-of companion to Megalopolis) and Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grazia, neither triggering the same awards heat. The next few days add new chapters: Dwayne Johnson steps into The Smashing Machine, Julia Roberts pursues Best Actress with After the Hunt, and Guillermo del Toro resurrects Frankenstein. Interestingly, none of these are flying direct from Venice to Telluride. The Smashing Machine and Frankenstein head to Toronto (starting Sept. 4), while After the Hunt opens the New York Film Festival on Sept. 26. Also in New York: Jeremy Allen White’s Bruce Springsteen biopic, which plays Telluride first before rolling east.
As always, Venice sets the tone, but Telluride, Toronto, and NYFF will refine (or rewrite) the Oscar narrative. For now, Lanthimos and Stone leave the Lido with momentum, while Baumbach and Clooney search for firmer footing on the road ahead.
