Critics went into festival season Star Is Born–curious, and came out rah-rah-ing the remake, to the extent that Variety’s Kristopher Tapley pondered whether Star had a shot at winning Oscar’s “Big Five” (Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Screenplay), a feat that only three films have ever accomplished. That would obviously be an incredible achievement in every sense of the word, not least because the Academy has generally preferred to spread the wealth around in recent years. There’s still plenty of season left to go, though, and we’ll see if the movie’s momentum holds up when critics get to take another look at it .

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Green Book

Peter Farrelly’s solo debut didn’t have much of an awards profile going into the festivals, but pundits walked out of Green Book’s Toronto premiere hailing it as the next great liberal-humanist drama about interracial friendship, with Deadline’s Pete Hammond calling the film “basically a cross of Driving Miss Daisy, In the Heat of the Night, The Help, The Blind Side, [and] Hidden Figures.” The movie then capped off its surprise run by taking home the People’s Choice Award at Toronto, an honor that bodes well: The last ten English-language films to nab that prize all scored Best Picture nominations, with three of them winning. (Oddly enough, the last movie to take home the audience award at TIFF without earning a Best Picture nod was 2007’s Eastern Promises, which also starred Viggo Mortensen. Farrelly may be hoping he’s not cursed.)