‘Empire Of Light’ is Old School Oscar Contender With a Career Best Performance from Olivia Colman

Roughly a year ago, Kenneth Branagh’s “Belfast,” launched out of Telluride, and there was something about that film’s emotional expansiveness and the irresistible pull of its unapologetic nostalgia that made it clear it was going to be a force to be reckoned with at the Oscars.I got the same sense watching Sam Mendes’ “Empire of Light” at its Telluride premiere this past weekend.

It has a similar open heartedness even if the setting for the movie is an English seaside town and not the war-torn streets of Northern Ireland.Cinema seeps through “Empire of Light.” Mendes’ latest doesn’t just swoon for the images that flicker across screens; it also pays tribute to the physical buildings that house our most cherished artform and the sense of escapism that gets triggered every time you sit down in one of those palaces.

If you are a movie lover, it

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