Festivals: Sundance
IN A VIOLENT NATURE Official Trailer: Chris Nash's "Genre-Redefining Zombie-Slasher" is Coming For You
By all accounts In A Violent Nature, the feature film debut from writer/director Chris Nash, is a game changer, a single film that revolutionizes the slasher genre. One of the buzziest titles to come out of Sundance this year we're...
Sundance 2024 Review: LITTLE DEATH, Ambitious, Unconventional, Must-See Filmmaking
There’s a make-it-or-break-it moment in writer-director Jack Begert’s boldly unconventional, existential drama/Hollywood satire, Little Death, that will leave audiences cringing in shock, wonder, and maybe awe. Some might even head for the exits. Coming as it does at roughly the...
Sundance 2024 Review: WINNER, Comic-Absurdist Biopic Succeeds Where Others Have Failed
The second narrative film and the third overall in almost as many years to cover similar, if not identical ground, Winner, a comedy-drama/biopic centered on the uniquely named Reality Winner, the ex-U.S. Air Force veteran, translator extraordinaire, and NSA whistleblower,...
Sundance 2024 Review: WILL & HARPER, Road Trip Doc Engages, Enlightens, Educates
When comedian and actor Will Farrell learned that his longtime friend and onetime Saturday Night Live (SNL) head writer Harper Steele had come out as a trans woman at the age of 61, he, like most of us on the...
Sundance 2024 Review: A DIFFERENT MAN, Idea-Rich Genre Mash-Up Stumbles, Falls, Dissatisfies
In Aaron Schimberg’s (Chained for Life, Go Down South) latest film, A Different Man, Edward (Sebastian Stan), a man euphemistically described as “facially different,” finds himself unmoored from the life he once had and rejected and the life he thought...
Sundance 2024 Review: HIT MAN, Richard Linklater Directs Glen Powell in a Morally Relativistic Comedy-Drama
To hear Glen Powell tell the story, he decided to become an actor and writer on Richard Linklater’s Fast Food Nation. It wasn’t his first or second role. It was his third. A not particularly significant part, it was more...
Sundance 2024 Review: IT'S WHAT'S INSIDE, Leave Your (College) Friends Behind
The friends we make in high school and college often aren’t the friends we keep. Good reasons abound as to why friendships don’t carry over 10, 20, or 30 years, but the key one, the “why” or “whys” friendships form...
Sundance 2024 Review: BETWEEN THE TEMPLES, A Cantor Finds His Voice In Life and Love
Trauma in all its facets -- experience, understanding, reconciliation -- and indie dramas are practically synonymous at this point. That, however, doesn’t make trauma or its natural consequence, mourning, or how it’s explored through film, any less relevant or meaningful....
Sundance 2024 Review: GHOSTLIGHT, William Shakespeare, Family Therapist
Coming-of-age stories are practically a sub-genre of their own. Coming-of-middle-age stories, however, tend to be, if not few and far between, then far more rare. That’s likely due to studio perceptions of what does and doesn’t sell: young adult-oriented films,...
Sundance 2024 Review: I SAW THE TV GLOW, Enthralling Exploration of Cult Fandoms, Nostalgia, and Trans Identity
In writer-director Jane Schoenbrun’s (We're All Going to the World's Fair) second feature-length film, I Saw the TV Glow, cult fandoms, the positives and perils inherent in nostalgia (tonic or toxin), and the boundless search for personal identity, specifically trans...
Sundance 2024 Review: THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF MAGICAL NEGROES, Surface-Deep Satire Flounders on Rom-Com Shores
Filmmaker Spike Lee generally gets credit for inserting the “magical negro” phrase into pop culture more than two decades ago, but the idea itself dates back decades, if not longer. Coined to reflect the tradition in fiction or film of...
Sundance 2024 Review: MY OLD ASS, Wise, Insightful, and Frequently Hilarious in Equal Part(s)
The summer between the end of high school and for some, college, can be filled with an unequal combination of anxiety and anticipation. Anxiety of the unknown and anticipation of new and novel experiences, of new friends and new relationships,...
Sundance 2024 Review: IN THE SUMMERS, Provocative, Heartbreaking Family Drama
It’s not being provocative — at least not intentionally — to suggest families, biological and otherwise, can seriously f*ck you up. Parents can fail their children. Children can fail their parents. Whether realistic or the opposite, expectations in either direction...
Sundance 2024 Review: GOOD ONE, Slow-Motion Family Implosion
Recreational camping — and its corollary, hiking or backpacking — has been part of the American experience for more than a century. For the minority who enjoy “roughing it,” leaving modern comforts like running water, functioning toilets, and central heating...
Sundance 2024 Review: A REAL PAIN, Jesse Eisenberg's Poignant Comedy-Drama
Over more than two decades, Jesse Eisenberg has been a singular onscreen presence, delivering a series of memorable, memorably idiosyncratic performances, including an early standout role in Noah Baumbach’s semi-autobiographical comedy-drama, The Squid and the Whale, in 2005 and an...
Sundance 2024 Review: SASQUATCH SUNSET, Jesse Eisenberg As You've Never Seen or Heard Him Before
Co-directed by Ausin residents David and Nathan Zellner (Damsel, Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter, Kid-Thing), written by David, and co-starring Nathan in prosthetic make-up and a matted fur suit, Sasquatch Sunset, billed somewhat generically as a “year in the life of...
Sundance 2024 Review: BRIEF HISTORY OF A FAMILY, Trenchant, Perceptive Character Study
The outsized demands inherent in familial expectations can weigh heavily on children. It’s all the heavier when those expectations fall on the shoulders of a child born and raised without siblings. That’s compounded even further when authoritarian governments strictly limit...
Sundance 2024 Review: YOUR MONSTER, Genre-Bending Showcase for Director and Star
The words “bold,” “audacious,” and “daring” can be easily tossed around whenever a new-to-us filmmaker makes their feature-length debut, but in writer-director Caroline Lindy’s case, they’re more than applicable. They fall short of accurately describing Lindy’s deliriously entertaining, genre-bending first...
Sundance 2024 Interview: DIG! XX, Ondi Timoner and Joel Gion Talk About the Passion
When documentary filmmaker Ondi Timononer and her brother David set out in the mid 90s to capture the tribulations and hopeful ascent of ten indie bands as they attempted to navigate the big bad record industry at the end of...
Sundance 2024 Review: SKYWALKERS: A LOVE STORY, Crowd-Pleasing, Above-the-Clouds Romance
Imagine suffering a panic or anxiety attack on a walk in the park or on the commute to and from work or as you watch your favorite docu-series via streaming. Now imagine a panic attack almost 2,000 feet above the...
