Festivals: Sundance
Sundance 2023 Review: CASSANDRO Wrestles With Macho Prejudices
Inspired by a true story, director Roger Ross Williams' fiction debut follows an underdog who broke traditions in lucha libre and became a queer icon.
Sundance 2023 Review: AUM: THE CULT AT THE END OF THE WORLD Offers Anatomy of Terror
Chiaki Yanagimoto and Ben Braun's documentary goes behind the scenes of the 1995 Sarin gas attack in a Tokyo subway.
Sundance 2023 Review: EILEEN, Perversely Beautiful
Womance receives the Hitchcockian treatment in Ottessa Moshfegh's story of a small-town girl gone bad with the author's manic smirk and wicked wink.
Sundance 2023 Review: CAT PERSON Reassembles the Rape-Revenge Genre for Gen-Y
Susanna Fogel and Michelle Ashford adapt the viral short story into a dating thriller, wedged between ambiguous consent rules and a male persecution complex.
Sundance 2023 Review: THEATER CAMP, Feel-Good, Hilarious Comedy
The summer mockumentary about a Gen Z musical camp, spread between 'Wet Hot American Summer' and 'What We Do in the Shadows,' brims with a refreshing community vibe.
Sundance 2023 Review: MAMI WATA, West African Folktale Stuns, Mesmerizes
In West African folklore, Mami Wata (“Mother Water”) represents a water-based deity of relatively recent vintage to the continent. Traditionally a life-giver and life-bringer, Mami Wata isn’t without her ambiguities, however. She can take as well as give in equal...
Sundance 2023 Review: KING COAL, Iluminating, Insightful Cine-Essay
Despite a total population just one-fifth of New York City, West Virginia, the 12th-least populous state in the Union and the 10th by land mass, holds a disproportionate place in the collective political, social, and cultural imagination in the United...
Sundance 2023 Review: ANIMALIA, Abstract, Metaphysical Sci-Fi Drama
For writer-director Sofia Alaoui, winning the Short Film Grand Jury Prize for Qu’importe si les bêtes meurent (So What If the Goats Die) at the Sundance Film Festival and the Best Short Film at the César Awards three years ago...
Sundance 2023 Review: DIVINITY, Provocative, Absurdist Lo-Fi Sci-Fi
There’s a fine line between ambition and pretension. It’s a line writer-director Eddie Alcazar (The Vandal, Perfect, Fuckkkyouuu) repeatedly skirts in his first feature-length film, Divinity, an absurdist, po-faced, lo-fi sci-fi film shot in gloriously luminous, numinous black-and-white. As a...
Sundance 2023 Review: IN MY MOTHER'S SKIN, Filipino Folk Horror Enthralls and Disturbs in Equal Measure
The 400-year-old spectre of imperialism, colonialism, and occupation (Spanish, American, and Japanese) hovers above Filipino filmmaker Kenneth Dagatan's (Ma) second, feature-length film, In My Mother’s Skin. Set during the waning days of World War II, with the Japanese army in...
Sundance 2023 Review: JOYLAND, Pakistan's Groundbreaking Queer Love Story
Writer-director Sam Sadiq’s feature-length debut, Joyland, is a film of firsts. It's the first Pakistani film to debut at Cannes (last year), where it won the Un Certain Regard and Queer Palm awards; the first Pakistani film to be shortlisted...
Sundance 2023 Review: MAMACRUZ, Spanish Character Study Impresses, Moves, Celebrates
In 1975, Francisco Franco, the right-wing dictator who ruled Spain for almost four decades, died after a lengthy battle with his own mortality, leaving his designated successor, Juan Carlos I, to presumably continue his fascist policies, centered on three overriding...
Sundance 2023 Review: SORCERY, Essential Chilean Anti-Colonialist Narrative
Chiloé Island lies off the southwestern coast of Chile. It’s a lush, verdant island, filled with rolling hills, forests, and farmland. Over millennia, it’s been home first to indigenous people, chief among them the Huilliche, and then, like most of...
Sundance 2023 Review: LA PECERA (THE FISHBOWL), Penetrating Exploration of Terminal Illness
The history of Puerto Rico is the history of colonialism. The history of Vieques, an island off the coast of Puerto Rico, is the history of American imperialism. During World War II, the United States forcibly expropriated most of the...
Sundance 2023 Review: MY ANIMAL, Visually Arresting Lycanthropy Tale
More than two decades ago, Ginger Snaps,a modest, lycanthropy-themed horror film from Canada, hit the festival circuit, receiving solid critical notices, but limited returns at the box office. Thankfully, Ginger Snaps didn't disappear into obscurity like so many of its contempories horror-wise....
Sundance 2023 Review: ROTTING IN THE SUN, Hilarious, Provocative Meta-Fictional Mystery-Thriller
For his eighth feature-length film, Rotting in the Sun, writer-director Sebastián Silva (Tyrel, Crystal Fairy & the Magic Cactus, The Maid) asks one of the most important, most fundamental questions of our time: How many dicks are too many dicks?...
Sundance 2023 Review: TALK TO ME, Creepy Embalmed Hand Leads to Horrific Results
Somewhere around the 30-minute mark in Danny and Michael Philippou’s (YouTube’s RackaRacka duo) feature-length debut, Talk to Me, an act of supernaturally motivated violence unfolds onscreen that will leave even the most jaded, skeptical “seen-it-all” horror fan shaking in their...
Sundance 2023 Review: INFINITY POOL, Brutal, Bloody, Effective Satire
Watching your own execution can change you, sometimes irrevocably. Being forced to watch said execution after paying for the one-time creation of a body double (clone) to serve as your surrogate can cause a debilitating existential crisis with apparently no...
Sundance 2023 Review: FAIR PLAY, All's Not Fair in Love and Gender War
There’s a moment in writer-director Chloe Domont’s impressively realized feature-length debut, Fair Play, when a collection of finance-bros, employees of the fictional One Crest Capital, a Manhattan-based hedge fund, half-watch a corporate-sponsored, obligatory, diversity and inclusion presentation while a newly...
Sundance 2023 Review: BIRTH/REBIRTH, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein for the 21st Century
[Note: Some minor spoilers follow.] Long in the public domain, Mary Shelley’s seminal 1818 novel, Frankenstein (full title: Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus), has formed, shaped, and influenced popular culture and our complex, contradictory relationship with science and scientific advance...
