Tag: sundance2018
Sundance 2018 Review: SWEET COUNTRY, a Powerful Slowburn on Australia's Not-So-Sweet History
Warwick Thornton's Sweet Country opens with Sam Neill's preacher Fred Smith sharing a meal with his Aboriginal farmhands Sam and Lizzie Kelly (exceptional newcomers Hamilton Morris and Natassia Gorey-Furber). "We're all equal in the eyes of the Lord," the preacher sermonizes as he...
Sundance 2018 Review: HAL, A Great Director of the 1970s Gets His Due
The so-called “New Hollywood” of the 1970s was driven by a number of filmmakers, many of them film school trained, who broke with many established modes of production and benefited from the opportunities afforded them by the collapse of the...
Sundance 2018 Review: TYREL, An Ambiguous and Uncomfortable Look at Casual Racism
Proving that ostracized characters with odd outlooks on life can be effectively disturbing in any language, Chilean director Sebastián Silva has made a career, in both Spanish and English, out of stories focused on people pushed to the edge –...
Sundance 2018 Review: KUSAMA - INFINITY, Inside the Life, Work, and Mind of a Legendary Artist
Now at the age of 88, legendary Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama is currently one of the most popular and successful artists in the world. Her recent New York gallery exhibition, "Yayoi Kusama: Festival of Life" - featuring her signature "Infinity...
Sundance 2018 Review: RUST, An Intriguing, Split-Screen Portrait of Abuse
Aly Muritiba’s Ferrugem (lit. Rust) opens with a haunting shot of a gymnotiform. It rears its head out of the coral, eyes still-white, mouth plopping open and shut, and body coated in a corroded tint of yellow. “They say when...
Sundance 2018 Review: DAMSEL, A Quick-Witted Feminist Western
Western tropes get punched straight in their often male-driven faces by a heroine in the Zellner Brothers' Damsel, where the protagonist is only in distress when dealing with the pathetically entitled males that cross her path. The fantasy of macho bravado...
Sundance 2018 Dispatch: Strong Docus Take Center Stage
Like most years, the 2018 edition of the Sundance Film Festival has had a fantastic crop of new documentary films. With nearly 50 docs unspooling throughout the categories, many of these will undoubtedly be the talked about nonfiction films of...
Sundance 2018 Interview: David Wain Beautifully Dreams A FUTILE AND STUPID GESTURE
[David Wain at Sundance 2018. Photo credit: copyright 2018 Zach Gayne.] The biopic or docudrama is one of the most fascinating, if not tickling, film genres. Unlike most other genres, whether a biopic succeeds with flying colors in capturing, or...
Sundance 2018 Dispatch: Best VR Lineup Ever Explodes at New Frontier
Unofficially the kickoff to "Year Four" of VR storytelling content, this year's New Frontier program was undoubtedly the best ever collection of narrative VR experiences. We are finally leaving behind the tech demo stage! Many of these pieces will be...
Sundance 2018 Review: WE THE ANIMALS Marks the Poetic Battle Cry of Childhood
At it's most visceral and true, Jeremiah Zagar's narrative feature debut is about the breath, blood and life of a child artist who is beginning to hone their passion in order to understand and survive, yes, but then also to heal, to grow, and to share.
Sundance 2018 Review: MADELINE'S MADELINE Dances in the Delight and Dread of the Feminine Intuitive
Madeline's Madeline is what we mean when we talk about authentic cinema; pure cinema, brimming over with euphoria and empathy and a direct perspective of a human, both inside and out, mental and physical, that feels so complete as to be dizzying. revelatory
Sundance 2018 Dispatch: A Walk on the Wonderful Weird Side
Yes it's been a particularly strong Sundance for the commercial fare on offer, but some of the surprising and most buzzed about titles at this year's festival fall into a category near and dear to Screen Anarchy readers. That is,...
Sundance 2018 Review: BISBEE '17 Looks at the Past and Present from All Sides
Known for his rigorous and radical deconstructions of performance, story and truth, documentary-tinkerer Robert Greene returns to Sundance with his most panoramic work yet, a wildly audacious de/reconstruction of the horrific -- and mostly forgotten -- deportation of striking immigrant miners from the town of Bisbee, Arizona in 1917.
ChefDance 2018: Sundance on a Plate
During one's time in Park City for Sundance, a person must be careful on how to navigate a snowscape filled with consumer excess and shallow posturing. This is not a wholly negative observation, it is merely the way things are...
Sundance 2018 Review: PITY, A Brilliant Portrait of Dangerous Self-Victimization
An unspoken consensus exists among prominent Greek filmmakers, including Yorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth), Athina Rachel Tsangari (Chevalier), and Argyris Papadimitropoulos (Suntan), regarding the validity of the so-called “Weird Wave.” In their rare eyes, a collective effort at creating similarly themed or...
Sundance 2018 Dispatch: Indie Fare Scores with Commercial Appeal
Sundance has long been the top fest for US independent films looking for a little love from big money distributors. It's expected that the annual lineup includes movies on the spectrum all the way from tiny esoteric documentaries to broadly...
Sundance 2018 Review: WON'T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR? Celebrates a True Compassionate Radical
Deftly weaving a bounty of marvelous archival footage spanning over 40 years, with a sprinkling of talking head interviews with Mister Rogers' cast and crew, as well as his wife Joanne and sons John and James, Oscar-winner Morgan Neville crafts a gentle and enduring chronicle of one of 20th century America's most compassionate radicals.
Sundance 2018 Review: MANDY, a Revenge-filled Feast of Visual Delights
In describing Panos Cosmatos' Mandy, the first word that comes to mind is 'admiration.' The picture reflects the singular, unique, and uncompromising vision of its director. Producing an auteur-driven horror film is an admirable feat in a business that often...
Sundance 2018 Preview: Premieres, Episodic, and More
Happy Sundance Film Fest kick off day! Yes the first few films will start running in Park City in just a few hours. If you've been following along with our previews, you've already seen us discuss a few films playing...
Sundance 2018 Preview: All the Midnighters
We've already taken a quick tour of the Dramatic Competitions and the Documentaries about to unspool when the Sundance Film Fest kicks of tomorrow. Part 3 of our preview series is a special treat as we take a brief look...
