Tag: sundance2021

It might be one of the deepest and most abiding ironies of the last year that it took the emergence of one pandemic (COVID-19) to temporarily end another pandemic (school shootings). With the majority of elementary and high school students...

One of the most popular arguments to despise horror films and related genres – in their most violent and explicit incarnations – is that they can inspire atrocities in real life. It's a thought as old as the films with...

In writer-director Rebecca Hall’s (Christine, The Town, Vicky Cristina Barcelona) evocative, provocative adaptation of Nella Larsen’s richly textured, multi-layered 1929 novel, Passing, two women, one-time high-school friends, now in their thirties, inadvertently cross paths in the tea room of an...

The New Zealand film Coming Home in the Dark, James Ashcroft's first feature, starts off intensely: a well-off family (father, mother and two teenage sons) enjoy a road trip in the countryside. During a picnic, they are interrupted by a...

All filmmakers introduced their works before each Sundance 2021 virtual screening. Swedish director Frida Kempff, responsible of Knocking, spoke about her film background. Until now she had developed her career in the documentary genre, always interested in social issues. She...

Deservedly or not, the word “crowd-pleaser” tends to have a negative connotation, situating a film’s potential popularity with broad demographic appeal, simple, easy-to-understand narratives, and emotionally cathartic endings. But in the second year of a global pandemic, a Before Times...

The absurd/dark comedy Mother Schmuckers, the first feature film by Belgian brothers Harpo and Lenny Guit, opens with some idiots cooking in a frying pan what appears to be a piece of shit. Although these young brothers, Issachar (Maxi Delmelle)...

More than 30 years after his first film, Sono Sion has established himself as a brilliant, prolific and chameleonic director. In the past decade alone, you can find some of his best work: a hilarious tribute to guerrilla filmmaking and...

The Apocalypse gets put on hold in a surreal drama from Brazil about mankind's struggle to adapt to a new normal.

The standout film of 2021 Sundance demystifies the porn industry through a female lens.

Rodney Ascher nose-dives into the rabbit hole of simulation theory argument in a cyber-acid documentary.

Writer-directing duo Albert Birney and Kentucker Audley deliver an escapist analog fantasy imbued with a technicolor retro vibe.

After cramming what must be hundreds of hours of Japanese cinema into his brief 59 years on this planet, poet Sono Sion is on the brink of releasing his first entry into the American cinematic landscape. Callooh! Callay! Prisoners of...