Festivals Reviews

Sundance 2024 Notebook: Sasquatch Sunset

After sitting through two hours of the Zellner brother’s long-awaited, dialogue-free, scatalogical feature, I have come to the conclusion that the quotidian existence of America’s favorite hairy cryptozooid is perhaps a topic best left enshrouded in eternal mystery.

Festivals Reviews

Sundance 2024 Notebook: Stress Positions

Remember 2020? Theda Hammel’s period piece finds John Early as Terry Goon (lol), a harried, incompetent, Covid-conscious caretaker for his exoticized model nephew who’s recovering in isolation from a broken leg.

Festivals Reviews

Sundance 2024 Notebook: Veni Vidi Vici

Opening with an Ayn Rand quote, Daniel Hoesl and Julia Niemann’s family portrait of ultra-rich Austrian Psychos who quite literally get away with murder is almost too severe to be considered satire.

Festivals Previews

Sundance Film Festival kicks off in Utah Tomorrow, Online next week

Celebrating its 40th edition, Sundance Film Festival is back with a full slate of in-person programming in the resort town of Park City with a full slate of screenings in Salt Lake City. Once again film lovers, journalists, and critics are flocking to the mountain ski area to kick the year off with a huge array of new feature films from a diverse set of veteran filmmakers and emerging directors.

Reviews

All of Us Strangers heals and haunts with a modern ghost story

It’s by no means A Christmas Carol, but in the grand tradition of holiday movies featuring spiritual visitations, Andrew Haigh works through familiar queer traumas in All of Us Strangers, his gorgeously realized vibey ghost story that arrives in wide release just in time for the holidays.

Reviews

The Boys in the Boat paddles into theaters to assuredly please local crowds

The holiday film with the most local relevance is almost certainly The Boys in the Boat. It tells the inspirational true story of the UW eight man crew team that improbably dominated better funded collegiate competition, made it to the 1936 Olympics, and showed Hitler the power of good old fashioned American determination.