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.

Festivals Reviews

Everyone’s invited to Saltburn for the holidays

The best thing Emerald Fennell does with her sharp satiric follow-up to A Promising Young Woman is giving the always-sublime weirdo Barry Keoghan a whole goddamned movie to finally let his freak flag fly. She brings a distinctly female gaze to a twisty class comedy about an Oxford scholarship nerd falling in (and in love with) with the college’s landed party people elite through the transformative power of doing a fortuitous favor for a fellow student.

Festivals Previews

Mill Valley Film Fest, maybe not a household name, but a heck of lineup

n 2021, in the heat of the pandemic, I was looking for anything to keep my mind busy and find new films that deserve attention. Mill Valley Film Festival (MVFF), was more than happy to help me on this venture and I had an incredible time even if just from my living room. While, once again, I’m not able to head down to California to catch it in person, they’re still offering virtual viewing options not only for press but more importantly, you the viewing audience!

documentary Festivals SIFF

It is once again time for SIFF DocFest

The time is nigh for SIFF to kick off its third(!) DocFest, a festival of many of the most interesting documentaries around the world. It all goes down starting tonight and running through next Wednesday at the Uptown. I’m most interested in catching two documentaries about two very different writers: John LeCarre and Tom Wolfe. But there’s a lot more to catch the attention of us documentary lovers.