LOVE ME (no distrib):  A truly existential romance.  Many years after the end of the human race, seemingly due to a combination of nuclear war and a new ice age, the two remaining artifacts with any ability to communicate are a smart ocean buoy and a satellite assigned to make contact with any life […]

> Sundance has a thriving Park City At Midnight program that features plenty of high-octane horror movies, but the most unnerving and disturbing film of this year’s festival may have been Craig Zobel’s COMPLIANCE, a low-key drama based (apparently rather closely) on a true story without any hacked-off limbs or hint of the supernatural. In […]

  OMAHA (no distrib):  A tiny tragedy that doesn’t reveal the true depths of its sadness until the very end.  One morning, a widowed father (John Magaro) hurries his children, 9-year old Ella (Molly Belle Wright) and 6-year old Charlie (Wyatt Solis), out of their house as it’s being foreclosed, and tells them to pack […]

> There’s a principled discussion to be had about whether the Sundance Film Festival should be featuring movies that are essentially low-budget Hollywood entertainments made outside the studio system. But that discussion fades into irrelevance when the result is as hilarious and accomplished as FOR A GOOD TIME, CALL…, which premiered tonight. Directed by first-time […]

  SIDNEY HALL (no distrib):  Shawn Christensen’s literary drama (written with Jason Dolan) is initially engaging as a modern-day sort of J.D. Salinger story, told simultaneously across three time periods, with Sidney Hall (Logan Lerman throughout) presented as an arrogant but troubled teen, an acclaimed novelist, and a middle-aged man who’s run away from the […]

  When Joseph Gordon-Levitt decided to make his feature writing and directing debut with DON JON’S ADDICTION (starring in it as well), his attitude was clearly Go Big Or Go Home.  To a large extent, he’s pulled off his audacious comedy, although in keeping with its theme, this may be the kind of movie people […]

  THE WEDDING BANQUET (Bleecker Street – April 18):  Ang Lee’s 1993 comedy needed to be rethought before it could be remade, since its plot turned on a woman marrying her gay landlord so that she could get a green card and he could placate his parents, since same-sex marriage was illegal.  Since that’s no […]

  A year ago, the idea of a “virtual film festival” would have seemed extremely far-fetched, but it’s become a regular practice in pandemic times.  The latest festival to take this path is Sundance, which in some ways is well-suited for this new normal, since it’s less built around starry galas than others.  (And there’s […]