TOUCHY FEELY offers the gifted writer/director Lynn Shelton taking herself very, very seriously for the most part.  It turns out to be a less effective mode for her than those of her recent small-scale comedies Humpday and Your Sister’s Sister, which had marvelously well-judged tones.  (In her more mainstream work, she recently directed a […]

  Maybe it’s time for a filmmaker who doesn’t give a damn about the Beat Generation to make the next movie about them.  Michael Polish’s BIG SUR joins last year’s On the Road as a Jack Kerouac adaptation that’s gorgeously filmed, performed with seriousness and commitment, and dramatically paralyzed.  (I missed this year’s other Sundance […]

  MAGIC MAGIC never really makes clear what it intends to be, but it’s awfully fascinating to watch. Written and directed by the prolific Sebastian Silva, who had two films at Sundance this year (the other was the well-received Crystal Fairy), and who is best known for his art-house success The Maid, Magic is set […]

  If you go to too many Sundances, or see too many indie films, there are certain templates you come to recognize all too quickly.  THE LIFEGUARD, written and directed by Liz W. Garcia, a TV writer (Memphis Beat, Cold Case) making her directing debut, follows so many of these conventions that it could have […]

  It takes quite a while–almost its entire length, in fact–for the utter conventionality of AFTERNOON DELIGHT to become clear.  Jill Soloway’s feature directing debut, for which she unaccountably won a Sundance award, toys with being a much more interesting, transgressive film, before settling down to be as middle-of-the-road and inoffensive as is humanly possible.  […]

  There’s a tendency to compare any slow-moving, beautifully-photographed drama with an abundance of natural imagery to the films of Terence Malick, but that’s unfair to the very particular surreal spirituality Malick brings even to his more insufferable projects.  In the case of AIN’T THEM BODIES SAINTS, the more apt comparison is probably to Robert […]

  The Sundance programmers, one has to assume, are big fans of TV’s Happy Endings.  Casey Wilson is part of that show’s wonderful ensemble, and one of its most reliably hilarious members.  The news that she was co-writing (with co-star June Diane Raphael) her own comedy vehicle must have seemed promising.  Yet at some point […]

  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 […]