Film Festival

SHOWBUZZDAILY @ SUNDANCE 2013: “Toy’s House”

Posted January 26, 2013 by Mitch Salem

  TOY’S HOUSE is a delightful Sundance surprise, a fresh take on adolescent boys coming of age.  The conceit of Jordan Vogt-Roberts’ film, written by Chris Galletta, is that Joe Toy (Nick Robinson), his best friend Patrick (Gabriel Basso), and a very strange tagalong named Biaggio (Moises Arias) don’t just run away, they literally find an […]

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Film Festival

SHOWBUZZDAILY Sundance Film Festival Reviews: “The Report” & “Them That Follow”

Posted February 2, 2019 by Mitch Salem

  THE REPORT (Amazon):  Scott Z. Burns’s political expose is important and engrossing, but it’s composed of so much exposition that it may have trouble finding a mainstream audience.  (Which made Amazon’s decision to pay $14M to acquire it somewhat surprising.)  The film is concerned with two overlapping cover-ups over a period of years, set […]

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Film Festival

Sundance Film Festival Reviews 2025: “Hal & Harper”

Posted February 11, 2025 by Mitch Salem

  HAL & HARPER (no network):  Cooper Raiff launched his career as an actor-writer-director with Shithouse, which won the Narrative Grand Jury Award at SXSW.  He parlayed that into Cha Cha Real Smooth, which was less well-regarded but nevertheless bought by Apple for $15M out of Sundance.  Like many indie filmmakers, he’s now shifted into television, […]

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Film Festival

Sundance 2024 Film Reviews: “The Outrun” & “Veni Vidi Vici”

Posted January 27, 2024 by Mitch Salem

  THE OUTRUN (no distrib):  Films about alcoholics and addicts in recovery are too numerous to count, and it’s easy to understand why.  The stories offer a clear narrative path, usually with an inspirational destination (occasionally with a tragic end, which can be just as cathartic), as well as a ready-made showcase for the star, […]

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Film Festival

Sundance Film Festival Reviews 2025: “Sorry, Baby” & “Dead Lover”

Posted January 31, 2025 by Mitch Salem

  The 2025 Sundance Film Festival is still going on, and will continue through February 2.  However, at this point all the major titles have premiered, and the at-home part of the festival has kicked in, so it seems fair to say that it was a fairly dispiriting edition, especially for those who judge Sundance […]

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Film Festival

Sundance 2024 Film Reviews: “The American Society of Magical Negroes” & “Sasquatch Sunset”

Posted January 21, 2024 by Mitch Salem

  THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF MAGICAL NEGROES (Focus/Universal – March 15):  The title of Kobi Libii’s first feature refers to the unfortunately well-established movie trope where a noble Black character exists only as a catalyst to make the white protagonist a better person.  (Think of everything from Driving Miss Daisy to The Green Mile, The Legend of Bagger Vance to Green […]

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Film Festival

SHOWBUZZDAILY Virtual Sundance Reviews: “On the Count of Three” & “Ma Belle, My Beauty”

Posted February 3, 2021 by Mitch Salem

  ON THE COUNT OF THREE:  There was a well-deserved Sundance screenwriting prize for Ari Katcher and Ryan Welch’s script for Jerrod Carmichael’s big-screen directing debut, which threads an almost impossible needle as a comedy about suicidal depression.  (In an unintentional way, the film is a companion piece to the festival’s How It Ends, also […]

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Film Festival

Sundance 2024 Film Reviews: “Presence” & “I Saw the TV Glow”

Posted January 26, 2024 by Mitch Salem

  PRESENCE (Neon – TBD):  Steven Soderbergh has always appreciated, and often demanded, a challenge, and in Presence he and screenwriter David Koepp have taken an original approach to the haunted house genre.  The point of view character here is the ghost itself, who we’re told has an inchoate consciousness that can’t distinguish between past […]

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