The actress Lake Bell’s feature-film writing/directing debut IN A WORLD… has a fresh slant on showbiz comedy, and it’s both consistently likable and sometimes very funny.  It’s also sloppy, overbroad, predictable and so technically flat that it hurts the eyes to watch–but that’s what first films are for. The general idea of In A World…, in which various […]

  AFTER THE WEDDING (no distrib):  The Danish 2006 After the Wedding, which won that year’s Best Foreign Film Oscar, was shot by director Suzanne Biers in the then-trendy Dogma style, heavy on pseudo-verite camerawork and lighting that imparted a sense of immediacy to the drama.  Bart Freundlich’s English-language remake dispenses with that style entirely.  […]

>Two Australian couples vacation together on the beaches of Cambodia, but only 3 people return. That’s the set-up for Kieran Darcy-Smith’s skilled debut WISH YOU WERE HERE, which premiered as part of Sundance’s World Cinema competition.The focal point of the story is the more settled, middle-class couple on the trip: Dave (Joel Edgerton) and Alice […]

  LUCE (Neon):  Julius Onah’s film was one of the most gripping and provocative of the festival, combining a tale about social and racial tensions with the suspense of a psychological thriller.  Based by director Julius Onah and JC Lee on the latter’s play (as adapted, the drama isn’t in any way stagebound), it centers […]

  REBEL IN THE RYE (no distrib):  Danny Strong’s first film as a director is a biography of J. D. Salinger (Nicholas Hoult), and it hits all the Salinger bullet points:  his early struggles to get published, his spectacularly doomed romance with legendary playwright’s daughter Oona O’Neill (he lost her to Charlie Chaplin), his difficult […]

  The title ZIPPER suggests something wittier and more enticing than Mora Stephens’ well-made melodrama turns out to be.  If a filmmaker is determined to reexamine the familiar story of a politician who can’t control his own personal excesses, some kind of new take or distinctive angle is advisable, but Stephens and her co-writer Joel Viertel […]

  BLINDED BY THE LIGHT (New Line/Warners):  Sundance was somewhat awash in feel-good movies this year, which is unusual but not unprecedented.  One of the most successful in previous years was 2002’s Bend It Like Beckham, directed by Gurinder Chadha.  Chadha returned to the festival this year after some time in the movie wilderness (Bride […]

  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 […]