EMILY THE CRIMINAL (no distrib):  John Patton Ford’s feature debut is a lean, gritty, accomplished thriller with a smashing star performance from Aubrey Plaza.  Plaza (who also produced) plays the titular Emily, an aspiring artist whose career got derailed due to a violent incident in college, giving her a record that’s preventing her from […]

  IN THE EARTH (Neon):  After his foray into more commercial cinema with the Netflix remake of Rebecca that didn’t go very well, Ben Wheatley has returned to the stranger and more experimental style of his earlier films like Kill List and High Rise with In the Earth.  It’s not an easy movie to describe […]

  V/H/S, which screened as part of Sundance’s Park City At Midnight series, is a gimmick piled upon a gimmick. First is the horror anthology itself, familiar from the Twilight Zone movie and Rod Serling’s Night Gallery TV show, among many others.  In this case, half a dozen unrelated short films, each from a different […]

This may be heresy, but the virtual Sundance Film Festival went so smoothly that if they offered it as an option in a hopefully pandemic-free 2022, I’d seriously consider passing up the freezing weather and the waits for delayed, packed shuttle buses to stay at home.  Sure, I’d miss the communal experience, but on the […]

  COLETTE (no distrib):  These days, the early 20th Century French writer known as Colette is remembered mostly if at all for having written the story that became the musical Gigi, but her own life proves to be remarkably timely in Wash Westmoreland’s film.  Westmoreland developed the project for a dozen years (originally with his […]

  JULIET, NAKED (no distrib):  Every Sundance has a title or two that isn’t particularly “indie,” other than by the fact that its stars aren’t hugely bankable.  These aren’t the films that set critical hearts aflutter, but they can be worthwhile all the same.  That’s the case with the likable Juliet, Naked, which continues Nick […]

  SHARP STICK (no distrib):  Lena Dunham is certainly no stranger to the concept of art as provocation, but it’s difficult to understand what Sharp Stick, her first feature film in a dozen years, and her first solo venture since Girls, is even seeking to provoke.  It centers on Sara Jo (Kristine Froseth), a bubbly […]

  THE PERSIAN VERSION (Sony Classics):  Maryam Keshavarz’s dramedy won the Sundance Audience Award in the US Dramatic Competition, and it’s a smart mixture of broad comedy and family drama.  The comedy is mostly set in the present day, where aspiring filmmaker Leila (Layla Mohammadi), tries to keep her distance from her mother Shireen (Niousha […]