THE FATHER (Sony Classics – TBD):  It’s probably foolhardy to start making predictions about next year’s Oscars when this year’s haven’t even been handed out yet, but it’s hard to imagine a scenario where Anthony Hopkins’s performance in The Father won’t be a major part of the Best Actor conversation.  It’s a showcase role, […]

  PLAINCLOTHES (no distrib):  A coming-out story laced with paranoia.  It’s 1997 in upstate New York, and the cops are running undercover operations in public restrooms to lead gay men into indecent exposure charges.  For Lucas (Tom Blyth), this is a particularly difficult assignment, because his own desires are deeply in the closet, not just […]

  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 […]

  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 […]

  FREAKY TALES (no distrib):  The writer/directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck have returned from their profitable but unbeloved sojourn in the land of Captain Marvel to their indie roots with Freaky Tales.  While heartfelt and entertaining, the effort is also intensely derivative.  Fleck was a child of 1987 Oakland, where Freaky Tales takes place, and it’s a […]

  Plot and character revelations are a critical part of James Marsh’s subtle, complex spy drama SHADOW DANCER, adapted by Tom Bradby from his own novel, so I’ll be circumspect in describing its plot beyond the initial set-up.  (Then again, I saw it at an 8:30AM screening at Sundance, so I’m not altogether sure I […]

  SHIRLEY (no distrib):  Josephine Decker’s film isn’t really a biography of the horror writer Shirley Jackson (The Haunting of Hill House, The Lottery), played here by Elizabeth Moss.  The script by Sarah Gubbins is based on a novel by Susan Scarf Merrell loosely inspired by Jackson’s life, and that fictional story has been changed […]

  Click on SHOWBUZZDAILY‘s reviews from this year’s Sundance Film Festival, in alphabetical order:   2 DAYS IN NEW YORK (Magnolia) BACHELORETTE (No Distrib) BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD (Fox Searchlight) CELESTE AND JESSE FOREVER (Sony Pictures Classics) COMPLIANCE (Magnolia) FILLY BROWN (No Distrib) THE FIRST TIME (No Distrib) FOR A GOOD TIME, CALL… (Focus) […]