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 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 […]

  THE SUNLIT NIGHT (no distrib):  The last thing one would have expected from the director of the genuinely scabrous Wetlands was a follow-up that seems to trying to meld NY Jewish comedy with the kind of enchanted romcom spirit of Bill Forsyth’s Local Hero.  But that’s what David Wnendt has given us, and the […]

  TO THE STARS (no distrib):  Tales of small-town outcasts are a regular feature at Sundance, and Martha Stephens’ drama is an accomplished example of the genre.  Shannon Bradley-Colleary’s script is set in 1960s Oklahoma (the film is splendidly shot by Andrew Reed in a black and white that recalls The Last Picture Show), centering on […]

  I AM MOTHER (no distrib):  Grant Sputore’s impressively controlled first feature brings us back to the post-apocalypse.  In Michael Lloyd Green’s script, it appears as though the only surviving remnant of humanity is an unnamed girl (Clara Rugaard as a teen) raised from a fetus by a maternal robot (voiced by Rose Byrne).  Mother […]

  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.  […]

There are certain inevitabilities at Sundance, apart from snow:  something will go wrong (after I waited on line for 2 hours on opening day, the box office discovered that it had lost one of my passes), and no matter how carefully one chooses one’s film selections, some of the hottest titles will be missed.  For […]

  I THINK WE’RE ALONE NOW (no distrib):  Pop culture seems to have an endless fascination with the post-apocalypse, and I Think We’re Alone Now has plenty of pedigree, hailing from Handmaid’s Tale pilot director Reed Morano, and with Peter Dinklage and Elle Fanning as seemingly the last people on Earth.  Nevertheless, it’s a misfire, […]