STOKER is the kind of swank, elegant horror movie we don’t see very often in these days of unkillable chainsaw-wielding serial killers who make awful use of human remains.  It’s chilling, more than a little crazy, and also borderline silly, all of which are part of the fun. The film is the first English-language project […]

  OMAHA (no distrib):  A tiny tragedy that doesn’t reveal the true depths of its sadness until the very end.  One morning, a widowed father (John Magaro) hurries his children, 9-year old Ella (Molly Belle Wright) and 6-year old Charlie (Wyatt Solis), out of their house as it’s being foreclosed, and tells them to pack […]

  WORTH (no distrib):  A dry but fascinating angle on the story of 9/11, Worth centers on the real-life Ken Feinberg (Michael Keaton), an attorney with a very specific expertise:  he and his firm calculated and negotiated compensation payouts to victims and survivors of disasters, in order to settle suits brought for their losses.  In […]

  Sundance is sometimes thrilling, but it can also be an ordeal.  Especially when the films are good, but not great.  And even more so if you arrive with limited tickets, and are left to the tender mercies of the Wait List lines (which, given Sundance’s idiosyncratic approach to Wait Lists, requires standing on each […]

  SERGIO (Netflix – April 17):  Greg Barker’s film has an unusual pedigree.  Barker, up to this point a documentarian, directed a nonfiction version of the same story (and with the same title) in 2009, but decided that he wanted to explore the life of UN diplomat Sergio Vieira de Mello further in a way […]

  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 […]

  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 […]

  Damien Chazelle’s powerhouse WHIPLASH is about the pursuit of not just excellence, but perfection, and on its own deliberately limited terms it doesn’t land far from that mark.  Whiplash won both the Grand Jury and the Audience prizes at this year’s Sundance Film Festival (only the 5th time that’s happened), and for all intents […]