showbuzzdaily Sundance reviews

Full SHOWBUZZDAILY Virtual Sundance Reviews

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 ...

by Mitch Salem

Full Story »

ShowbuzzDaily Sundance 2022 Reviews: “When You Finish Saving The World” & “Fresh”

It’s the second consecutive Virtual Sundance, with safety, convenience and isolation in place of weather, shuttle buses and community. Over the next several days, we’ll be bringing you reviews of several Su...

by Mitch Salem

Full Story »

SHOWBUZZDAILY Sundance Film Festival Review: “The Farewell”

THE FAREWELL (A24): Lulu Wang’s The Farewell is what could be called Sundance Classic, a small, very personal film nurtured by the festival into wide enough attention that A24 paid $6M to release it. It’s...

by Mitch Salem

Full Story »

SHOWBUZZDAILY Sundance Film Festival Reviews: “The Report” & “Them That Follow”

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’...

by Mitch Salem

Full Story »

SHOWBUZZDAILY Virtual Sundance Reviews: “First Date” & “Pleasure”

FIRST DATE: Your regard for First Date is likely to directly relate to your nostalgia for the low-rent action comedies and Tarantino imitations of the 1990s and 2000s. Those comedies were marked by idiot plots that p...

by Mitch Salem

Full Story »

SHOWBUZZDAILY Sundance Film Festival Reviews: “Official Secrets” & “Greener Grass”

OFFICIAL SECRETS (IFC): Film festivals have a way of creating unintended double features when thematically similar films are seen in close proximity, and it’s hard to watch Gavin Hood’s Official Secrets wit...

by Mitch Salem

Full Story »

SHOWBUZZDAILY Virtual Sundance Reviews: “Human Factors,” “Cryptozoo” & “How It Ends”

HUMAN FACTORS: Is Ronny Trocker’s Human Factors intended as a political allegory? The married couple at its center are the German Jan (Mark Waschke) and the French Nina (Sabine Timoteo), and there’s a plo...

by Mitch Salem

Full Story »

SHOWBUZZDAILY Sundance Film Festival Reviews: “The Sunlit Night” & “Wounds”

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...

by Mitch Salem

Full Story »

SHOWBUZZDAILY Virtual Sundance Review: “Judas and the Black Messiah”

JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH (Warners/HBO Max – February 12): The title refers to the FBI informant Bill O’Neal (played here by LaKeith Stanfield) and the Illinois Black Panthers leader Fred Hampton (Daniel ...

by Mitch Salem

Full Story »

ShowbuzzDaily’s Sundance 2022 Reviews: “Living,” “Call Jane” & “Watcher”

LIVING (no distrib): Over the years, there’s periodically been talk about remaking Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 masterpiece Ikiru, including a rumored updated US version that would have starred Tom Hanks in the le...

by Mitch Salem

Full Story »

ShowbuzzDaily Sundance 2022 Reviews: “Emily the Criminal” & “blood”

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, ...

by Mitch Salem

Full Story »

SHOWBUZZDAILY Virtual Sundance Reviews: “Mayday” and “Prisoners Of the Ghostland”

MAYDAY: The fantasy whatzit is a Sundance staple, and Mayday fits into that category. (Paradise Hills was a recent example from a past festival.) Ana (Grace Van Patten), short for Anastasia, is an ignored and abuse...

by Mitch Salem

Full Story »

SHOWBUZZDAILY Sundance Film Festival Reviews: “After the Wedding” & “Adam”

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 camerawo...

by Mitch Salem

Full Story »