Posts Tagged ‘Sundance Film Festival’
 

 

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
 

 
 

ShowbuzzDaily Sundance Film Festival Reviews: “Monster” & “Beirut”

  MONSTER (no distrib):  There’s less than meets the eye in Anthony Mandler’s Monster.  Based by Colen C. Wiley, Radha Black and Janece Shaffer on Walter Dean Myers’ novel, it seems like it’s goin...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Sundance Film Festival Reviews: “Brittany Runs A Marathon” & “Big Time Adolescence”

  BRITTANY RUNS A MARATHON (Amazon):  Paul Downs Colaizzo, previously a playwright, makes a remarkably assured film writing/directing debut with Brittany Runs a Marathon, which features a breakout star performance by Jill...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY SUNDANCE REVIEW: “Low Down”

  No one can accuse LOW DOWN of attempting to glamorize the true story it tells.  Jeff Preiss’s first film as a director is a slow, grim dirge set in an underbelly of the jazz world in 1970s Los Angeles, and it...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY SUNDANCE REVIEW: “God’s Pocket”

  Of all the titles in this year’s Sundance US Dramatic Competition line-up, none may have been more promising on paper than GOD’S POCKET.  Based on a novel by Pete Dexter, it marked the feature directing debu...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Sundance Film Festival Reviews: “Horse Girl,” “Happy Happy Joy Joy” & “Kajillionaire”

  HORSE GIRL (Netflix – February 7):  Every one of the four films Jeff Baena has directed had its premiere at Sundance, with Horse Girl following Life After Beth, Joshy and The Little Hours.  It’s an impressi...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Sundance Film Festival Reviews: “Call Me By Your Name,” “Fun Mom Dinner,” “Before I Fall” & “Wind River”

  CALL ME BY YOUR NAME (Sony Classics):  Luca Guadagnino’s sumptuous gay romance has been anointed as the Sundance entry most likely to figure into next year’s Oscar race, and it’s easy to see why.  It ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

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
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Sundance Film Festival Reviews: “Novitiate,” “The Incredible Jessica James” & “Marjorie Prime”

  NOVITIATE (Sony Classics):  It’s not clear how much of an audience there can be for a dark drama set amid the physical and psychological hardships of a pre-Vatican II midwestern abbey, but Margaret Betts’s N...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

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
 

 

 

ShowbuzzDaily Sundance Film Festival Reviews: “Studio 54″” & “What They Had”

  STUDIO 54 (no distrib):  Matt Tynauer’s documentary covers all the bases of the disco that defined nightlife for a surprisingly brief time in the late 1970s, from the club’s construction on the site of an ol...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Sundance Film Reviews: “Promising Young Woman,” “Four Good Days” & “Zola”

  PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN (Focus/Universal – April 17):  Emerald Fennell’s feature-film writing/directing debut has antecedents as old as the 1973 TV-movie The Girl Most Likely To… (co-written by Joan Rive...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

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
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY SUNDANCE REVIEW: “The One I Love”

  The trouble with trying to recommend THE ONE I LOVE , written by Justin Lader and directed by Charlie McDowell, is that it’s impossible to describe how clever, surprising and intriguing it turns out to be without...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Sundance Film Festival Reviews: “Luce” & “Sonja: The White Swan”

  LUCE (Neon):  Julius Onah’s film was one of the most gripping and provocative of the festival, combining a tale about social and racial tensions with the suspense of a psychological thriller.  Based by director J...
by Mitch Salem