Posts Tagged ‘Sundance reviews’
 

 

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
 

 
 

ShowbuzzDaily’s Sundance 2022 Reviews: “Honk For Jesus. Save Your Soul,” “Cha Cha Real Smooth” & “Alice”

  HONK FOR JESUS.  SAVE YOUR SOUL (no distrib):  Scandal-ridden mega-churches aren’t exactly fresh territory for screens big (The Tears of Tammy Faye) or small (The Righteous Gemstones), with tones that range from ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Sundance Film Festival Reviews: “Band Aid,” “The Discovery” & “Golden Exits”

  THE DISCOVERY (Netflix):  Charlie McDowell’s first film was the ingenious metaphysical farce The One I Love, so there was plenty of reason to eagerly anticipate his follow-up.  He (and, once again, co-writer Just...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

ShowbuzzDaily Sundance 2022 Reviews: “Palm Trees and Power Lines,” “Am I OK?” and “Lucy and Desi”

  PALM TREES AND POWER LINES (no distrib):  Jamie Dack’s first feature film (from a script written with Audrey Findlay) means to unsettle, and it does.  17-year old Lea (Lily McInerny) is stuck in a dead-end Southe...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Virtual Sundance Reviews: “Eight For Silver” & “The Sparks Brothers”

  EIGHT FOR SILVER:  Sean Ellis’s 19th century werewolf movie takes itself very seriously.  Ellis has extensively revised the usual mythology of the genre:  the full moon doesn’t figure into things, the were...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Virtual Sundance Reviews: “CODA” & “Censor”

  A year ago, the idea of a “virtual film festival” would have seemed extremely far-fetched, but it’s become a regular practice in pandemic times.  The latest festival to take this path is Sundance, whic...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

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
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Sundance Film Festival Reviews: “Miss Americana,” “Ironbark” & “Scare Me”

  MISS AMERICANA (Netflix – January 31):  There are certainly areas of Taylor Swift’s life that are carefully elided in MISS AMERICANA (her actor boyfriend’s face and name are absent, for example, and th...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY @ SUNDANCE 2013: Capsule Reviews

  The old truism that Park City empties out during the second half of the Sundance Film Festival, making it possible to see all the hot titles that premiered at the festival’s start, is far less true than it used to ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

ShowbuzzDaily Sundance 2022 Reviews: “God’s Country” & “Phoenix Rising”

  GOD’S COUNTRY (no distrib):  A deliberative character study that’s also a thriller of sorts, anchored by one of the best performances of Thandiwe Newton’s career.  When two hunters (Joris Jarsky and Y...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Virtual Sundance Reviews: “Passing,” “Street Gang” & “Mass”

  PASSING:  The actress Rebecca Hall has taken a big swing in her writing/directing debut.  Her film Passing, based on the 1929 novel by Nella Larsen, embraces ambitious, difficult themes with sensitivity and expertise.�...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Sundance Film Reviews: “Shirley,” “Surge” & “The Climb”

  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 Gu...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

ShowbuzzDaily Sundance Film Festival Reviews: “Blindspotting” & “Monsters and Men”

  BLINDSPOTTING (no distrib):  At Sundance, often one doesn’t seek perfection so much as promise, and there’s plenty of the latter in Blindspotting, written by its stars Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal.  They h...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

ShowbuzzDaily Sundance Film Festival Reviews: “Sidney Hall,” “To the Bone,” “The Little Hours” & “Beach Rats”

  SIDNEY HALL (no distrib):  Shawn Christensen’s literary drama (written with Jason Dolan) is initially engaging as a modern-day sort of J.D. Salinger story, told simultaneously across three time periods, with Sidne...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

ShowbuzzDaily Sundance Film Festival Reviews: “Come Sunday” & “The Miseducation of Cameron Post”

  COME SUNDAY (Netflix):  American films that feature religious figures tend to come in two varieties:  the cloying “faith-based” dramas that play quite literally to the choir, and the “edgy” film...
by Mitch Salem