Posts Tagged ‘Sundance reviews’
 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Sundance Film Reviews: “Save Yourselves!” & “The Fight”

  SAVE YOURSELVES! (no distrib):  A moderately amusing sketch that doesn’t quite have the heft for feature length.  Writer/directors Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson satirize Brooklyn hipsters and sci-fi in t...
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 2013: “The Spectacular Now”

  The screenplay for THE SPECTACULAR NOW, a Dramatic Competition entry at Sundance, was written by the team of Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, who also wrote (500) Days of Summer, but the new film has none of the b...
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 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 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 Film Festival Reviews: “American Animals” & “The Kindergarten Teacher”

  AMERICAN ANIMALS (no distrib):  It’s not easy to come up with a new spin on the venerable heist movie genre, but writer/director Bart Layton has managed just that with American Animals.  Layton had been until now...
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 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 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 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: “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’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
 

 
 

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