Deadline Studio at Sundance 2020 – Day 1 – Aubrey Plaza, Ron Howard, Sasheer Zamata & More

Seamlessly meshing classic scary movie tropes with the more profound horror of real-world conflict zones, His House represents a harrowing but bracingly creative feature debut for British writer-director Remi Weekes.

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It’s the final countdown! After months of regular season games and exciting playoff matches, the Kansas City Chiefs will face off against the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl LIV on Sunday, February 2.

A gritty coming-of-age drama, Charm City Kings introduces viewers to a dirt bike scene where Baltimore’s young people have honed a sports-like showmanship and sense of community over the last 50 years. Directed by Angel Manuel Soto with a script from Sherman Payne and a story penned by Barry Jenkins, Chris Boyd and Kirk Sullivan, the film is based on the documentary 12 O’Clock Boys from director Lotfy Nathan.

Fresh out of Harvard, 23-year-old director Lance Oppenheim quickly dispenses with any facile or reductive ideas about aging gracefully in his first feature-length documentary,Some Kind of Heaven, a look inside the nation’s largest retirement community.A so-called “fountain of youth,” as one resident describes it in the darkly upbeat film, Central Florida's The Villages is home to over 130,000 residents who can choose to fill their ample free time with thousands of activities, everything from

By Mike Fleming Jr

By Brandon Choe

Feeling the love! Ron Howard was thrilled to learn of Jennifer Aniston’s appreciation for his former TV series, Happy Days, weeks after she gave it a shout out during her Screen Actors Guild Awards acceptance speech.

While the prospect of a sequel series to Ron Howard‘s 1988 fantasy feature “Willow” has gotten fans frothing at the mouth, Howard told Variety that Disney Plus still hasn’t made a final decision on the show as of yet.

Chante Herries (2nd 2019 Runner Up), Belinda Qaqamba Ka-Fassie (Miss Drag South Africa 2019), Laylah Zokufa Khan (1st 2019 Runner Up) Pic: Mkhululi Thobela

By Brandon Choe

Writer-director Lawrence Michael Levine deviously screws with our heads in Black Bear while at the same time messing with those of his principal characters, a trio played with a succession of intriguing shifts by Aubrey Plaza, Christopher Abbott and Sarah Gadon, all in fine form.

Most immigration stories are similar in a broad sense but distinctive in the details, which is certainly the case withMinari.A rare look at a Korean family trying to adapt and make a go of it in, of all places, 1980s Arkansas, Lee Isaac Chung’s autobiographical feature is warmly observant, gently humorous in the vein of Ozu and not shy about the awful strain the struggle places on the adults in the family.

The battle lines of territorial masculinity are drawn with compelling psychological complexity in Summer White, in which a 13-year-old boy impatient to become a man grows increasingly hostile to the presence of his single mother's new partner in their lives. Mexican director Rodrigo Ruiz Patterson establishes a domestic situation of almost unhealthy mutual emotional dependency and then ruptures it with the arrival of an outsider whose kindness and generosity make him even more of a threat.

The faces in Saudi Runaway are blurred, with one exception: the documentary's subject and (cameraphone) cinematographer.

Two literarily inclined couples on a college campusgive the foursome inWho’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?a run for their money in the bad behavior department inShirley,a classy and nasty little item that gives some fine actors a chance to go at it with claws out and liquor bottles open.

Moving quickly past the mass shooting at a Parkland, Florida, high school and the outcry that led many to hope things would be different this time, Kim A.

As comprehensive and sobering an account of the murder of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi as one could want is offered up byThe Dissident.An Oscar winner forIcarus,his 2017 look into the Russian sports doping scandal, director Bryan Fogel has assembled this massively documented investigation in an impressively short amount of time; Khashoggi was killed at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018, but one feels no stone was left unturned in researching and conveying the story.

Acclaimed filmmaker Ron Howard said a personal connection moved him to make a documentary about the most devastating wildfire in California history.

By Mike Fleming Jr