‘How It Ends’ Film Review: It’s the End of the World as We Know It, and You’ll Feel Fine

As she explained to us in an interview of the Deep Focus podcast, Rebecca Hall has been working a long time bringing her directorial debut, “Passing,” to life. Even though the debut was delayed due to the pandemic, the period drama finally premiered as part of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Also Read: Neon Acquires Jonas Poher Rasmussen's 'Flee' in 7-Figure DealMade lucid in hand-drawn animated form, Amin’s memories are expressed in two distinguishable styles: The most traumatic, and thus the foggiest, appear through rough lines in muted black-and-white, like an apparition barely visible in the mist of his subconscious, but with tangible sensorial impact. That minimalist approach changes for sequences in the present and the larger part of the past.

Irene (Tessa Thompson) rarely passes for white. She fears for her safety too much to do so.

In the last 20 years, as the internet steadily integrated itself into every facet of our lives, adolescence has been changed radically. No longer forced into interactions with other people their age by circumstance, more and more teens have found themselves alone on their computers, phones and tablets for immeasurable lengths of time.

Exquisite performances from Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga provide the pulsing, emotionally heightened center to Passing, Rebecca Hall's assured move behind the camera, adapted with great sensitivity from the 1929 novel by Harlem Renaissance author Nella Larsen. "We're all of us passing for something or other, aren't we?" muses Thompson's melancholy character Irene Redfield.

Sundance Film Festival Cinema Café talk on Sunday with Rebecca Hall. “Everybody was a judge and there was so much bullying going on.

Jessica Kiang It starts in sweltering heat; it ends in freezing weather. And in between, as the temperature gradually drops, Rebecca Hall’s “Passing,” based on Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel, calmly brings the diffuse racial landscape of prohibition-era New York City into crystalline, gorgeously shot focus.

Irene (Tessa Thompson) rarely passes for white. She fears for her safety too much to do so.

The presumed dead-and-buried practice of racial passing by light-skinned blacks in the United States decades ago is returned to center-stage in Passing, a delicate, sensitive, intentionally claustrophobic and not entirely limber directorial debut from the protean British stage performer Rebecca Hall.

See Photos: 14 Buzziest Sundance Movies for Sale in 2021, From Questlove's 'Summer of Soul' to Rebecca Hall's 'Passing'As conflicted Irene, Thompson delivers her finest work to date, reminiscent of her turn in the recent period piece “Sylvie’s Love” but with greater substance.

Also Read: 'Sesame Street' Documentary 'Street Gang' Set for 2021 HBO DebutAgrelo, best known for 2005’s “Mad Hot Ballroom,” does an exemplary job of storytelling as she corrals this saga into about 100 minutes and sums up just how groundbreaking the show was. “We thought we were changing children’s television,” says Cerf at one point in the film.

A gently funny take on the last-day-on-earth microgenre, Zoe Lister-Jones and Daryl Wein's How It Ends sets its protagonist (Lister-Jones) up with an ambitious to-do list, then slows her down so she can appreciate the journey.

Also Read: 14 Buzziest Sundance Movies for Sale in 2021, From Questlove's 'Summer of Soul' to Rebecca Hall's 'Passing' (Photos)The story is specific to one group of women at one particular time, but five decades later, it’s certainly applicable to current questions about the role of religion in society, about the place of tradition and rigor in the Church and about how social justice movements intersect with biblical teachings.

One of the most exciting international discoveries of last year's Sundance festival was His House, which explored the cultural dislocation of the refugee experience through a genuinely nerve-rattling horror prism.

Also Read: 14 Buzziest Sundance Movies for Sale in 2021, From Questlove's 'Summer of Soul' to Rebecca Hall's 'Passing' (Photos)The film was one of the opening-night presentations at the virtual Sundance Film Festival on Thursday, occupying the same position as previous music-focused docs like “Twenty Feet From Stardom,” “Searching for Sugar Man,” “What Happened, Miss Simone?” and last year’s “Miss Americana.” No doubt it left some viewers wishing that it had been the Eccles Theatre moving to the

Kourosh Ahari's debut feature proves an accomplished psychological chiller that impresses far beyond its historic status as a U.S. production featuring primarily Iranian or Iranian-American talent.

Sure, Sundance is absolutely loaded with some amazing prestige films that are sure to be in the discussion at the end of the year during awards season. Rebecca Hall’s “Passing?” Looks incredible and thought-provoking.