‘Nothing Compares’ Review: Bio-Documentary Composes Sinéad O’Connor’s Life Into a Sanitized Greatest Hits Compilation [Sundance]

Demystifying and questioning the very notion of authenticity, Jason Kohn’s informative and oddly riveting, diamond-documentary “Nothing Lasts Forever” is ostensibly about the oft-antagonistic relationship between natural and synthetic diamonds. Yet, diamonds are an in-road as Kohn explores the commodification of such abstractions as love and desire, questioning how exactly a shiny rock — one that isn’t even that rare — became a physical manifestation of commitment.

After striking gold with period drama “Bridgerton” in a $100+ million deal with Netflix, Shonda Rhimes’ Shondaland has debuted its latest bid for streaming success: “Inventing Anna.” Based on the too–good–to–be–true story, “Inventing Anna” draws inspiration from the work of journalist Jessica Pressler, whose article “Maybe She Had So Much Money She Just Lost Track of It” chronicled the exploits of Anna Delvey, a young Russian woman who successfully posed as a German heiress, conning New York’s elite out of thousands of dollars worth of clothes, shoes, vacations, and private jets.

In his review of the film, TheWrap’s Steve Pond wrote “‘Nothing Compares’ is a movie that is both timely and curiously out of time. It’s a potent film that explores the roots of the brilliant but troubled Irish singer, who’s been back in the news recently with the suicide of her teenage son and her own hospitalization, but it also turns her recent years into an afterthought, bypassing many of the highs and lows that led her here over the last two decades.”“Nothing Compares” is produced by Eleanor Emptage and Michael Mallie for Tara Films (UK) and Ard Mhacha Productions (Ireland), and presented by Field of Vision.

EXCLUSIVE: Numerous broadcasters and streamers vied for it, but Deadline hears that Showtime is in exclusive negotiations for the worldwide rights to Nothing Compares, the Sundance buzz title documentary about the provocative life of Irish singer Sinéad O’Connor.

Since signing his first record deal at the tender age of just 20, Neil Hannon aka The Divine Comedy has enjoyed 30 years of gleefully disruptive pop releases. 

Team Tomdaya! As Tom Holland’s romance with Zendaya has continued to heat up, Drew Barrymore is looking back at the couple’s journey to love.

The idea of revisiting the first COVID quarantine of 2020 might be anathema to most people, but the new Charli XCX documentary Alone Together offers the inside track on the creation of how i’m feeling now, a deeply personal pop album and a key creative document of the pandemic. Alone Together tracks the six week period when Charli holed up in her LA home and made a whole new album from scratch, with little company besides her boyfriend and a pile of freshly purchased recording equipment.

Matt Donnelly Senior Film WriterCooper Raiff’s “Cha Cha Real Smooth” is officially dancing to Apple TV Plus. The tech giant and growing streamer has nabbed the second feature from the heat-seeking director out of this year’s virtual edition of the Sundance Film Festival.Apple emerged victorious from a competitive bidding market that had attracted Netflix, Amazon and Sony Pictures as potential buyers.The deal was brokered by Endeavor Content with a sale closing as high as $15 million, an individual familiar with the talks stated.“Cha Cha Real Smooth” stars Raiff as a recent graduate working as a bar mitzvah hype man.

At first glance, actor-writer-director Cooper Raiff’s “Cha Cha Real Smooth” might look like your typical cutesy and whimsical Sundance dramedy, about a twenty-something college graduate learning a valuable life lesson and experiencing a bit of a delayed coming of age. While that’s not an inaccurate description of Raiff’s disarmingly lovely film (programmed in this year’s US Dramatic Competition), what feels miraculous about “Cha Cha” is: it doesn’t come with even an ounce of that cringe-inducing Sundance fancifulness, a brand that many love to hate.

Alexei Navalny, Russia’s highest-profile opposition figure, perennial thorn in Putin’s side and currently a guest in state prison, gets a vigorous up-close-and-personal look in this eventful, fest-moving, never-a-dull-moment documentary from Daniel Roher. A collaboration between HBO Max and CNN Films, Navalny, provides a sustained look at a good-looking, articulate and seemingly unafraid family man who came very close to being murdered on August 20, 2020 by what were quite clearly politically hired killers. The privileged access provides the opportunity for an international public to get a handle on a driven personality who consistently said things very few others are willing to risk. Anyone who follows contemporary international politics will eat it up.

Grieving Sinéad O'Connor has revealed the sweet way she's remembering her late son Shane following his funeral last week.Taking to Twitter, the Irish musician revealed that she has a permanent place set at the table for the 17 year old, who was reported to have gone missing from hospital before his tragic death earlier this month. Sinéad, 55, wrote: “Am staying with my best girlfriend. Been with her since the funeral.

In May 1948, after the controversial approval of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, war broke out between Arab and Jewish factions in the region. The conflict began due to claims over the same land.

Guy Lodge Film CriticIf the Jane Collective has gone under-credited in American women’s rights history over the last half-century, independent cinema is doing its best to make up for lost time. Right on the heels of Phyllis Nagy’s colorful fictionalized drama “Call Jane,” “The Janes” is the second film at this year’s Sundance festival dedicated to the female-staffed, Chicago-based underground service that provided over 11,000 illegal abortions to women in need between 1968 and 1973, at which point Roe v.

Dennis Harvey Film CriticThough not mandatory, a stint of missionary service is common among young Mormons, with men and (to a lesser extent) women mostly between 18 and 21 sent to LDS outposts around the world for evangelical work by the thousands each year. They comprise the most public face of a church still regarded by many outsiders as secretive and strange, and thus are an object of natural curiosity, if also some popular ridicule.

Chris Willman Music WriterNetflix’s epic Kanye West documentary, “Jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy,” will unfold in three feature-length parts, as the subtitle promises. (The first part premiered Sunday in the Sundance Film Festival, and gets a one-night theatrical release Feb.

With a promising start with his first film Shithouse for which he starred, directed and wrote and won the Grand Jury Narrative Prize at SXSW, Cooper Raiff looms now also to be one of the breakouts of this year’s Sundance Film Festival where Cha Cha Real Smooth, his small but splendid second film for which he performs the same triple threat duties debuted Sunday as part of the Dramatic Competition lineup. I can only imagine if the festival had managed to be in person as originally planned rather than virtual in this Omicron-stricken year it would be met with a massive standing ovation. Raiff is bound to become an indie darling as if further proof was needed, but Cha Cha Real Smooth cements him as the real deal both in front of and behind the camera.

A blistering psychological thriller and enigmatic horror film that already has Sundance audiences divided thanks to its provocative, polarizing premise, filmmaker Andrew Semans’ “Resurrection” is emotionally searing, wildly unhinged and maybe even a little batshit crazy. However, as anchored by its two fiercely committed and convincing lead performances (Rebecca Hall and Tim Roth), a menacingly disquieting tone, and a frightening ambiguity about a disintegrating mental state, “Resurrection” is a deeply distressing and compelling drama that will shock and shake you to your core.