‘Palm Trees And Power Lines’ Plays The Dynamics Of Sexual Predation To Their Dark, Logical Conclusion [Sundance]

What do you have to say to the Russian people in the event of your death? Filmmaker Daniel Roher (“Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band,”) asks his subject, political Russian dissident, Alexei Navalny, at the beginning of his engrossing new doc “Navalny.” “C’mon,” Navalny scoffs, dismissively, as if highly attuned to Roher’s “gotcha” question he could frame posthumously in the case of the political agitator’s untimely death.

Directed by Paula Eislet and Tonya Lewis Lee (Spike Lee’s producer and partner), the documentary “Aftershock” chronicles the dismal maternal mortality rate that women of color face in the United States medical system. The statistics are shameful, pointing to a systemic racist indifference, and the documentary chronicles the staggering number of times that expectant mothers entering into hospitals simply do not come out alive due to a lack of care and sensitivity.

In 1973, at the age of 23, Korean immigrant Chol Soo Lee was arrested. An outsider within San Francisco’s Chinatown, Lee was charged with first-degree murder after being accused of shooting a Chinese gang member in the back at point-blank range.

TikTok is an undeniable force in our society. It has the power to launch music careers, house the homeless, and unite people worldwide.

A dreamlike exploration of toxic masculinity, new motherhood, and sexual awakening, Quebecois actor-director Monia Chokri debuted her second feature, “Babysitter,” at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. While it’s unclear what “Babysitter” is actually trying to say — or even what its characters learn over the course of its plot — the film is so thoroughly sardonic that it gleefully resists any deeper meaning.

“My Old School,” a documentary by Jono McLeod, opens with an enticing montage. Interviewees speak ominously about a mysterious character who’s done something strange — a man who may even be unhinged enough to have changed his identity through facial reconstruction.

If you’ve never been to Sundance before, you can expect a lot of fresh features from oft-marginalized directors and — at least these days — films shot with square aspect ratios. “Girl Picture,” a delightful, Finnish coming-of-age tale by the director Alli Haapasalo, fulfills both criteria.

Filmmaker Jamie Dack is no stranger to film festivals. Her short film about teenage malaise in suburban Southern California “Palm Trees and Power Lines” premiered at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival as a Cinéfondatio selection.

debuted at Sundance this week, unravels Lee’s bizarre story with actor Alan Cumming sitting in for the man himself by lip-syncing to Lee’s narration (Lee agreed to tell his story, but didn’t want to appear on camera). Director Jono McLeod, who knew Lee as a fellow student, tells the tale via interviews with his now-50-something classmates, animated sequences and snippets of old video. Cumming, who was originally attached to star in a now-defunct feature adaptation of the story, remembers the saga as a news bombshell in Scotland.

“We grew up in Atlanta and in the church. Like in the height of Southern Baptist megachurches.

If two people who lack a common language want to communicate, they’ll find a way to communicate. The characters in “blood,” the first new film from Bradley Rust Gray in a decade, don’t exactly lack a common language, but coltish English and crummy Japanese necessitate auxiliary tools for communication, such as food, dance, music, flowers, and art.

“Have you ever felt vertigo looking into the sky?” Nadeem Shahzad asks over voiceover roughly fifteen minutes into “All That Breathes.” The accompanying shot looks straight up into a sunny yet smog-streaked sky as a swirl of black kites swoops and careens overhead. The birds are numerous, too many to count, but their movements are mesmerizing.

Bookended by a near-identical juxtaposition of sound and fury, directors Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace’s “Meet Me in the Bathroom” starts and ends like a messy, wannabe Jules Dassin cityscape film seen through a grunge filter. “Manhattan crowds with their turbulent musical chorus, Manhattan faces, and eyes, forever for me,” our narrator reads as we see riotous anger take to the streets.

“I’d rather have one person dance in my car than have 100 people with the song on in the background” late-night radio DJ, Naz (Naz Kawakami), tells his friend. The young man hosts a show called “Night Drive,” on 90.1 FM Honolulu, “the show that makes you feel cool when you’re driving at night, the show where you actually are as you speed down the freeway going about your misdeeds.” Beginning production in November 2020 as a sort of documentary/fiction hybrid, native Hawaiian filmmaker Alika Tengan’s “Every Day In Kaimukī,” is an admirable and well-intended debut, though it’s far more successful in its vibe than it is in establishing an artistic voice with command over narrative.

As you’ve hopefully heard by now, and read our review, the Sundance film, “Something In The Dirt” is a big hit. From filmmakers Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, who I like to describe as DIY versions of Christopher Nolan—that is to say ambitious, cerebral, complex sci-fi, horror, and genre films, but done on a lo-fi scale—“Something In The Dirt” is a swirl of all their previous heady, high-concept ideas, but with a big dose of humor and a deep look at the world of phenomenon, conspiracy theories and even pareidolia or apophenia (essentially the phenomenon of seeing patterns, consistencies and correlations of things that just aren’t there).

Opening on a slide show in an empty classroom, a storm thundering away outside, black and white frontier images flicker. They feature carriages, trains, and indigenous persons communicating with settlers; miners, hunters, and cavalry troops: a romantic portrait of Manifest Destiny.

Dressed all in black, Lilas Mayassi and Shery Bechara stand outside a restaurant while staring down at Mayassi’s phone, smiles painting their faces. The bandmates giggle to each other as Mayassi shows Bechara pictures of a woman she met at a nightclub the previous evening.

Playing in the Premieres section of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, “Sharp Stick,” produced during lockdown, was conceived by Lena Dunham and the film’s director of photography, Ashley Connor, starting from the base elements that were already available to them — namely a set of actors and locations. But while many quarantine-made films have appeared to embrace a “will this do?” aesthetic, implicitly relying on the audience’s sympathy and compassionate understanding to fill gaps and forgive compromises in production value, Dunham has instead created a work of art that comfortably fits within and plays with the limitations imposed by the pandemic.

His name was Brandon and to almost everyone at Glasgow’s Bearsden Academy, he seemed a bit odd. This new pupil was much taller than the other students, said he was from Canada and, well, his face looked…strange.