In the ‘80s, everyone was scared of Satanists. You know, the whole Satanic Panic era.
In the ‘80s, everyone was scared of Satanists. You know, the whole Satanic Panic era.
“The Whale”Though critics were divided on Darren Aronofsky’s “The Whale,” Oscar voters agreed that Brendan Fraser’s performance as a 600 lb. English teacher was a standout. “King Richard”Few best actor winners had an evening as memorable as Will Smith’s.
a resurfaced clip produced by Sundance in which she describes the movie, Malia dropped her globally recognized last name and is credited on the project as Malia Ann.Malia described “The Heart” as “an odd little story, somewhat of fable, about a man grieving the death of his mother after she leaves him an unusual request in her will.”She studied filmmaking at Harvard University as a visual and environmental studies major and landed a job as a writer on Janine Nabers and Donald Glover’s Amazon Prime series “Swarm,” which premiered in March 2023.Still, fans on X, the platform previously known as Twitter, were conflicted about Malia, who lived in the White House during her dad’s two presidential terms from 2009 to 2017, seemingly trying to distance herself from her famous moniker. “Nepo baby strikes again,” one hater tweeted on Wednesday.
widespread drug abuse an extremely relevant issue in America? Obviously. But just as screamingly apparent is that a kilo of deflating, predictable movies about narcotics and dope are not going to bring hesitant audiences back to struggling movie theaters.
Investigative documentaries are some of the most interesting films you can watch. There’s no need to create artificial drama, as the subjects are real, and you can’t help but get swept up in the investigation.
There’s a special type of frustration that comes with watching a film like Bruno Mourral’s “Kidnapping Inc.” It’s a frustration borne from a good place—you want the film to succeed—but around every corner, “Kidnapping Inc.” just can’t help but trip over itself. This is a film that showcases two really solid lead performances, highlights horrific injustice found in a country many people aren’t familiar with, and is shot in a way that makes its modest budget feel much bigger.
Perhaps the best compliment that you can give a narrative feature is to say that it feels like a documentary. Not to say the shot composition is uninspired and the subject dry, but it’s a way to spotlight just how you forget this is actually an actor reading written words, but instead, believe everything happening in front of you is real and true.
Unlike other film festivals around the globe, Sundance has been ahead of the curve when it comes to telling LGBTQIA+ stories whether in narrative or documentary form. That was once again evident in 2024 with the festival selecting films such as “Layla,” “Sebastian,” “My Old Ass,” “Stress Positions” and “Ponyboi.” One NEXT slate selection that attempted to cross the lines of both documentary and drama is Jules Rosskam’s “Desire Lines.” Sadly, like many world premieres in its genre this year, it comes up disappointingly short.
As the latest feature from writers/directors Fernanda Valadez and Astrid Rondero (“Identifying Features”) draws to a close, it’s hard to ignore the starkness, pacing, and tone overall; this is hardly the sort of film one puts on as any sort of a palate cleanser. While superbly well-made, beautifully shot, and comprised of a cast firing on all cylinders in terms of acting ability, to make it through “Sujo” is akin to a slight exercise in endurance, though not without a noticeable crescendo as the film chugs along.
The idea of youth escaping into a large section of woods so as to start life anew is a plot device not at all unexplored prior, seen in films as recently as 2013’s “The Kings of Summer,” while literature will always have “My Side of the Mountain. “In “Penelope, “the concept gets the episodic treatment, but if the premiere is any indicator, this is one project with the potential to captivate in its own unique way.
Twenty years ago, Ondi Timoner’s rock doc “Dig!” the wildly entertaining, sensationalistic portrait of the dysfunctional indie rock bands the Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols and their strange love/hate relationship and rivalry, was a smash hit, at least critically, winning the Sundance Prize Grandy Jury Prize for Best Documentary and squarely landing the filmmaker on the map.
“Skywalkers: A Love Story” joins “Free Solo” in a film subgenre that can only be described as “F*ck That.” It’s an ultra-specific genre of documentary that showcases feats that are so incredibly dangerous that you not only shake your head in disbelief but actually get your heart beating harder as you hold your breath, imagining that if you don’t make a noise, then maybe these people won’t die right before your eyes.
By now, it should be evident that each passing year brings with it advancements in technology, landing anywhere on an imaginary graph containing the likes of the latest smartphone to a car that can brew a mean cup of coffee. One area that’s been hovering over the whole of humanity for far longer than a need for a house that dictates a grocery list is that of the afterlife; pondering what happens after each and every one of us shuffle off this mortal coil remains, quite possibly, an everlastingly unanswerable question, but for those left behind in the wake of a loved one’s passing, a more pressing matter would be the manner in which one deals with said loss, and how best to move on.
Despite the increased awareness of gender identities, there is one classification that has been around for over 100 years or 30 years (it’s debatable) that rarely enjoys the spotlight, intersex. An intersex person can be a broad definition for someone who is born without a number of different sexual characteristics.
There’s something magical that happens to most people around the age of 13. For many, that’s when you might have your first real romantic love.
Media representation of disabled people is challenging to get right — too saccharine, and you’re veering towards inspiration porn, too maudlin, and you’re implying that a disabled life might not be a life worth living. “Ibelin,” the newest documentary from “The Painter and the Thief” filmmaker Benjamin Ree, strikes a poignant balance, acknowledging the ways that physical disability can limit a life while showing how one complex man expanded his world nonetheless.
“Reinas,” the latest from director Klaudia Reynicke, is a quiet but vivid tale of summer days in Lima, Peru. The script, which Reynicke co-wrote with Diego Vega, depicts a family drama against a backdrop of political chaos.
The 2024 Sundance Film Festival is almost at an end, but there are still films to screen in the online portion of the festival and, almost as importantly, awards to hand out to happy independent filmmakers. The big winners at this year’s awards ceremony were Alessandra Lacorazza’s “In the Summers” which won the Grand Jury Prize U.S.
Sundance Film Festival’s lineups can often be dark affairs with edgy shocks, narcotics and strident political talking points. But one of the most soul-satisfying movies to premiere at the 2024 edition features no drug dealers, whistleblowers or bloodbaths. It’s about a sweet 93-year-old grandma who collects marbles and rides a mobility scooter.And, OK, yes she also holds a man at gunpoint.Running time: 97 minutes.
Filmmakers have parsed the zombie genre from seemingly every angle possible. George A.
The 2024 Sundance Film Festival is almost at an end, but there are still films to screen in the online portion of the festival and, almost as importantly, awards to hand out to happy independent filmmakers. The big winners at this year’s awards ceremony were Alessandra Lacorazza’s “In the Summers” which won the Grand Jury Prize U.S.
The phrase in the clutch represents an ability to pull off something crucial during an important moment, widely used in the world of sports. These words can be applied to any Hail Mary football pass, any home run while the bases are loaded, or a three-point buzzer beater; it’s the latter with which athletes like Sue Bird are acutely familiar and can be seen several times over the course of “Sue Bird: In The Clutch, “ an aptly named documentary telling the story of one of the finest players the WNBA has ever seen.
Since helming the Academy Award-nominated “Winter’s Bone” in 2010, Debra Granik has enjoyed shifting between a further dabble into feature-length filmmaking (“Leave No Trace”) in addition to documentary work (“Stray Dog”), which, when coupled with her eclectic decades-strong filmography clearly showcases an overabundance of ability and flair for skillfully adapting to any subject that comes her way. Another comfortable entry on her resume exists in “Conbody VS Everybody, “a six-part docu-series with a concept unlike anything she’s tackled prior while continuing to demonstrate her knack for creating something compelling while also supremely relevant to this day and age.
It might come as a surprise to most that the skirmish between Russia and Ukraine has been active for nearly a decade. However, international headlines would raise awareness to new heights upon Russia’s invasion of its neighbor in February of 2022.
Filmmaker Asmae El Moudir, making her feature directorial drama, starts her non-fiction film “The Mother Of All Lies” as a modest family chronicle—an elevated home video of sorts. It is soon clear, though, that she has much more on her mind because the actual subject of her inquiry is the collective amnesia around a seminal event that changed Morocco forever, the 1981 Casablanca bread riots.
Some movies are Irish. “Kneecap” is Ireland.
PARK CITY – Movies that stick with you long after you watch them are nothing new. There are literally thousands of examples in the history of cinema.
“We Are the World” was a once-in-a-generation meeting of musical giants when it was recorded Jan. 28, 1985 — and released two months later on March 7 — to benefit African famine relief.Anyone who was anyone in music at that moment — a who’s who of legends, including everyone from Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross and Bob Dylan to Billy Joel, Tina Turner and Bruce Springsteen — showed up to support the cause.Written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie and produced by Quincy Jones and ’80s hitmaker Michael Omartian, the single sold a whopping 20 million copies.
The “Erin Brockovich” director moves his camera around so much, you want to yell at the screen, “Settle down, please! I have a headache!” There is a rationale for his nearly-nonstop motion shtick: the audience is experiencing the haunted house from the perspective of a ghost. And this particular ghost apparently needs to get its steps in.However, aside from a couple creepy voyeuristic scenes that the technique complements, its more obvious purpose is for Soderbergh to show off elaborate tracking shots.
A formally rigorous and free-associative dive into a decade’s worth of political fighting in the Congo, from roughly 1955 to 1965, Johan Grimonprez’s “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat” is a fascinating and sprawling historical overview. Eschewing the usual mix of contextual talking heads, the Belgian filmmaker and multimedia artist instead adopts its narrative approach from the jazz that flows freely throughout the film and helps frame the political struggles of the Congo.
It starts innocuously enough. “Krazy House,” the English-language debut of Dutch filmmakers Steffen Haars and Flip van der Kuil, launches with a ‘90s family sitcom parody that ribs their cheese and cringe.
China began loosening its one-child policy in 2015 until finally, in 2021, it abolished all restrictions on the number of children a family could have. Young Chinese filmmakers are beginning to grapple with the fallout of those prior decades in new fiction films that demonstrate how the Chinese family unit has been irreversibly transformed.
As one examines the abundance of cultures worldwide, to see the marginal way women continue to be treated on a global scale remains infuriating to take in during the era of #MeToo and the fact that seemingly little progress has been made even as our society makes its way into 2024. Though gains can undeniably be acknowledged on the political front and numerous other fields, it’s still apparent that an ocean exists in the way of real change, with “Black Box Diaries” a stunning example of the heavily outdated customs in which parts of our minuscule planet find themselves stuck and the women who suffer as a direct result.
The premise of the documentary “Will & Harper” is so simple that it almost seems presentational, self-serving, or stunt-y. The idea is, after 30 years of friendship, comedian Will Ferrell learns, through a personal email, that an old friend and former “Saturday Night Live” writer, then Adam Steele (yes, the dead name is used at first), is coming out as a trans woman.
As the “peak TV” wave begins to crest, artists are again realizing that not every book needs adaptation as a miniseries. There’s value in the concision and prioritization forced by the feature format.
“Ben Is Back” with Julia Roberts and “Beautiful Boy” starring Timothée Chalamet. A few years back at Sundance I saw the premiere of the awful “Four Good Days” starring Mila Kunis and Glenn Close.
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