Sundance Review: Abigail E. Disney Co-Directed ‘The American Dream & Other Fairy Tales’

Most kids wouldn’t want to endure high school twice, although there are some who would no doubt prefer to remain there forever. Brandon Lee (no, not the late actor son of Bruce Lee) chose a third path by re-enrolling when he was 32 years old and getting away with it, at least for a while. How it all happened is whimsically recounted in My Old School, a clever, amusing and rather slight account of a Scottish misfit’s most irregular education. Or, as Woody Allen used to describe himself, it’s “thin but fun.”

Filmmaker Rory Kennedy’s “Downfall: The Case Against Boeing” is perhaps the quintessential modern American tale. A prestigious company that had the most outstanding reputation in aviation, cultivated over several decades pissed that all away, and was responsible for the deaths of almost 350 people through cutting corners and taking shortcuts meant to maximize profits and appease shareholders.

his review, the film features a couple who both work at Disneyland but live with parents because they can’t afford a house or apartment. It also shows employees who are so cash-strapped, they frequent food banks set up specifically for Disney employees.

Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticAt the same moment Disney-critical documentary “The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales” was premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, the media giant’s controversy du jour involved the treatment of dwarfs in its upcoming live-action “Snow White” remake. “Heigh-ho! Heigh-ho!” as the lyrics go. “We dig up diamonds by the score / A thousand rubies, sometimes more / Though we don’t know what we dig ’em for.” Turns out, the employees of Disneyland can say the same, generating enormous wealth for shareholders and CEOs while earning barely enough to feed their families — a situation Abigail Disney wants to do something about.The granddaughter of The Walt Disney Co.

Utama (Our Home) is precisely the sort of discovery that justifies film festivals and makes them useful: a small, hitherto unheard-of work from an out-of-the-way country that grabs you from the opening minutes and afterwards makes you want to tell your friends they’ve got a real treat to look forward to. A rare Bolivian entry in a major festival, this Sundance World Dramatic Competition title and feature debut by Alejandro Loayza Grisi is gorgeously made and brings to life a backwater existence in a distant land with skill and assurance.

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.

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.

The 2022 Sundance Film Festival obviously has so much to offer. Big premieres from indie auteurs, world cinema, documentaries, films for kids, and movies that are receiving so much acclaim right now, you’ll be hearing more from them later in the year upon regular theatrical release.

is a Disney.It’s a self-conscious film, to be sure, driven by a combination of passion and guilt. It’s also a scattershot one that could have viewers wondering if it’s a film about the Walt Disney Company or a film about American capitalism.

Things have not been going well for Emily. Some of it is just terrible luck.

Albeit beautifully shot and made tolerable by the warm presence of Carla Juri in the leading role, blood is a frustratingly indulgent study of emotional recovery after the loss of a loved one. This fourth feature by Bradley Rust Gray is splendidly appointed with locations in Japan and Iceland and an appreciation of emotional openness expressed by all the characters. All the same, the mostly short scenes of recent widow Chloe handling her grief day by day possess little compelling drama and are handicapped by a scruffy Japanese male lead who just doesn’t match up with his appealing female counterpart in any credible way. As with the director’s previous work, you come out of it wondering who this film was made for.

Writer-director Jamie Dack has expanded her widely admired 2018 short film Palm Trees and Power Lines into a considerably more thorny and disturbing feature of the same title. Shot verité style on the most banal possible locations, the film, which is making its world premiere in the U.S. Dramatic Competition section of the Sundance Film Festival, takes an unvarnished look at an environment that is arid both literally and figuratively, one in which young people seem to be given precious little guidance or structure by family or society. Dack doesn’t explicitly editorialize but makes acutely clear the vulnerability of adolescents left too much to their own devices at a formative age.

In 2009, when I was in the Air Force and stationed in Germany, I traveled to Berlin on New Year’s Eve to celebrate. As my friends and I were getting turnt up in the bar, I came out as a lesbian. The moment was random and unprovoked. I shared the news with all my friends and had a dope night ringing in the 2010s, but panic set in when I woke up the next day. I’m 27 years old and a lesbian: what do I do now? 

Attempting to remake a classic film is never an easy assignment. Especially when said classic is as revered as Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 drama “Ikiru.” Director Oliver Hermanus and screenwriter Kazuo Ishiguro could have placed the story in contemporary times, making a new version more palatable for some critics, but instead, set it in the exact same era only interchanging London for Tokyo.

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.

The film had its premiere in the U.S. Dramatic Competition lineup at the Sundance Film Festival.

Apparently it is the season to celebrate the iconic marriage and professional relationship of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. Aaron Sorkin wrote and directed a penetrating, funny, revealing, and ultimately moving film, Being The Ricardos which covers a lot of ground in the Lucy/Desi world using dramatic license to place several real events in their lives all in the course of one week of production on I Love Lucy. Although starring Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem as the iconic pair, it felt quite real and actually was as you discover watching Amy Poehler’s marvelous love letter to their lives and times in Lucy And Desi, which like Ricardos will be available on Amazon Prime, the perfect companion piece to Sorkin’s film, and a compelling documentary portrait all on its own.

I might be tempted to call writer/director James Ponsoldt’s new coming of age film about four young girls who discover the dead body of a man on the last summer days before starting middle school, Stand By She. Okay I will. Its actual title is Summering and it is a sweet and sincere attempt to give young girls the kind of edge-of-turning-teen story of a last summer of no worries with your friends that has mostly been reserved for boys in classic Hollywood films in the genre. With a screenplay Ponsoldt with co-writer Benjamin Percy was inspired to create coming out of the pandemic, and new questions about life presented to our youngest members of the planet, they land on a somewhat dark situation. Four carefree young girls come face to face with death, and some special bonding in this unusual entry into the Kids section of the Sundance Film Festival where it is premiering today. Ponsoldt wanted to make this one for his daughter, and maybe he says even a sister or mother or any female who didn’t have the kind of role models on screen boys did as he was growing up.

Rarely has a filmmaker kept his central character at such a distance as writer-director Ricky D’Ambrose does in The Cathedral. This is clearly an autobiographical work in some very important ways, and no doubt a purging of some demons as well. And yet the kid here, whose life the film follows from birth to his acceptance at college, has very few lines of dialogue and for the most part remains a cipher. All the same, this is a penetrating look at childhood that, distinctively, focuses more than anything on the foibles and shortcomings of the child’s parents, particularly his father.