Sundance Review: Alan Cumming In Documentary ‘My Old School’

Woody Allen’s decade-long downward spiral began after making “Midnight in Paris” in 2011 and following it up with a series of movies ranging from bad to worse to worse than that: “Irrational Man,” “Wonder Wheel,” “Cafe Society,” “A Rainy Day in New York.” At least we have the minor gift of “Blue Jasmine,” a comparatively fine movie according to the pathetic standard set by the rest, to counterpoint the nearly annual stream of Allen’s shrugging dross, but the emphasis is on “minor.” What a difference a change in era made for one of American cinema’s most influential directors.

“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.

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.

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.

“90 Day Fiancé” star Alina Kozhevnikova, the hit franchise’s first little person to be featured on the show, has been fired by TLC due to her past racist social media posts that have resurfaced.

star Alina Kozhevnikova, the hit franchise's first little person to be featured on the show, has been fired by TLC due to her past racist social media posts that have resurfaced.In a statement to ET, TLC said they've cut all ties with 27-year-old Alina due to the offensive posts, which mock different races and religions.«TLC discontinued filming with Alina Kozhevnikova following the recent discovery of her past social media statements,» the statement reads. «She will not appear on the upcoming Tell All, any future seasons of the franchise and starting next month, she will no longer appear on.

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.

Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticIn 1993, six years after Johnny Depp and company were deemed too old to keep up the charade on “21 Jump Street,” Brandon Lee went back to Bearsden Academy. At least he said his name was Brandon Lee.

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.

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.

almost – to make up for the fact that the story itself is something of a letdown.A classic unreliable-narrator doc, the film is always fun to watch. But unlike, say, Ramin Bahrani’s “2nd Chance” — a 2022 Sundance doc that is intricately constructed to take the viewer through the twists and evasions doled out by its own unreliable narrator — “My Old School” works hard to put a stylish spin on a story whose surprises are telegraphed from the beginning.It gets off to a promising start, as we see actor Alan Cumming sitting down at a desk in a Scottish classroom, with titles letting us in on the film’s central conceit: “The man at the heart of this story does not want to show his face, but you will hear his voice.

Kanye’s demands for the final cut on Jeen-yuhs makes its Sundance premiere all the more fascinating.

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.

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.

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.

There is, at the moment, no shortage of information in the culture about Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. In just the past few months, the performers behind “I Love Lucy” have been the subjects of both a (very good) season of TCM’s “The Plot Thickens” podcast and a (very bad) Aaron Sorkin movie, “Being the Ricardos.” Now you can add to that mix “Lucy and Desi,” a new feature-length bio-documentary from actor/director Amy Poehler, which is hitting Amazon Prime in March, presumably as something of a companion piece to “Ricardos” (which the streamer/studio also financed).

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.

Virgino and Sisa live what most people would consider a very simple life. They raise and care for Lamas in the Bolivian highlands keeping the traditions of their Quechua people alive.

Seemingly a rejection of monocausal history in that it twists the firehose nozzle all the way open to spray from any and every direction, “Riotsville, U.S.A.” is no less problematic from where it sits on the other side of that theoretical chasm. Grabbing at anything that conforms to the half-cooked epiphanies the documentary has from moment to moment, the path of the film’s discussion weaves through about a dozen provocative ideas without betraying much of an attempt to critically analyze any one of them.