Tag Archives: sundance

You know the Tolstoy quote about all happy families being the same, but “every unhappy family is unhappy in their own way?” The quartet at the center of Steven Soderbergh‘s ghost story Presence has refined their own particular brand of dysfunction to perfection. The mom, Rebecca (Lucy Liu), is a …

New documentaries about Selena, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Jeff Buckley, and Sly Stone are among the films competing at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival next month. Amir “Questlove” Thompson’s long-in-the-works Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius) — the follow-up to the Roots drummer’s Oscar-winning directorial debut Summer …

Jesse Eisenberg was stuck. Then he saw four words. The actor, writer, and director had been trying to adapt “Mongolia,” a 2017 short story he’d written for Tablet Magazine, into a movie, and was, by his own admission, hitting a brick wall. A tale of two college friends — one …

You probably know someone like David: early 40s, has a steady job (selling internet ads), loves his wife and toddler son. He’s on meds but still anxiety-ridden, somehow seems both highly observant and perpetually distracted. Takes the responsibility of adulthood seriously. Very seriously. Maybe you’re related to that person. Maybe …

Every movie alcoholic lets you ride shotgun with them to their rock bottom, and the low point that Saoirse Ronan‘s character — her name is Rona — hits headfirst in The Outrun is a high-impact one. When we first meet her, she’s being thrown out of a pub in London, …

A wise man once said it’s a fine line between stupid and clever, and should anyone doubt the inherent truth in that comment, we’d like to present them with Exhibit A: It’s What’s Inside, a Netflix acquisition out of this year’s Sundance that’s far more of the former and way, …

What were you like when you were 18 years old, high on the feeling that your life was a blank canvas spread out in front of you, and you could throw whatever paint splatters you wanted on it? Maybe, like Elliott (Maisy Stella), the hero of My Old Ass, you …

At a TED talk in 2012, Angela Patton, the CEO of the nonprofit organization Girls for Change, told a story. She was running a summer immersion program in Richmond, Virginia, called Camp Diva. Patton asked the dozen or so attendees if there was something the camp could do to foster …

There may not be a movie that has more BDE (Brooklyn Dad Energy) than Good One — you’d have to go to closing time at a Park Slope bar with nothing but The National on the jukebox to find a more concentrated dose of paternal moodiness than writer-director India Donaldson’s …

Imagine the Dardenne brothers got very high one night on some primo hash, then directed a slasher flick. That may be the best way to describe In a Violent Nature, and yes, we admit that this review has already drawn battle lines: You can sense jump-scare purists scoffing, arthouse habitues …