Los Cabos Journal: At Eternity’s Gate
One would think that artist and filmmaker Julian Schnabel would be perfectly primed to provide a cinematic look at the life of another iconoclastic artist, Vincent van Gogh. With At Eternity’s Gate,...
View ArticleLos Cabos Journal: Sunset
László Nemes is one of the most audacious filmmakers in international cinema. His sublime WWII drama Son of Saul powerfully demonstrated that film still plays a vital role in making sense of the...
View ArticleSlamdance Journal: Impetus
Impetus is nearly impossible to categorize – not because it defies genre, rather it tries to occupy too many of them at once. Fiction, biography, autobiography, documentary and metatextuality all...
View ArticleSlamdance Journal: Lost Holiday
Lost Holiday seems to fancy itself some sort of crime drama or buddy comedy. I’m not saying that it’s neither, but it does seem to suffer from a lack of passion in its characters, just as those...
View ArticleSlamdance Journal – The Beksinskis: A Sound and Picture Album
The Beksińskis. A Sound and Picture Album is a documentary based on a book by Magdalena Grzebałkowska, which is based on the life of painter Zdzislaw Beksinski. A collection of home videos, news...
View ArticleSlamdance Journal: Desolation Center
As riveting as the recent Fyre Fest documentaries have been, Desolation Center shows us that there’s some heart and soul in the history of music festivals. With its roots in the early 1980s Los Angeles...
View ArticleSundance Journal: The Farewell
Of all the things compelling about Lulu Wang’s cross-cultural family drama The Farewell, the starring role of Awkwafina as Billi firmly establishes this film as something special. The rapper/actress...
View ArticleSundance Journal: Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile
Award-winning documentarian Joe Berlinger has spent much of his career investigating issues of justice and going beyond the headlines to find deeper stories of the accused. In collaboration with the...
View ArticleSlamdance Journal: A Great Lamp
A Great Lamp is the first feature by director Saad Qureshi. While much of it feels like a first voyage and a grand gesture to make a strong impression, the film’s raw emotions make for a humanizing...
View ArticleSlamdance Journal: The Vast of Night
The Vast of Night takes a big gamble in both visual style and storytelling structure, and it hits the jackpot. This close look at a small town’s flirtation with the unknown shows how small stories can...
View ArticleSundance Journal: Luce
It’s rare to see a film so courageous as Luce. The movie demands a lot from its audience. It mercilessly refuses to be easily constrained, consistently undermines conventions and expectations, and...
View ArticleSundance Journal: The Lodge
Sundance often has sleeper hits come out of the Midnight Section. (2018 saw both Mandy and Hereditary.) This year’s boldest film seems to be The Lodge, the English-language debut by Veronika Franz and...
View ArticleSundance Journal: The Report
As the American political system continues to devolve to tribalism, it’s often refreshing to remember that there are people within the trenches of power who continue to fight for a more perfect union...
View ArticleSundance Journal: Late Night
From her writing and acting roles on The Office through her self-titled sitcom, Mindy Kaling has emerged as one of the great talents of her generation. Her self-critical comedy confronts major social...
View ArticleSundance Journal: Paddleton
Cancer dramas are usually mawkish, teary things, melodramatic films where the fear of loss is exuded in every frame. It’s somewhat refreshing that director Alex Lehmann and co-writer/star Mark Duplass...
View ArticleSundance Journal: The Nightingale
Few films are more brutal than The Nightingale. The follow-up from The Babadook director Jennifer Kent is an unapologetic look at the vile, dehumanizing violence at the heart of colonial Australia in...
View ArticleSundance Journal: The Souvenir
It’s relatively rare to have such austere, auteur-ish films as The Souvenir play at Sundance. Park City is normally the home of brash, sometimes clumsy indie fare, not the rarefied (some may chide as...
View ArticleSundance Journal: The Sunlit Night
The Sunlit Night is the latest of a bunch of indie drama/comedies starring Jenny Slate in the last few years. They usually follow a similar formula – a fish out of water situation, someone dealing with...
View ArticleCinequest Journal: Princess of the Row
Currently working its way through the festival circuit is the quiet gem Princess of the Row. The film might be taken as heartbreaking, but at its core is a message of resilience and hope. Alicia...
View ArticleSarasota Film Festival Journal: Feral
Feral may share its title with several other recent films, but this one is a singular experience of one woman trying to stay warm while homeless beneath New York City. Annapurna Sriram stars as Yazime,...
View Article