Month: January 2023

In Thembi Banks’ “Young. Wild. Free.,” a visually confident, shape-shifting yet sometimes wandering coming-of-age tale, nothing comes easy to Los Angeles teen Brandon. Carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders at home and school, he is on the final day of his employment when we first meet him in the back office of

Like Qasim Basir’s last feature, “A Boy. A Girl. A Dream,” his new “To Live & Die and Live” is a questing mood piece whose characters roam a city’s highlife in a fruitless search for inner peace. Here the setting is Detroit, but the protagonist a successful filmmaker taking a forced yet needed sabbatical from

Magnolia Pictures has acquired worldwide rights to “Kokomo City,” the feature directorial debut of Grammy-nominated producer, singer and songwriter D. Smith. The pact comes after the film’s world premiere in Sundance’s Next section. It marks Magnolia’s second acquisition at the festival, following its pickup of “Little Richard: I Am Everything.” Smith filmed and edited the look

One of the most talked-about scenes at this year’s Sundance Film Festival unfolds in the opening sequence of “Fair Play,” a sexy thriller starring “Bridgerton” breakout Phoebe Dynevor and “Solo” actor Alden Ehrenreich. They play a newly engaged couple who keeps their relationship a secret because they work together at a cut-throat hedge fund. In

In “Infinity Pool,” what happens in Li Tolqa stays in Li Tolqa, an impoverished country where, if they’re rich enough, foreign guests can literally get away with murder. But that’s not the half of it. Visitors hold grotesque, drug-addled orgies at which their genitalia appear to morph before your eyes. The locals host sick rituals,

In the American South, they’ve been known to say, “A child’s gotta eat their share of dirt.” And Raven Jackson’s thoughtful, fragmentary portrait of a Black woman over four decades of rural Mississippian life certainly encompasses the kind of hard life lessons that could be thus summed up. But the strange poetry of the film’s

It’s Cynthia Erivo’s first time in Park City, Utah for the Sundance Film Festival. It’s a remarkably short trip — about 48-hours, not including flying time, as she takes a quick break from filming “Wicked” in London. But it’s a particularly momentous occasion: Erivo is celebrating the debut her latest movie “Drift,” the first film

James Cameron’s blockbuster sequel “Avatar: The Way of Water” has claimed the No. 1 spot at the domestic box office for the sixth consecutive weekend. The sci-fi epic added $20 million from 3,790 theaters over the weekend, declining roughly 40% from its prior outing and boosting its North American tally to $598 million. It’s currently

After just six weeks of release, James Cameron’s blockbuster sequel “Avatar: The Way of Water” has surpassed $2 billion in global ticket sales. It’s the sixth film in history — and first in pandemic times — to cross the coveted milestone, joining an exclusive club that includes “Avatar,” “Avengers: Endgame,” “Titanic,” “Star Wars: The Force

There’s much talk in popular culture these days of “feeling seen”: finding our inner lives and specific identities reflected in art created by strangers who nonetheless, it seems, know us all too well. It’s a disorienting kind of thrill — a recognition that our private selves, so precious and particular to us, are also keyed

A psychopath watching William Oldroyd’s deliciously deranged “Eileen,” based on the book by Ottessa Moshfegh, might simply see in it an uplifting tale of personal liberation. After all, Eileen (Thomasin McKenzie) goes from being a dowdy, downtrodden compulsive masturbator — we watch her rub herself surreptitiously under her tweed skirt on two separate occasions in

“Talk to the hand” may be a popular phrase of breezy dismissal, but talking to a particular hand has terrible consequences in the Australian horror “Talk to Me.” This directorial debut feature for twin siblings Danny and Michael Philippou belies their prior reputation as “filmmakers on a rampage” making sometimes controversially violent, bad-taste comedic videos

One of the most anticipated films of this year’s Sundance Film Festival was “Cat Person,” the feature adaptation of Kristen Roupenian’s viral New Yorker story of the same name. The Jan. 21 world premiere left the audience at the Eccles Theatre cringing and cackling at this dark look at modern dating. Directed by Susanna Fogel

In the wickedly ambiguous Sundance conversation-starter “Cat Person,” two singles a half-generation apart see their relationship quite differently. Even the word “relationship” is relative. Margot (Emilia Jones), a 20-year-old sophomore, works the concession stand at a repertory theater, where she flirts with a patron (Nicholas Braun of “Succession”) who looks kinda like a young Nicolas

In “The Road Not Taken,” Robert Frost makes poetry of a simple choice. Most of us know the ending, but midway through, he imagines returning one day to that metaphorical fork in order to try the other path: “Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.” In

“Eileen,” a darkly funny thriller that premiered on Saturday at the Sundance Film Festival, offers up two killer roles for Anne Hathaway and Thomasin McKenzie as a psychologist and a prison secretary who are drawn together in unexpected ways. But the film carried an emotional resonance for Hathaway, she revealed to the crowd during a

With her tart direct address, Leila makes a cheeky protagonist in “The Persian Version,” a Sundance-blessed dramatic comedy about the wide rift between an immigrant mother and her Iranian American daughter. Layla Mohammadi and Niousha Noor portray Leila and her mother, Shirin. They also carry the weight of writer-director Maryam Kesharvarz’s third feature, which braids

In a reception that’s sure to warm the hearts of theater kids everywhere, “Theater Camp,” a goofy mockumentary about intensely earnest thespians, earned a heartfelt standing ovation at Sundance Film Festival. Real-life best friends Ben Platt, Molly Gordon and Noah Galvin star in “Theater Camp,” an affectionate satire set at a scrappy overnight camp in

Time’s Up, the anti-harassment organization that was launched to substantial fanfare among Hollywood personalities and political players at the onset of the #MeToo movement five years ago, will halt current operations in the coming days. The decision comes following a tumultuous stretch of months for the organization, stirred by revelations that leadership had undisclosed connections

No matter how many “good little movies” play at Sundance, going forward this festival simply can’t be what it has been if it doesn’t feature movies that can break out of the independent-film-world bubble. And look, it’s not as if a movie has to be one or the other! “Fair Play” is a perfect example.