There is a tendency among film critics, programmers, and academics to dismiss filmmakers who work within genres as entertainers, not accepting them as artists. Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, Douglas Sirk, and other classical Hollywood directors have engraved within the fabric…
Nourishing Films At Sundance: ‘Operation Avalanche,’ ‘Holy Hell’ and ‘Indignation’
Before the very first screening of every day at Sundance, I go out of my way to spend a few minutes at the festival headquarters to get free coffee and cookies. This has essentially become my unhealthy but also subsidized diet,…
‘Manchester By The Sea,’ and a few other Sundance films that don’t matter as much
A funny thing happened on my fourth day at Sundance. After the screening of what will be the festival’s best film, I was so transfixed, so mesmerized and so subtly heartbroken that the entirety of the movie’s impact only took…
Sundance 2016: Farts in ‘Swiss Army Man’ and a ‘Wiener-Dog’ On A Cold Day
The festival environment is drastically inconsistent, shifting quickly from the mild sun to a dark cold in the evening, a slight sprinkle to an intense blizzard. Sundance can be friendly and inviting or distant and chilly. When most of your…
Sundance continues uphill climb to nowhere with ‘The Free World,’ ‘Wild’ and ‘Ali and Nino’
If you attend a lot of film festivals, one of the idiosyncratic and geeky pleasures is recognizing weird motifs that unintentionally connect very different films. This year’s Sundance appears to have a fascination with spiraling staircases and dead dogs —…
‘Belgica’ and ‘Other People’ are Disappointing Sundance Openers
Tucked away in a mountainside town that is located 40 minutes away from Salt Lake City, one of the world’s premiere film festivals provides a platform for A-list actors and undiscovered talent, some of the cinema’s greatest auteurs and first feature films…
A wolf in polar bear’s clothing: The evils of ‘Norm of the North’
The ineptly paced, written and animated Norm Of The North is worse than a cinematic defecation left to be flushed in the month of January. It’s an evil film masquerading as liberal commentary, a cynical, post-modern grotesquery, devoid of any…
