Sundance 2025 Review: JIMPA, Generational Queer Drama Elevated By Authentic, Heartfelt Performances
With a career spanning six decades, two centuries, and more accolades than could fit in a single review, John Lithgow could have retired long ago to bask in much deserved critical acclaim and popular consideration. Even as he approaches...
SLY LIVES! (AKA THE BURDEN OF BLACK GENIUS) Review: Sly Stone Doc Enlightens, Entertains
Win on Academy Award on your first try and chances are, you’d be tempted to quit while you were ahead. For Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, however, winning a Best Documentary Oscar for Summer of Soul four years ago made a...
Sundance 2025 Review: RAINS OVER BABEL, Singularly Enthralling Retro-Futuristic Queer Fantasy
In the retro-futuristic, pop-punk imagination of Spanish Columbian writer-director Gala del Sol (Natalia Hermida) and her unmissable, queer-coded feature-length debut, Rains Over Babel (Llueve Sobre Babel), Cali, Colombia exists in a sublime liminal space, at the crossroads between the real...
Sundance 2025 Review: OH, HI!, Anti-Rom-Com Promises Much, Delivers Less
The title of writer-director Sophie Brooks’s feature-length debut, Oh, Hi!, an anti-rom-com, appears almost immediately in an exchange between longtime best friends, Iris (Molly Gordon) and Max (Geraldine Viswanathan). Usually saved for a moment combining surprise and levity, here...
Sundance 2025 Review: DIDN'T DIE, Post-Apocalyptic Zom-Com, Short on Zombies, Short on Comedy
In co-writer/director Meera Menon’s (Equity, Farah Goes Bang) post-apocalyptic zombie tale, Didn’t Die, the zombie-filled life is barely worth living. As always, staying alive means not just dodging the unwashed walking dead and their insatiable appetite for tender human...
Sundance 2025 Review: BUNNYLOVR, Gen Z Cam-Girl Faces Existential Crisis
Pace everyone’s favorite Greek philosopher, Socrates, if the unexamined life isn’t worth living, then the unexamined cam life — as in cam-girl life — is probably a close second or even a distant third. That lack of self-exploration, of...
Sundance 2025 Review: OBEX, Oddball Lo-Fi Sci-Fi/Fantasy Redefines Vibe Flick
Writer-director Albert Birney’s (Strawberry Mansion, Tux and Fanny, Sylvio) latest film, OBEX, an almost non-categorizable sci-fi/fantasy/comedy-drama, stands out as a vibe film through and through. If you’re on OBEX’s wavelength or frequency, i.e., attuned to its oddball charms, quirky humor,...
Sundance 2025 Review: THE UGLY STEPSISTER, Grim, Grotesque, Gory Take on Grimm's Folktale
There’s a startlingly disturbing moment in Norwegian filmmaker Emilie Blichfeldt’s brilliantly inverted fairy/folk tale, The Ugly Stepsister (orig. Den stygge stesøsteren), where the unfortunate title character, Elvira (Lea Myren), the dutiful daughter of a penniless social climber, undergoes an 18th century...
Sundance 2025 Review: REBUILDING, Loss, Grief, and Rediscovering Family
Despite the contrarian, anti-science protestations of some on the right, climate change is real. The effects thereof have been and will be felt in the years to come, including extreme weather events, such as the recent devastating wildfires that tore...
Sundance 2025 Review: LOVE, BROOKLYN, Performance-Led Romantic Triangle Engages, Enthralls, Entertains
A catch-all phrase popularized over a decade ago by Meta (formerly Facebook), “It’s complicated,” meant to describe romantic relationships that didn’t fall into one particular category or another, finds its clearest, nearest, and obviously it’s most recent application in director...
Sundance 2025 Review: THE THINGS YOU KILL, A Professor, the Patriarchy, and a Psychological Breakdown
Ali (Ekin Koç), the professor-protagonist in Iranian-born, Canada-residing writer-director Alireza Khatami’s (Terrestrial Verses, Oblivion Verses) perception- and consciousness-bending film, The Things You Kill, suffers from a debilitating existential/spiritual crisis. After returning to Turkey after more than a decade in...
Sundance 2025 Review: OMAHA, Poignant Character- and Performance-Driven Family Drama
For the disheveled, unnamed father (John Magaro, September 5, Past Lives, First Cow) in first-time feature-length director Cole Webley and writer Robert Machoian’s (The Killing of Two Lovers) poignant family drama, Omaha, a new dawn brings a new, ominous day....
Sundance 2025 Review: SPEAK, Heartfelt, Hopeful, Uplifting Doc
Every year, approximately 6,700 high-school students from 1,500 schools around the country participate in the National Speech and Debate Tournament (NSDT) in 42 distinct categories. Chief among them is the Original Oratory category, the subject of the captivating documentary...
Sundance 2025 Review: THE LEGEND OF OCHI, Family-Oriented Fantasy-Adventure For the Win
After two decades directing a plethora of shorts, commercials, and music videos, writer-director Isaiah Saxon makes his official feature-length debut with The Legend of Ochi, a richly imagined, Amblin-influenced family-oriented fantasy-adventure set in a semi-contemporary mythical Eastern Europe. Bolstered...
Sundance 2025 Review: SORRY, BABY, Trauma Recovery Drama Elevated by Eva Victor's Writing, Directing, Acting
Nurtured by Pastel, Barry Jenkins’ production company, Eva Victor (Billions) wrote, directed, and stars in Sorry, Baby, one of the most remarkable, quite possibly extraordinary feature-film debuts in recent festival history. To turn her screenplay into reality, Victor spent...
Sundance 2025 Review: PLAINCLOTHES, Undercover Cop and Repressed Desire Are Combustible Elements
Somewhere in the bowels of an upstate New York shopping mall circa 1997, the undercover cop, Lucas (Tom Blyth), in writer-director Carmen Emmi’s fascinatingly tense, engrossing character study, Plainclothes, sits quietly at a first-floor dining area, his eyes perpetually scanning...
Sundance 2025 Review: KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN, Politics, Queerness, and Jennifer Lopez
As countries on both sides of the Atlantic careen uncontrollably towards illiberalism, authoritarian, and fascism, art as an act of resistance, opposition, or defiance gains ever greater importance. That includes an oft-adapted work, such as Manuel Puig’s 1976 postmodern...
Sundance 2025 Review: LURKER, Parasocial Obsession, Pop Stardom and Celebrity Worship, Together Again
In writer-director Alex Russell’s (Beef, The Bear, Dave) remarkably impressive feature-length debut, Lurker, a rando, a fan-turned-stan, and an obsessive narcissist with sociopathic tendencies, Matthew Morning (Théodore Pellerin), finds himself perfectly situated to leverage a supposedly chance meeting with an...
Sundance 2025 Review: DEAD LOVER, Strange, Weird, Wonderful
Both singular in vision and singular in execution, filmmaker Grace Glowicki’s fantastic horror-comedy, Dead Lover, must be seen to be disbelieved. It must be seen to be believed too. Hyper-stylized, archly written in a hilarious camp tone (when it’s...
Sundance 2025 Review: OPUS, Even Demented Malkovich Can't Save Cult Horror Entry
Q: “What’s the difference between a religion and cult?” A: “Time.” There’s cult horror — as in horror that develops an offscreen cult following — and cult horror – as in a horror film about a cult. First-time writer-director...
