Streaming: 'Station Eleven' is a wow. Give it a chance.

by Deborah Lipp

Station Eleven is a ten-episode mini-series that you may have avoided up until now, since it is largely about a pandemic. A lot of my friends tell me they can’t stand the idea. But bite the bullet and give it a try. In the world of Station Eleven (based on a novel written in 2014—long before COVID), a virulent flu wipes out 99% of humanity. It all happens in a week, so their pandemic is much less boring than ours...

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Sundance Review: This 'Alice's Wonderland Is all Keke Palmer

by Jason Adams

Let's just start with what matters most: Keke Palmer is a star. If not quite yet in the technical terms of massive name recognition and box office numbers then in all of the ethereal qualities that makes one get to those places soon enough. (The Jordan Peele movie coming out later this year is probably going to kick all of this into proper gear.)  I have obviously noted Keke's razzle and her dazzle in earlier roles -- I remember thinking she was destined to be going places several years back with Scream Queens. But watching the premiere of Alice this weekend at Sundance, a proper star vehicle if ever there was one, this sense really grabbed me about the shoulders and shook me up -- she's got that It, baby. The reason why this was my biggest takeaway is that Alice simply wouldn't work without her...

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Sundance Review: ‘Three Minutes – A Lengthening’

By Abe Friedtanzer

There have been many films made about the Holocaust, and a great number of them focus on the horrors experienced within concentration camps. In addition to the millions of lives lost, there were also communities throughout Europe that were decimated, some of which have no survivors. Bianca Stigter’s Three Minutes – A Lengthening examines a short reel of footage that was shot in 1938 in Poland and offers a window into a town and way of life that can never be truly known or recreated…

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Sundance: 'You Won't Be Alone' stirs and shape-shifts

by Matt St Clair

You Won’t Be Alone, the new Macedonian folk horror tale premiering at Sundance, is not for the faint of heart. Yet, for a film with such grotesque violence, Goran Stolevski's feature debut is strangely moving and intimate. His film is a poetic and philosophical depiction of what it means to be human; It arouses and stirs as often as it repels...

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Sundance: 'Call Jane' is worth answering

By Ben Miller

Handsomely filmed and admirably performed, Oscar-nominated Carol screenwriter Phyllis Nagy makes her feature film directorial debut with Call Jane. Elizabeth Banks stars as Joy, a traditional suburban Chicago housewife in the 1960s. Joy has a loving but busy lawyer husband Will (Chris Messina) and a 14-year-old daughter Charlotte (Grace Edwards). Joy is newly pregnant, and keeps having dizzy spells and passes out in her kitchen. Her doctor diagnoses a congenital heart blockage that threatens her life, unless the pregnancy is terminated - the only treatment...

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