FYC: Youth Acting and Breakthrough Stars

by Nathaniel R

Alan S Kim, everyone's favourite mischief maker in Minari

Each year at the Critics Choice Awards -- I just filed my ballot -- we're expected to vote in a category that gets almost no press or campaigning: Best Young Performer. The nominees tend to be whichever kid had a leading role in a movie everyone saw. I've always found this depressing since all awards categories should be taken seriously and, as with adult performances or directing or costuming or whatever, you should think about your ballot and not just pick the most visible options solely because they're right in front of you. So each year I try to help by posting my own ballot...

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Putting the Genre in Gender at Sundance

by Jason Adams

A lot of ink, possibly pink, has already been spilled on this year's Sundance marking a flashpoint for female filmmakers. (You can find the same sort of headlines if you look back at last year's fest, which included Eliza Hittman's Never Rarely Sometimes Always, Kirsten Johnson's Dick Johnson is Dead, and Emerald Fennell's Promising Young Woman.) Still, women's voices at this year's fest feel dominant in a way I'm not sure they ever have before, and it strikes me that the ways we're seeing women re-working genre as a tool of dissembling trauma and male-dominance is in particular fascinating, especially as the Trump years come to their ignominious, death-rattling end...

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Sundance: The Best Way to Go Out in “How It Ends”

By Abe Friedtanzer

It’s been quite revealing to see how the film and television industries have responded to the limitations imposed by stringent regulations during the pandemic. We saw a few shows like Connecting… and Social Distance, the Coastal Elites special, and radically different release strategies from studios and streamers. What excites me most is the way that filmmakers have used new approaches to create stories that don’t directly reference what’s going on now in the world but try something innovative instead. To best illustrate this, let’s look at How It Ends, the new collaboration between Zoe Lister-Jones and Daryl Wein, who were last at Sundance with White Rabbit in 2018.

It’s the end of the world – a comet is headed towards Earth and so there’s literally going to be no tomorrow...

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Best International Feature: Costa Rica, Peru, Uruguay

by Cláudio Alves

Even though the Best International Feature category exists to celebrate world cinema, AMPAS tends to be biased in favor of European films. Productions from Africa, Asia, and Latin America tend to get shortchanged, although many stupendous films harken to those continents. Those tendencies may be waning though; In the last decade, only half of the winners came from Europe. With recent victories for Mexico and Chile, maybe we're living through a newfound openness from the Academy towards Latin American excellence? Speaking of which, we've already reviewed the flicks from Argentina, Chile, Guatemala, Mexico, and Venezuela. Now, it's time to examine the submissions of Costa Rica, Peru, and Uruguay… 

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Sundance Review: Ailey

by Murtada Elfadl

Like Summer of Soul, Ailey tells the story of Black art through testimonials from the artists who lived through it. In this case the story of pioneering dancer and choreographer Alvin Ailey. He was only 27 years old when he founded what would eventually become one of the most renowned dance companies in the world; the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater...

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