Sundance Surprise: Fighting With My Family

Abe Fried-Tanzer reporting from Sundance

Each year, Sundance hosts a “surprise screening” that’s printed as such on its advance schedule and only revealed during the festival itself. It’s a chance to premiere a hit movie for a small audience that is usually pretty excited about it. Last year, it was Jason Reitman’s Tully, and the year before that, it was eventual Oscar winner Get Out. This year, it’s Fighting with My Family, slated for theatrical release in just two weeks.

This premiere brought out some big stars, including Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Vince Vaughn, and real-life wrestler Paige, whose story serves as the inspiration for this film...

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Sundance: "The Last Black Man in San Francisco"

Murtada Elfadl reporting from Sundance

While watching The Last Black Man in San Francisco - a gorgeous, specific, and fantastical fable of a film with a decidedly assured tone - I kept thinking of Oprah Winfrey’s introduction of Precious  star Gabourey Sidibe at the Oscars. “Where did that come from?”, “Where did you learn how to do that?” I was asking these questions of writer/director Joe Talbot and writer/actor Jimmie Fails. They had collaborated on a short film before, but this is their feature debut. How did they spring out of the gate so exceptionally?

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Sundance: Zac Efron is "Extremely Wicked..."

Abe Fried-Tanzer reporting from Sundance

Everyone knows the name Ted Bundy, but I’m not sure that everyone knows as much as they think they do about him. I certainly didn’t going into Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, the Sundance premiere from director Joe Berlinger, an Oscar nominee back in 2011 for the documentary Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory. The key curiousity here is the casting of Zac Efron, onetime star of High School Musical, as the notorious killer...

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Sundance: Awkwafina in "The Farewell"

Murtada Elfadl reporting from Sundance

Big family gatherings can be tough. Especially when the gathered family are dispersed all over the world and live disparate lives. In The Farewell, a family gathers in China, ostensibly for a cousin’s wedding. Some flew in from Japan, some from the United States and some are, of course, local. As the conversation gets real and tense about living in different places, what values and opportunities you get and lose when you leave the home country, the film hit me hard. It reminded me of my own family and gatherings like this. When reality forces families to disperse, the push/pull of old vs new country can get contentious, emotional, and raw. Writer/director Lulu Wang captures this exact tension acutely. She also writes with love and authenticity about family so The Farewell hits an emotional bullseye.

Front and center is Awkwafina as a young Chinese-American artist, Billi, living in New York with her immigrant parents...

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Sundance: Zora Howard in "Premature"

Murtada Elfadl reporting from Sundance

Once in a while, a film comes along where the actual experience of watching it is so enjoyable, it stirs a cozy reaction. A certain contentment, a satisfied smile washes over you as you spend time with the characters and the story. The type of film, the rhytyms, the stories that stir that reaction in me can differ but Rashaad Ernesto Green’s Premature is one of those movies.

The film follows Ayana (played by Zora Howard who co-wrote the screenplay with the director) through her last summer in Harlem before she leaves New York for college...

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