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Entries in Reviews (1249)

Wednesday
Jan262022

Sundance: Creative Storytelling in ‘My Old School’ and ‘The Cathedral’

By Abe Friedtanzer

Alan Cumming appears in My Old School

Screening multiple films a day at a festival can lead to the discovery of unexpected thematic connections. Initially, My Old School and The Cathedral, may seem to be completely unrelated films, but, seeing them within twenty-four hours of each other (with two or three others in between), I was surprised by their similarities. They both grapple with memory and history on a very specific level, and do so in inventive manners… 

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Tuesday
Jan252022

Sundance: The elegiac poetry of 'Dos Estaciones' 

by Cláudio Alves

Director Juan Pablo González comes from a family of tequila makers in the Jalisco highlands of Mexico. Though never outright stated, such biographical details inform in his fiction feature debut. Dos Estaciones is a love letter to the region and the noble artisanship of making tequila de old-fashioned way, from the azure expansions of the agave fields to the shiny glass bottle. However, it's also a eulogy, a cry of mourning for a dying world. Foreign pressures threaten the long history of the land, buying the fields and factories from families who've owned them for generations. A Mexican tradition thus becomes an American commodity, and there's little to do but honor what's lost, show people its value, its intrinsic beauty, resist through art and remembering…

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Tuesday
Jan252022

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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Monday
Jan242022

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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Monday
Jan242022

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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