Sundance: "Flee" beautifully animates a family's struggle

by Eurocheese

As the first acquisition at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Flee made headlines as an early success story. To anyone who attended the premiere screening, it was no surprise that the film was snapped up so quickly. Between its lovely animation and personal message, it speaks to a refugee’s journey in a heartfelt way. I shed tears at several points during the film, and based on the reactions I heard during the Q&A afterwards, we’ll be hearing much more about its emotional impact in the future.

The story begins as a conversation between two friends, one of whom (Amin) seems to be hesitating when considering marriage to his longtime boyfriend...

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Interview: Bao Nguyen on "Be Water" and the cultural resonance of Bruce Lee

by Nathaniel R

Bao Nguyen's Be Water premiered on ESPN this past summer and has touched a lot of people since then. It's a lovely meditation on Bruce Lee's life, his relationships to both the East and the West, and the meaning of his legacy and activism. Be Water is one of 238 films eligible for the Oscar this year in Best Documentary Feature. We were thrilled to sit down with Bao Nguyen, over Zoom of course, to discuss his picture and the man and myth that is Bruce Lee.

Be Water was five years in the making, though things sped up considerably once ESPN signed on two years or so ago. Originally Be Water was supposed to come out around Bruce Lee's 80th birthday this past November but demand was so great for new movies during quarantine that the release was moved up to June. Nyugen, had a strange year (didn't we all!) but one recurring joy was hearing from and seeing photos of multigenerational families watching the film together. He describes the film as "connective tissue" and the parents and kids and grandparents could then discuss what Bruce Lee meant to them...

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Showbiz History: Shrinking Women, Sundance Hits, and City Lights

7 random things that happened on this day, January 30th, in showbiz history

1931 City Lights premieres in Los Angeles. Albert Einstein, pictured above with Chaplin, was the guest of honor. It was a silent film released well past the point when that was fashionable (sound took over very quickly in one of Hollywood's most titanic upheavals) but it proved a success in theaters...

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Sundance: Rita Moreno in the Spotlight

By Abe Friedtanzer 

In a week where we’ve lost both Cicely Tyson and Cloris Leachman, it feels like the right time to celebrate trailblazing actresses who are still earning awards love well into their eighties and nineties. On tap at Sundance in the U.S. Documentary Competition section is Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It. This exploration of her life and the profound influence she has had on so many is a rich, endearing journey that constitutes a truly delightful and energizing look at a remarkable actress who just last week earned her fourth consecutive Critics Choice nomination at the age of eighty-nine.

This film should work equally well for those intimately familiar with much of Moreno’s resumé as well as those who know her only from her signature film role that won her an Oscar, 1961’s West Side Story, or from the great TV work she’s still doing on the recently-wrapped One Day at a Time...

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Sundance Opening Night: CODA

By Abe Friedtanzer

 

It’s never the biggest movies that premiere on opening night of the Sundance Film Festival, but they’re always worth looking at carefully since they do set the tone for what comes next. I reviewed the first films I saw in 2020 and 2019 for this site, and they were both among the best films I saw each year – Summertime, director Carlos López Estrada’s follow-up to another Sundance opening night premiere, Blindspotting, coming out sometime this summer, and the Alex Gibney documentary The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley, which ended up debuting on HBO.

That impressive club adds a new member this year in the form of CODA. I didn’t realize until I finished watching the film that its title is an acronym for Child of Deaf Adults...

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