Review: "The Afterparty" Could've Been More Lit

By: Christopher James

Is Apple TV+'s new comedy "The Afterparty" worth attending? Read on to find out.

High school reunions are nightmares, but they’re nightmares that you can’t miss. Where did your high school crushes end up? What scores do you need to settle with old rivals? Will you murder the famous pop star from your graduating class? Well, hopefully the latter is not on your bucket list.

The new Apple TV+ comedy, The Afterparty, is a fun whodunnit comedy that centers around the murder of a celebrity following his high school reunion...

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Sundance: Another Inappropriate Relationship in ‘Palm Trees and Power Lines’

By Abe Friedtanzer

In film and television it’s very common to find a romance happening that probably shouldn’t be, with too wide an age gap that’s either just unappealing or actually illegal. That’s a central problem some have with Licorice Pizza. The Alliance of Women Film Journalists actually has a category in their awards titled “Most Egregious Age Difference Between Leading Man and Love Interest.” Palm Trees and Power Lines is the latest reminder that if something feels off, there’s probably good reason to raise alarm…

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Sundance: Falling asleep (and in love) with 'Blood'

by Cláudio Alves

Bradley Rust Gray's Blood nearly put me to sleep. I mean it in a positive way, despite the negative readings such statements usually entail. At times, it felt like watching a 111-minute ASMR video crossed with a stubbornly understated character study. Even the casting appears designed to induce visceral relaxation, from Carla Juri's whispery intonations to Issey Ogata's unmistakable voice. Gray has devised a film of hypnotic qualities, extrapolating its protagonist's search for inner serenity to the audience's experience of movie-watching. At times, like when a gentle song unfurls with lyrics about dozing off, it almost seems as if Blood is winking at the semi-conscious spectator, sharing a joke, giving permission to dream… 

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Sundance: It's Doubled-Trouble for Karen Gillan in 'Dual'

by Jason Adams

I suppose it's less of a theoretical question now than it was a few decades ago, but what would it mean for us if human cloning becomes a reality? It's a topic science-fiction has wrestled with for ages, but having just spent two years weathering my first global pandemic by basically Netflix-and-chilling it I'm prone to think our grand high sci-fi authors might've overblown our reactions to such epochal events. (I mean... we barely reacted to that news about UFOs, for god's sake.) And so I'm now prone to believe that human cloning would be met with something closer to the meh, shrug, move-on that The Art of Self-Defense director Riley Stearns' crafts with his slyly mundane sci-fi parable Dual, just premiering at Sundance...

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Sundance: More ‘I Love Lucy’ with ‘Lucy and Desi’

By Abe Friedtanzer

 Have you noticed that, when there’s a major scripted film about a real person from history, there’s often a documentary to go along with it at the same time? One of the very first articles I wrote for this site was about RBG and On the Basis of Sex, where the former was clearly the superior product. Recently, Being the Ricardos opened in theaters and then quickly to Amazon Prime. The movie looks at a (fictionalized) tempestuous week for the TV power couple. The documentary on the same couple, from director Amy Poehler, zooms out to look at their entire story, offering a good amount of added context.

This film’s title gives away its focus, which is that the lives of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz were so intertwined, even after they were no longer married, that it’s impossible to truly separate them...

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