Sundance: "The World To Come" review

by Jason Adams

As a writer it must be said (or written even!) that I love words. Perhaps on occasion, it has been said and written, more than I ought to. It's the romance of my life. You can spend hours staring in the eyes of one -- erasing it, putting it back, looking for it the absolute best of partners. It's in words where I find meaning, too much and too often -- the experience of a thing is here and gone but once you've dug it back up and defined it, encased it into the tombs of steely-sided capital letters, well then it's a thing, right and proper. Understanding one's life, the un-understandable, becomes a matter of word puzzles.

It's this same tension, between word and feeling, that fuels Mona Fastvold's same-sex romance The World To Come, and like its heroine its that tension that very nearly undoes it...

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Sundance: Robin Wright Directs “Land”

By Abe Friedtanzer 

Self-imposed exile is a common cinematic device used to frame narratives, with a variety of motivations for that lifestyle change. Venturing out solo into harsh or unknown conditions has been the premise of a range of films, including Wild and Into the Wild. Watching such a journey can be most poignant for what it reveals about its protagonist, and the beauty (or misery) they find along the way. Robin Wright makes her directorial debut with Land, a Focus Features production premiering at Sundance and slated for release on February 12th... 

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Sundance Review: Summer of Soul (...Or When The Revolution Could No Be Televised)

by Murtada Elfadl

1969 is remembered for many events, among them Woodstock. But that same year another concert event just as momentous took place in New York City, The Harlem Cultural Festival. It had a killer set of performers -  Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Sly & The Family Stone to name just a few. Yet until a few days ago I bet you didn't even know it had happened. I certainly didn’t until I saw Summer of Soul (...Or When The Revolution Could No Be Televised), Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s joyous documentary which premiered on the opening night of Sundance 2021.

A good music documentary needs good music and Summer of Soul has that in spades...

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Sundance: Discussing Grief in “Mass”

By Abe Friedtanzer

 It’s always interesting to see actors step behind the camera to direct, both for the subject matters they choose and the times they decide not to cast themselves in their projects. I was particularly moved by William H. Macy’s debut in that role with Rudderless, which played at Sundance in 2014 but didn’t go very far after that. It dealt with a father struggling to connect with his late son through his music after a school shooting. Now, Fran Kranz, who I always remember as Topher on Dollhouse, is exploring a similar concept as writer and director of Mass.

The film opens with church staff members setting up a room for an awkward meeting set to occur between two sets of parents...

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Sundance: “On the Count of Three” review

By Abe Friedtanzer

 

Meeting characters at a moment where they want to end their lives is a complicated endeavor. It’s important to introduce them and explain who they are while communicating what has happened to get them to this mental place. Such narratives are often melancholy, but they can also be unexpectedly funny, as is the case with On the Count of Three...

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