Sundance Awards (Plus Abe's 'Jury of One' Wrap)

by Abe Fried-Tanzer

Minari won Sundance

The Sundance Film Festival is officially over, closing out yet another busy week and a half of nonstop movies. I managed to catch 41 films this year, including almost all the Premieres titles and most of the U.S. Dramatic Competition films. I enjoyed running into Murtada a few times and noting how much we disagreed on a few films (one of his least favorites is on my top ten list, and I hated Zola, which he loved).

After the jump, the official awards and the best of what I saw... 

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A Funny Time Loop in "Palm Springs"

Abe Fried-Tanzer nearing the end of Sundance 2020...

Time loops are cool again thanks to all the hoopla around Russian Doll, but, in the same way that experiencing the same day over and over again gets stale after a while, has the phenomenon been explored enough at this point? Hulu and Neon certainly didn’t think so when they set a Sundance record by spending $17.5 million (and 69 cents) for Palm Springs, a comedy that deals with the topic yet again...

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Sundance Review: The 40 Year Old Version

by Murtada Elfadl

You love to see a star being born in a festival screening. Specially when that star is over 40, wrote and directed their own star vehicle after years of being ignored. It’s the ultimate artistic dream, to find inspiration from something very personal to you, yet have others respond to it. Remember the name Radha Blank because The 40 Year Old Version is only the beginning for her.

Blank plays a version of herself, a New York playwright nearing her 40th birthday and still struggling to find a place for herself and her art in the city...

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Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Will Ferrell go "Downhill"

Abe Fried-Tanzer reporting from Sundance

Any time a foreign film is truly successful, there seems to be almost instantaneous talks of either a remake or a TV series coming soon for American audiences. Parasite is considering the latter and last year at Sundance, After the Wedding was a hot ticket, adapted from the 2006 Danish film. There was some skepticism when it was announced that the uncomfortable Swedish comedy Force Majeure, nominated for a Golden Globe and well loved here at The Film Experience, was getting an American treatment, but surprise: this remake is worth the price of admission...

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"Ema" at Sundance

by Abe Fried-Tanzer

Chilean director Pablo Larraín was last at the Sundance Film Festival with frequent collaborator Gael García Bernal in 2013 for the Oscar-nominated No. Since then, he’s earned two additional bids from the Golden Globes in the foreign language category for The Club and Neruda. He even made his first film in English: Jackie. Now, Larraín is back with another Bernal film, showing in the Spotlight section after its premiere at the Venice International Film Festival.

Though Bernal plays a substantial role, this film is all about actress Mariana Di Girolamo. She stars as the title character, who is married to Bernal’s choreographer character...

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