Sundance Institute
No irony intended (perhaps) in a documentary about the imminent environmental collapse of Utah’s Great Salt Lake ecosystem and the significant collateral damage to the livelihood of large numbers of locals, premiering at the last Sundance Film Festival to be held in the state before it voluntarily transplants to Colorado. Abby Ellis’s documentary “The Lake” follows ecologists, biologists and politicians involved in what one newscaster terms “an environmental nuclear bomb,” the drying out of the Great Salt Lake as the climate puts less water into it and the citizens of Utah take more out. The lake now contains 70 percent less water than it used to, an alarming number by any standards. Utah’s is not the only saltwater lake in the world facing potential disaster; but it is the largest and has the most people living near it. And no one has managed to fix any of the others.
Continue reading “Hell or Low Water” »
Tandem Pictures
The publicity material for “Run Amok” describes its subject matter as “thorny,” although it’s the approach to the topic that might make a viewer tense up. That topic is the ongoing plague of U.S. school shootings, and the approach is a deliberate tonal jumble of pathos, sincerity, tragedy and whimsy; something for everyone (to be cross with). But the goal is for a fictional young shooting survivor to speak for herself, once she’s untangled the knot of snakes in her head; to accept that even she may not know how she feels so asking about it all the time might go nowhere. And certainly to point out that solutions to school shootings do not lie inside the schools.
Continue reading “School Daze” »
David Shadrack Smith/Sundance Institute
A tale old as time. Some piece of new technology lets people transmit themselves to the world in ways previously impossible. Diverse groups which have rarely had their voices heard speak up. Some of them are uncouth and unconventional. They resist the capitalist urge, for a while. Pornography becomes a small part and then a big part of the entire effort. Things fall apart, with casualties. Another new technology displaces the first one, and the caravan moves on. All this plays out in the story of New York’s Manhattan Cable Television, 1970s public access broadcasting in which more or less anyone could say more or less anything, taking advantage of compact reel-to-reel videotape technology which to modern eyes is as compact as an aircraft carrier.
Continue reading “Live From New York” »
Eric Branco/Summer 2001 LLC
Josephine Decker’s “Chasing Summer” announces itself as an outlier. For a filmmaker whose work has often been marked by fragmentation, sensory abrasion, and a willful resistance to narrative comfort, this new film feels almost disarmingly straightforward. It unfolds as a recognizable homecoming story, complete with old grudges, unresolved romances, and the uneasy realization that the self one fled is still waiting patiently back where the odyssey began. That air of convention is no accident. It has a great deal to do with the film’s writer and star, Iliza Shlesinger, whose comic instincts pull Ms. Decker toward something cleaner, calmer, and — by her standards — positively classical.
Continue reading “You Can Go Home Again” »
Sundance Institute
Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass (2026)
David Wain’s first feature in eight years, “Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass,” arrives as a cheerfully indecorous homecoming — a return to the shaggy, ensemble-driven absurdism that once made his comedies feel like contraband smuggled into multiplexes. A sitcom-bright spoof of Americana that filters “The Wizard of Oz” through celebrity culture, the film is at once junk-drawer eclectic and curiously sincere about the small, stubborn dreams of its heroine.
Continue reading “Somewhere Over the Top” »
La Biennale di Venezia
This is going to sound a bit like inside baseball, but it’s not every day you see a major studio releasing anime. Within the Sony Pictures corporate structure, Crunchyroll handles such titles by default. Otherwise, they’d go to niche labels such as Destination Films or Sony Pictures Classics. Tangentially, homegrown Sony Pictures Animation productions lately have been dumped on Netflix, including surprise hit “KPop Demon Hunters.” The first (and hopefully not last) anime feature to carry the Columbia Pictures banner proper is “Scarlet” by Mamoru Hosoda, director of the Oscar-nominated “Mirai.”
It makes sense that “Scarlet” merits special treatment and a coveted awards season slot, though, considering its premiere at the Venice International Film Festival among many Oscar hopefuls. It possesses the epic bravado and artistry that exemplify prestige pictures. The voice cast features such luminaries as Koji Yakusho, and it’s a relief the studio has the good sense to not to dub it in English, at least for now. Its credits even boast Danish academics serving as historical and cultural consultants. It’s some serious stuff we’re talking about here.
Continue reading “Enter the Void” »
Alex Majoli
In the Hand of Dante (2025)
“In the Hand of Dante” emerges as the most controversial selection at Venice International Film Festival. In and of itself, it is not the least bit offensive, but thousands of Palestine supporters took to the streets on Aug. 30 in Lido, the island where all festivities are based. It’s no surprise that 1,500 industry types petitioned to ban the film’s Israeli star, Gal Gadot. Though she has ultimately skipped the world premiere, “In the Hand of Dante” is still catching heat in the press due to director-cowriter Julian Schnabel’s defense of his star.
Continue reading “Literary Gem” »
Stefania Rosini
Though premiering out of competition at Venice International Film Festival, Gus Van Sant’s “Dead Man’s Wire” is a contender to be the breakout among this year’s official selections. Based on the true story of perhaps the Luigi Mangione of his time, the film is very much reflective of the national mood at the moment – unlike Spike Lee’s “Highest 2 Lowest.”
Continue reading “Two Wrongs Can Make a Right” »
Netflix
A House of Dynamite (2025)
Kathryn Bigelow’s latest, Venice International Film Festival competition entry “A House of Dynamite,” is, for the most part, one of those end-of-days Armageddon movies, except it never actually culminates in special effects-laden spectacles of total obliteration. The film does not follow the Michael Bay or Roland Emmerich blockbuster tradition. Instead, it focuses solely on those behind the scenes trying to respond and stave off the impending destruction.
Continue reading “Nuclear Options” »
A24
The Smashing Machine (2025)
On the heels of their breakout, “Uncut Gems,” the Safdie brothers are headed for a breakup. Both have solo stuff coming out this awards season via A24. First up is Venice International Film Festival competition title “The Smashing Machine,” written and directed by Benny Safdie, the younger sibling who has been in the public eye a lot more thanks to his side job acting in films like “Licorice Pizza” and “Oppenheimer.”
The new film is a biopic on early mixed martial arts star Mark Kerr, who was also the subject of John Hyams’s 2002 HBO documentary, “The Smashing Machine: The Life and Times of Extreme Fighter Mark Kerr.” Aside from the shared title, there’s quite a bit of overlap in terms of narrative.
Continue reading “Hit Where It Hurts” »
