Courtesy of Sundance Institute
MOVIE REVIEW
Fair Play (2023)
Emily (Phoebe Dynevor) is supposed to be smart. She is the only woman analyst on the trading floor of her finance organization (the details of which aren’t really important, though it’s rare for a finance company to be so blind to gender optics these days) but she doesn’t know two things. Firstly, men in finance are the most gossipy and self-serving backstabbers on the planet, capable of making million-dollar gambles based on nothing more than a feeling and a few columns on a spreadsheet, and generally prepared to shank their grandmothers if there is a commission in it. Secondly, while she earned her position by being exceptional at her job, her fellow analyst Luke (Alden Ehrenreich) was a nepo hire, only maintained on payroll because somebody owed his brother a favor, which Emily somehow never realized. “Fair Play” only works if the very smart Emily is inexplicably stupid about these two things. The opening sequence, of a sex scene at a wedding reception which breaks new ground in how menstruation is shown on film, is meant to explain why: Luke and Emily have been in a secret relationship for so long and so seriously that Luke proposes right there on the bathroom floor. Emily accepts, which is the beginning of the worst week of her life, as she learns what every professional woman should already know: No office dick is worth the office drama.
Continue reading “Sleeping With the Enemy” »
Courtesy of Sundance Institute
MOVIE REVIEW
The Pod Generation (2023)
Into this moment of tension over reproductive rights lands "The Pod Generation," a gentle sci-fi satire of parental unease that isn't toothless but wants to try mediation and understanding rather than scream at anyone in anger. Whether this is actually a failing, or bad timing, or just a missed opportunity might depend on the eye of the beholder along with their feelings about the set of reproductive organs lower down; but it does produce a film skirting around the full nature of its own topic at a safe distance so as not to get singed.
Continue reading “Baby Talk” »
Dustin Lane/Courtesy of Sundance Institute
MOVIE REVIEW
Sometimes I Think About Dying (2023)
The obvious joke that "Sometimes I Think About Dying" could have come from the Sundance Random Title Generator is deflated a bit by the fact that the film already heard this gag, back when the original short of the same name played at the festival in 2019. But the shoe does fit. The new expansion is from the same writers – Stefanie Abel Horowitz who also directed the short, Katy Wright-Mead who also starred in it, and Kevin Armento who wrote the original play that inspired both short and feature – and has the same outline: a meek, introverted Fran (here Daisy Ridley) is lonely and depressed in the overcast Oregon gloom. The short was essentially a two-hander, while this feature, directed by Rachel Lambert, has room for all the co-workers Fran endures at her office job, well-meaning overly upbeat cubicle dwellers that might make anyone consider oblivion, if not freelancing.
Continue reading “Everybody Hurts” »
Courtesy of Sundance Institute
MOVIE REVIEW
The Eight Mountains (2023)
“The Eight Mountains” is an adaptation of an Italian coming-of-age novel by Paolo Cognetti, who himself attended film school but whose only contribution here apart from the source material is a cameo role. Instead, the adaptation and directing duties inexplicably have gone to a pair of Belgians: Felix van Groeningen, best known on these shores as the director of “Beautiful Boy” starring Steve Carell and Timothée Chalamet, and Charlotte Vandermeersch, an actress with an extensive resume in Belgian TV. Though la Belgique is nowhere near les Alpes, the filmmakers do a good job of conveying an overall literary aura. Still, it’s hard to argue this should not have been a miniseries instead.
Continue reading “The Trail Not Taken” »
Neon
MOVIE REVIEW
Infinity Pool (2023)
Brandon Cronenberg's previous film, "Possessor," had moments of gore and violence, while manipulating you mostly through drastic quiet unease about mind and body; a film in which Andrea Riseborough calmly stared at you while you were staring at her. "Infinity Pool" barges in and breaks the window and makes a mess on the floor; a film in which Mia Goth screams at you about your unease until you decide that maybe you don't feel so bad. Emboldened, reasonably enough, by the last film's success, Mr. Cronenberg now attacks on multiple fronts. In "Infinity Pool" there are clones and doubles and sleight of hand about which is which. There are rich white people going off the deep end into drug-fuelled violence in a country offensively poorer than Los Angeles. There's a bag of storytelling tactics, harsh editing and strobe lighting and subliminal glimpses of genitalia, the tool kit that gets called experimental – but really isn't because it isn't chasing a state of mind, just an instant of disorientation, not the same thing. All these flammable items go into the test tube, without catching fire.
Continue reading “Double or Quits” »
Courtesy of Sundance Institute
MOVIE REVIEW
L'Immensità (2023)
Andrew (he/him), played by Luana Giuliani, is a perpetually dour teen unpleasant to his younger siblings. Against his wishes, his parents, Clara (Penélope Cruz) and Felice (Vincenzo Amato), continue to misgender him and call him by his dead name, Adri. They seem to think this is a phase he should have outgrown by now. Andrew also begrudgingly attends a girls’ Catholic school where the uniform is of course far from gender-affirming for him. When alone, he asks God to send him a sign – which appears to manifest in black-and-white TV performances of ’60s Italian pop singers, or maybe in the form of a slum off the beaten path beyond the wire-fenced reeds Clara has designated as out of bounds. Having a clean slate there would certainly afford Andrew the chance to romantically pursue Sara (Penélope Nieto Conti).
Continue reading “About a Boy” »
Searchlight Pictures
MOVIE REVIEW
Theater Camp (2023)
A mockumentary chronicling the 3-week-long AdirondActs summer camp for drama kids, Sundance entry “Theater Camp” immediately brings to mind cult favorites like “Waiting for Guffman” and “Wet Hot American Summer.” Naturally, the film brings the premise up to date: Crypto-bro-esque vlogger Troy (Jimmy Tatro) takes the reins after the founder, his mother, Joan (Amy Sedaris), suffers a seizure from a strobe light during a middle school play and becomes comatose. To make matters worse, AdirondActs is on the brink of bankruptcy; Caroline (Patti Harrison), a venture capitalist type, sees this as an opportunity to help expand a neighboring camp. But in spite of these signs of the Millennial times, the film inexplicably has the look of 1970s archival footage from the documentary “Crip Camp.”
Continue reading “Child’s Play” »
Courtesy of Sundance Institute
MOVIE REVIEW
Little Richard: I Am Everything (2023)
Baz Luhrmann's film "Elvis," already cooking at 450 Fahrenheit, is goosed even further when Alton Mason turns up playing Little Richard, screaming "Wop Bop-A-Loo-Bop" from a range of two inches as you rock backwards in your seat. Mr. Mason gives "Tutti Frutti" all he's got; but even skilled impersonations of Little Richard look like best guesses after 10 seconds of reminder about the real thing. This is handy for "Little Richard: I Am Everything," a documentary about the life and career of the singer born Richard Wayne Penniman, which samples a range of his performances but opts not to run any of them at length or let archive footage of the singer in action just unspool. The film wants to talk about the many contradictions and agonies in Little Richard the man, rather than the thermal updraft of the music; and for those issues, you have to hear him speak.
Continue reading “The Boy Can’t Help It” »
Super Ltd.
MOVIE REVIEW
Saint Omer (2023)
As fairytales are to children, courtroom cases are to adults. A terrible thing has happened; and society comes together in a highly structured and regulated format to decide how to handle it. Instead of the terrible thing, the focus becomes the process of how society deals with it. A courtroom is a mirror of society, but structural issues such as racism or sexism are not under its purview; only individual actions are up for discussion. And once the decision of the court is made, the terrible thing can be wrapped up with a tidy little bow. Whether or not justice was done is not quite the point.
Continue reading “Trial by Fire” »
DreamWorks Animation
MOVIE REVIEW
Puss In Boots: The Last Wish (2022)
“Puss in Boots” came out in 2011, which is kids’ movie years is back around the dawn of time. Its lead character, the suave sword-fighting cat based on Zorro, was introduced to the “Shrek” universe back in 2004, a.k.a. slightly after the big bang. The big bang in American animation was “Shrek” itself, an anti-fairytale from 2001 that took its studio, DreamWorks Animation, into the big leagues. It changed the animation game both stylistically, moving away from hand-drawn work into computer animation, and tonally. Shrek was a disgusting ogre who behaved the exact opposite to the picture-perfect characters from a mouse-themed studio. The movie itself was chock full of pop-culture references (bored parents laugh out loud but the references don’t usually age well), it cast famous actors as the characters which permanently altered how animation has been performed since, and furthermore its knowing, snide tone has also been aped by most of non-Disney kids’ movies released in its wake. Once upon a time, all that was fresh, but kids who saw Puss in Boots debut in “Shrek 2” in 2004 have their own kids now.
Continue reading “Die Another Day” »