Category: Sundance
-
Sundance 2021: Programme preview
If the past year has taught cultural institutions the world over anything, it’s that the show can and must go on. The continuing Covid-19 pandemic means that the 2021 Sundance Film Festival will be – predominantly – a digital experience. Save for a select few satellite screenings set up across the US within strict health…
-
Sundance 2018: The Tale review
★★★★☆ Documentary filmmaker Jennifer Fox unravels her own history of sexual abuse in The Tale, a sharp and harrowing account of stories and lies hidden away at the expense of innocence. The truth of the story as far as Jennifer Fox (Laura Dern) knows, The Tale centres around the discovery of a school assignment recounting…
-
Sundance 2018: Never Goin’ Back review
★★★☆☆ Fresh faces Maia Mitchell and Cami Morrone star in the debut feature film from Texan director Augustine Frizzell, the chaotic, stoner-girl trip Never Goin’ Back – playing this weekend at Sundance London. High-school dropouts Jessie (Morrone) and Angela (Mitchell) are inseparable. Nothing matters more to them than each other as they move from day-to-day,…
-
Sundance 2016: Love & Friendship review
★★★★☆ Whit Stillman’s films are often concerned with the absurdities of human interactions. His latest, Love & Friendship, is no different – except that it’s based on a Jane Austen novella. Yet Stillman, whose previous work like 2009’s Damsels in Distress focuses in a skew-eyed perspective of modern America, is the perfect fit. Based on…
-
Sundance 2016: How to Let Go of the World review
★★☆☆☆ At the beginning of Josh Fox’s breakout 2010 documentary Gasland, he stated that he was not a pessimist. Further along the same road of ecological activism that he embarked on in that film, his newest endeavour sees him presented with a very real challenge to his otherwise sunny disposition. Even before it’s started, How…
-
Sundance 2016: Programme preview
The sleepy Utah ski resort of Park City explodes into life once again as Hollywood and the world’s press bombard its slopes. This is the Sundance Film Festival, which despite its modest indie circuit origins (as the Utah/US Film Festival in 1978) is now America’s foremost film festival, perhaps in industry clout only behind Cannes…
-
Sundance 2014: The One I Love review
★★★★☆ When Mark Duplass and Mad Men star Elisabeth Moss first sit and discuss their relationship in a couples therapy session, audiences will feel they have a fair idea of where The One I Love (2014) is headed. A romantic dramedy of sorts with hints of mumblecore, in which the aforementioned duo bicker before adorably…
-
Sundance 2014: Obvious Child review
★★★★☆ Recent lo-fi Brooklynite comedies such as Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha (2013) and Lena Dunham’s Tiny Furniture (2010) feel positively old-hat compared with Gillian Robespierre’s bracing Obvious Child (2014), which is funnier and more urgent than both. Robespierre and her breakout star Jenny Slate give us a feminist comedy about abortion, but still this is…
