My second dispatch from the 2024 Sundance Film Festival includes capsule reviews of Nathan Silver’s Between The Temples, Josh Margolin’s Thelma and India Donaldson’s Good One.
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My first dispatch from the 2024 Sundance Film Festival includes capsule reviews of Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain, Michael John Warren’s Lolla: The Story Of Lollapalooza and Theda Hammel’s Stress Positions.
”What’s unexpected, and undeniably amusing, is that these kids curse like sailors, spitting Scarface volumes of profanity on the field. This is presumably why The Underdoggs has gone straight to streaming, so underage viewers won’t have to worry about sneaking into an R-rated movie and can watch it as easily as they watch porn on their phones.” – North Shore Movies, 01/25/2024
”Supporting characters only exist to tell us how important Isabel Wilkerson is, how the world needs her work, and her voice. Even people on their deathbeds don’t get to talk about anything except how much this book is going to matter. The constant affirmations of the author’s ego aren’t just dramatically inert, they also overwhelm her ideas, sucking up all the screen time.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 01/25/2024
”It can also be seen as the codification of Pacino’s movie star persona, the first time he started treating that magnificent head of hair as a co-headliner and when his squeaky Michael Corleone whisper got gruff. The ending of the film is the beginning of the broadly theatrical, ‘LOUD-quiet-LOUD’ monologues that became the actor’s signature, for better and worse.” – Crooked Marquee, 01/19/2024
“There’s a perfectly lovely two-hander here about an elderly woman and a middle-aged man opening up to one another over the course of a daylong drive. The Proustian allusion in the title is entirely intentional, as this is very much a remembrance of things past. The problem is that the movie keeps pulling away from what’s so compelling about the present.” – North Shore Movies, 01/19/2024
”What’s grimly funny is how the character’s sensitive, do-gooder liberalism consistently backfires on her. Mrs. Nowak isn’t particularly subtle nor even incorrect about regarding her fellow teachers as fascists and thugs, yet she’s the one whose actions keep making a bad situation worse. What was that again about the road to Hell being paved with good intentions?” – North Shore Movies, 01/19/2024
”Most movies would saddle us with a monologue explaining the character’s journey and marking her personal growth, but director Morissa Maltz knows she doesn’t need a voice-over. She has Lily Gladstone. It’s captivating watching her watch people, allowing us the space to intuit what’s going on internally without blathering about it on the soundtrack.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 01/18/2024
”These tech bro douchebags ride skateboards at work while drinking oat milk lattes, affectations that the film regards with visceral disgust. The 56-year-old Statham, in his battered pickup and mesh trucker hat, leans so hard into the generational antipathy it’s like a Death Wish movie, except instead of muggers he’s picking off trust fund kids who vape.” – North Shore Movies, 01/14/2024
“Not really a remake, nor even really a musical re-imagination of Tina Fey’s sleepover staple so much as it is a recitation. Pile into a packed auditorium and hear all (or at least most of) your favorite lines repeated by a new, less-illustrious cast under terrible television lighting. Occasionally they sing songs you will not be humming on the way home.” – North Shore Movies, 01/12/2024
SPLICED PERSONALITY 