“A nice movie about nice people. These are gifted under-actors, with Firth doing that thing where he conveys enormous amounts of emotion without moving any of the muscles in his face. What’s missing from the film, I’m afraid, is the terror. All the postcard cinematography and pleasant parties paper over what’s ugliest about this damnable disease.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 02/05/2021
My fifth and final dispatch from the 2021 Sundance Film Festival contains capsule reviews of Jane Schoenbrun‘s We’re All Going To The World’s Fair, Ana Katz’s The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be Quiet, Fran Kranz’s Mass and Mona Fastvold’s The World To Come.
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My fourth dispatch from the 2021 Sundance Film Festival contains capsule reviews of Amalia Ulman’s El Planeta, Robin Wright’s Land, Marion Hill’s Ma Belle, My Beauty and Sion Sono’s Prisoners Of The Ghostland.
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My third dispatch from the 2021 Sundance Film Festival contains capsule reviews of Marilyn Agrelo’s Street Gang: How We Got To Sesame Street, Dash Shaw’s Cryptozoo, Jerrod Carmichael’s On The Count Of Three and Rebecca Hall’s Passing.
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My second dispatch from the 2021 Sundance Film Festival contains capsule reviews of Iuli Gerbase’s The Pink Cloud, Hogir Hirori‘s Sabaya, Kristina Lindström and Kristian Petri’s The Most Beautiful Boy In The World and Albert Birney and Kentucker Audley’s Strawberry Mansion.
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My first dispatch from the 2021 Sundance Film Festival contains capsule reviews of Baz Poonpiriya’s One For The Road, Siân Heder’s CODA, Alex Camilleri’s Luzzu and Ahmir ‘Questlove’ Thompson‘s Summer Of Soul (…Or, When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised).
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My November conversation with the legendary Frederick Wiseman is part of the Coolidge Corner Theatre’s satellite programming for the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. Discussing his latest masterpiece City Hall, the filmmaker reflects on the heroism of local government and the madness of Donald Trump. Also, I got to tell Fred about Four Seasons Total Landscaping. – Coolidge Corner Theatre, 01/29/2021
“There’s probably no way I wasn’t going to fall hard for a picture in which a boozy projectionist teaches a kid life lessons by showing him old movies. Nevertheless, it’s impossible not to be moved by Abu Alala’s belief in art as a liberating force, and all the ways books, music and cinema can work as keys to unlocking the prisons in which we’re born.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 01/29/2021
“The whole movie looks like it takes place inside a catalog. Yet, depending on your tolerance for sun-dappled montages in which characters ‘live, laugh, love’ to what must have been exorbitantly expensive Led Zeppelin songs, the film goes down surprisingly easily. There’s a Hallmark-y comfort-food quality to Our Friend, but don’t expect it to tell you the truth.” – North Shore Movies, 01/21/2021
“Valadez sidesteps the hard-hitting Sicario style one might expect for such a story in favor of something dreamier and more abstract. There are some images here that will sear themselves into your brain. Everything in the film feels as forlorn as the hollowed-out ghost town Magdalena and Miguel discover where a vibrant community used to be.” – North Shore Movies, 01/21/2021
