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
“To watch The Climb is to remember that comedy can indeed still be directed. The camera works as a partner here with the performers. Director Covino has conceptualized these scenes as complex physical experiences purposely playing around with the audience’s POV to sometimes sublime ends. It is, for lack of a better word, cinema.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 01/19/2021
“Screenwriter Knight smartly caters the role to everything at which Hathaway excels. Linda is type-A, buttoned-up and wild at heart, over-talking her way through sanctimonious speeches with a rigid physicality that keeps getting distracted and going all slinky whenever her lusty eyes light up. I’d kill to see her play Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing.” – North Shore Movies, 01/15/2021
“The new platform launches with a quartet of films belatedly celebrating the 2020 centenary of Federico Fellini, introducing a sparkling new restoration of his playful, penultimate film, Intervista. In conjunction, the Brattlite is offering internet exclusive screenings of two of the director’s earliest efforts, where we can see his signature style beginning to take shape.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 01/13/2021
“Stallone spills his saga with a breathtaking lack of self-awareness and the undisguised mean streak of the perpetually aggrieved. I suppose there’s something potentially tragic about a less-talented little brother feeling forever outshined, but the documentary is just a giant whine. It’s 73 minutes of Fredo’s ‘I’m smart and I want respect!’ speech from Godfather II.” – North Shore Movies, 01/11/2021
“After fifteen years of hotshot young directors ripping off Alfonso Cuarón’s battle sequences from Children Of Men, apparently now they’ve moved on to stealing the stillbirth scene from Roma? I suppose one can admire the technical bravado required to choreograph the 1917 of crib death while also wondering why such a thing would be necessary.” – WBUR’s The ARTery, 01/07/2021
SPLICED PERSONALITY 