HONK FOR JESUS.  SAVE YOUR SOUL (no distrib):  Scandal-ridden mega-churches aren’t exactly fresh territory for screens big (The Tears of Tammy Faye) or small (The Righteous Gemstones), with tones that range from wildly comic to solemn.  Adamma Edo’s feature debut doesn’t have much to add to the subject, but it does have Sterling K. […]

  LIVING (no distrib):  Over the years, there’s periodically been talk about remaking Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 masterpiece Ikiru, including a rumored updated US version that would have starred Tom Hanks in the lead.  We finally have an English-language Ikiru in the more modest form of Oliver Hermanus’s Living, from a screenplay by the famed novelist […]

  It’s the second consecutive Virtual Sundance, with safety, convenience and isolation in place of weather, shuttle buses and community.  Over the next several days, we’ll be bringing you reviews of several Sundance premieres, some of which will find their way into theaters, with more likely to make their public appearances via VOD and streaming […]

This may be heresy, but the virtual Sundance Film Festival went so smoothly that if they offered it as an option in a hopefully pandemic-free 2022, I’d seriously consider passing up the freezing weather and the waits for delayed, packed shuttle buses to stay at home.  Sure, I’d miss the communal experience, but on the […]

  ON THE COUNT OF THREE:  There was a well-deserved Sundance screenwriting prize for Ari Katcher and Ryan Welch’s script for Jerrod Carmichael’s big-screen directing debut, which threads an almost impossible needle as a comedy about suicidal depression.  (In an unintentional way, the film is a companion piece to the festival’s How It Ends, also […]

  MAYDAY:  The fantasy whatzit is a Sundance staple, and Mayday fits into that category.  (Paradise Hills was a recent example from a past festival.)  Ana (Grace Van Patten), short for Anastasia, is an ignored and abused waitress who finds herself swimming through a portal to what turns out to be an otherwise deserted island […]

  THE WORLD TO COME (Bleecker Street – March 2):  Although the story is set in 1856, this is 2021, so it’s not hard to see where Mona Fastvold’s The World To Come is heading.  Ron Hansen and Jim Shepard’s script begins in the dead of winter, in the wilderness that was upstate New York […]

  JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH (Warners/HBO Max – February 12):  The title refers to the FBI informant Bill O’Neal (played here by LaKeith Stanfield) and the Illinois Black Panthers leader Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya).  Although Hampton was only 21 years old, he was so charismatic and successful–he had put together a local coalition that […]