Posts Tagged ‘Sundance review’
 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY SUNDANCE REVIEW: “The Skeleton Twins”

  Star power makes all the difference  in THE SKELETON TWINS.  Craig Johnson’s dramedy (written with Mark Heyman) takes place in fairly commonplace territory, especially at Sundance:  siblings bound together, whe...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY SUNDANCE REVIEW: “Young Ones”

  The post-apocalyptic sci-fi western, which once must have seemed revolutionary and innovative, is now (it dates back at least to 1975’s A Boy and His Dog) an established subgenre.  Jake Paltrow’s entry into ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY SUNDANCE REVIEW: “Happy Christmas”

  Joe Swanberg, the director, writer and co-star of HAPPY CHRISTMAS, which premiered at Sundance earlier this week, makes Woody Allen look lazy.  He’s had something like a dozen features to his credit since the sta...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY @ SUNDANCE 2013: “Lovelace”

  There are any number of ways the story of Linda Lovelace and Deep Throat could be told to make a potentially fascinating movie, from the sociological to the political, the personal to the satiric.  The laziest–o...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY SUNDANCE REVIEW: “God’s Pocket”

  Of all the titles in this year’s Sundance US Dramatic Competition line-up, none may have been more promising on paper than GOD’S POCKET.  Based on a novel by Pete Dexter, it marked the feature directing debu...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY @ SUNDANCE 2013: “Afternoon Delight”

  It takes quite a while–almost its entire length, in fact–for the utter conventionality of AFTERNOON DELIGHT to become clear.  Jill Soloway’s feature directing debut, for which she unaccountably won a S...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY SUNDANCE REVIEW: “Obvious Child”

  A surprisingly commercial concoction by Sundance standards, Gillian Robespierre’s OBVIOUS CHILD doesn’t feel very much unlike the pilot for a cable dramedy.  That’s not meant as any kind of dire crit...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY @ SUNDANCE 2013: “A.C.O.D.”

  Stu Zicherman’s A.C.O.D. (written by Zicherman and Ben Karlin) suffers a bit from a familiar indie comedy malady:  the conflicting desires to tell meaningful and even dark stories, while at the same time getting ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY SUNDANCE REVIEW: “The Sleepwalker”

  For SHOWBUZZDAILY’s full set of Sundance capsule reviews, click here.   What kind of filmmaker does Mona Fastvold want to be?  It’s an existential question that comes up often at Sundance, where artisti...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY @ SUNDANCE 2013: “The Lifeguard”

  If you go to too many Sundances, or see too many indie films, there are certain templates you come to recognize all too quickly.  THE LIFEGUARD, written and directed by Liz W. Garcia, a TV writer (Memphis Beat, Cold Cas...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY SUNDANCE REVIEW: “Song One”

  Kate Barker-Froyland’s directing debut SONG ONE is so wispy and insubstantial that the bytes making up its digital images seem barely capable of adhering to a screen.  Clearly influenced by John Carney’s m...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY @ SUNDANCE 2013: “Sweetwater”

  But for one unfortunately critical element, Logan and Noah Miller’s SWEETWATER (the brothers rewrote a script originally by Andrew McKenzie) is a highly enjoyable darkly comic western, as subsumed in stylized mov...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY SUNDANCE FILM REVIEW: “Hellion”

  Of all the films in this year’s US Dramatic Competition at Sundance, Kat Candler’s HELLION was the one that most closely matched what’s become a festival template: Aggressively shaky handheld camerawork...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY @ SUNDANCE 2013: “Magic Magic”

  MAGIC MAGIC never really makes clear what it intends to be, but it’s awfully fascinating to watch. Written and directed by the prolific Sebastian Silva, who had two films at Sundance this year (the other was the we...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY SUNDANCE REVIEW: “Low Down”

  No one can accuse LOW DOWN of attempting to glamorize the true story it tells.  Jeff Preiss’s first film as a director is a slow, grim dirge set in an underbelly of the jazz world in 1970s Los Angeles, and it...
by Mitch Salem