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Sundance ‘25: ‘THE BALLAD OF WALLIS ISLAND’ A Crowd-Pleasing Folk Charmer

It’s been a decade since the folk duo McGwyer (Tom Basden) and Mortimer (Carey Mulligan) broke up. But if Charles (Tim Key), an eccentric, well-meaning, and possibly unhinged wealthy bachelor, has anything to do with it, their reunion is imminent. He’s determined to bring them together for one last performance—both as a personal passion project and a tribute to his late wife, their biggest fan. What follows is a funny, bittersweet, and deeply charming British comedy musical, powered by strong performances and even stronger music. Read More

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Sundance ’25: ‘OH HI! – A Rom-Com with a Body Count?

Molly Gordon and Logan Lerman are lovers on a seemingly idyllic upstate weekend outing in writer-director Sophie Brooks’ Oh Hi!. What begins as a disgustingly cute romantic getaway takes a sharp turn when the nature of their relationship is drawn into question. Despite their easy chemistry and rollicking sex life, Lerman’s Isaac insists on keeping things casual, while Gordon’s Iris yearns for the most meager crumbs of commitment. When he can’t even manage that, she makes a split-second decision to prove they’re meant to be together, though her methods are, let’s say, unconventional. Read More

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Sundance ’25: ‘THE UGLY STEPSISTER’ Gives Cinderella Story a Gruesome Facelift

The Ugly Stepsister has already earned a reputation around Park City as the horror movie in this year’s Midnight section…the one that made an audience member puke in the aisle. For horror enthusiasts, this is the theatrical equivalent of a Michelin star. You must see this movie, etched in regurgitation. For the first 80 or so minutes of Emilie Kristine Blichfeldt’s no-holds-barred retelling of Cinderella, I wasn’t sure what all the fuss was about. And then, the reason someone yakked became grotesquely clear. Read More

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Sundance ’25: Disquieting Stalker Thriller ‘LURKER’ Lets a Fox into the Henhouse

When an obsessive fan infiltrates the inner circle of his favorite up-and-coming pop star, Oliver (Archie Madekwe)—a single-name moniker à la Prince and Beyoncé—under the guise of being an unbiased outsider, an unsettling game of cat and mouse with far-reaching implications begins. Matthew (Théodore Pellerin) sleepwalks through a lackluster existence—working a dead-end retail job, mooching off his grandmother—until Oliver steps foot into his store. A surreptitious trap is sprung in real time. Read More

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Sundance ’25: ‘DIDN’T DIE’ Reimagines the Zombie Apocalypse as a Mumblecore Relationship Movie

There’s a certain irony to the fact that the zombie movie has been done to death. Enter writer-director Meera Menon, who reanimates the zombie apocalypse as a mumblecore dramedy to impressive effect. Menon’s ultra-low-budget debut feature film, Didn’t Die, is a snarky yet sincere vision of life after a mass extinction event, where the remainder of humankind has nothing better to do than host daily happy hours at home, sift through the detritus of civilization for its most useful scraps, and listen to a podcast about the end of the world in real time. Read More

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‘WOLF MAN’ Redux Howls With Heart and Horror

The Wolf Man has a shaggy history in the annals of cinema. After premiering in George Waggner’s well-regarded 1941 feature, the character went on to appear in increasingly desperate mashups alongside Frankenstein, Dracula, Abbott and Costello, and—for some godforsaken reason—Alvin and the Chipmunks. Joe Johnson’s 2010 dreadfully dull remake with Benicio del Toro and Anthony Hopkins was widely panned. Years later, Ryan Gosling was briefly set to play the character in the quickly-sundowned Dark Universe series. Like a full moon waning, the monster movie icon was put to rest. Following a successful stint reviving the Universal monster movies with the critically acclaimed, box-office hit The Invisible Man, writer-director Leigh Whannell (Saw, Upgrade) was tapped to try his hand at this oft-cursed property, recruiting Christopher Abbott as his leading lupine man to star opposite Ozark’s Julia Garner. Read More

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‘THE BRUTALIST’ An Intellectually Stimulating Work of Art With a Masterful Adrien Brody Turn

When Harrison Lee Van Buren Sr. (Guy Pearce) meets László Tóth (Adrien Brody), he remarks—almost accusingly—that their conversation is “intellectually stimulating.” Tóth, an accomplished architect forced to flee his home country after the horrors of WWII, reflects that his love for architecture boils down to the simplicity of its form: nothing but architecture, he asserts, can be better seen than described. A cube can only be understood when it is witnessed. Van Buren’s comment seems complimentary, yet an undercurrent of foreboding and judgment tinges what could be mistaken for flattery. Perhaps it’s that this self-made American millionaire finds himself taken aback by the poetic musings of a Hungarian Brutalist architect, his sympathies and biases toward post-war Europe swirling into a hazy stew of pity and otherness. To glimpse genius in the battered face of an immigrant startles Van Buren, who is, at his core, an opportunist with a taste for fine art but a habit of sponsoring little beyond his own vanity. Read More

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Noodling Bob Dylan Biopic ‘A COMPLETE UNKNOWN’ Riffs On the Myth of the Unknowable Artist

I’ve never seen Bob Dylan live. In theory, I would love to, but I’ve been convinced that the artist whose music was such a beacon of personal resistance and revolution for me in my college years isn’t what he once was. As if by design, he deprives his audiences of the freewheeling early breakouts that largely define his career, favoring newer material—predominantly smoky R&B tracks with even smokier vocals. And yet, Bob Dylan, as presented in James Mangold’s smartly constructed and slippery biopic A Complete Unknown, has always, almost instinctually, rebelled against our expectations of him, bristling at the idea that his value as an artist is tied to his willingness to embrace any outmoded form of who he is. The Bob Dylan of today and the Bob Dylan of yesterday may be in conversation with one another, but the living continuum is not a hostage of the past. He doesn’t seek to be known, but he wants to be understood, especially for who he is in the here and now. Read More

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Endearing Then Glitchy ‘Y2K’ Runs Out of Comedic Bandwidth

Coming off his little-seen but largely effective feature debut Brigsby Bear, SNL alum Kyle Mooney’s sophomore feature attempts to mash up Superbad and This is the End in an apocalyptic teen comedy that fails to fully connect. Jaeden Martell and Julian Dennison star as Eli and Danny, two unpopular best friends on a quest to kiss girls, and feel boobs, and stuff. After a few shots to steel their courage, the dorky but sweet pair head to the kickback at Soccer Chris’ spot, where Eli’s longtime crush Laura (Rachel Zegler) is recovering from her recent breakup. Part virginity-losing quest, part end-of-the-world action-comedy, Y2K presupposes a revisionist past where all the Y2K fear-mongering was not, in fact, misplaced. The moment the clock strikes midnight in the year 2000, the electronics throughout Chris’ house, tethered together into an apocalypse-minded singularity, band together to attack and subjugate humanity. As is often the case with high-concept comedies, it’s funny until it’s not. Read More

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‘NOSFERATU’: Eggers Delivers an Instant Horror Classic That Seduces, Haunts

Evil is the plague of desire, heartache etched across time and space, in Robert Egger’s immaculately constructed gothic horror, Nosferatu. A remake that leans on this classical haunt’s impressionistic terrors as much as it engages in a century-long conversation with the story itself, mining the treasured material for new macabre corners to exploit and desecrate, Nosferatu is an artisanal implosion of Egger’s unholy but exacting storytelling sensibilities. The craft is front and center in Egger’s frigidly cold, knottily twisted reimagining of this vampiric tragedy: Jarin Blaschke’s moonlit, candle-flickering cinematography lures you into the shadows; Craig Lathrop’s meticulously haunted set designs create a tension between the living and the dead, the opulent and the otherworldly; and composer Robin Carolan’s deliciously unnerving score binds the film’s horrors into a single unholy hymn, deepening the dread that Egger’s impeccable craft brings to life. What prevails is a singular vision of demented yearning and moral corruption where you don’t dare look away from the screen for an instant—for fear of being seduced by Nosferatu’s spell—or perhaps because you already have been. Read More