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

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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?

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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

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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

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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

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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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Sundance ‘24: ‘DÌDI’ Comes Of Age in Observant, Rude Dramedy 

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In his cringe-tastic treatise on middle school awkwardness Eighth Grade, Bo Burnham captured the universal horror of growing up through the specificity of Elsie Fisher’s Kayla. Her oily identity crisis effortlessly evoked our own transitory 13-year-old state, subjecting us to the lost-but-not-forgotten dread of first crushes, online interactions, and seething parental conflict. With Dìdi, Oscar-nominated director Sean Wang does much the same, with more of a skater-punk male juvenile delinquent edge. While the similarities are easy to identify, Dìdi stands on its own as a singular vision of coming-of-age that taps into the universality of being a total dickhead rage monster, because hormones. Read More

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Sundance ‘24: Love and Faith Collide ‘BETWEEN THE TEMPLES’ In Quirky Jewish Rom-Com

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After the sudden passing of his author wife, a Jewish cantor (Jason Schwartzman) finds himself deep in the throes of a crisis of faith that has his questioning everything from his career to his own worth. When he crosses paths with his childhood music teacher (Carol Kane), herself at a turning point in life, his misery and her meshuggah send the pair into orbit around one another. Together they decide she’ll have her long-awaited Bat Mitzvah, despite the fact that she’s in her 70s. Between Two Temples, written and directed by Nathan Silver, explores this unexpected relationship at the intersection of faith, expectation, and love, using humor and heart to examine how what makes sense on paper is rarely what the heart yearns for. Read More

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Sundance ‘24: ‘A DIFFERENT MAN’ A Darkly Comic Psychological Thriller About Abandoned Identity 

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An aspiring actor with an extreme facial deformity undergoes an experimental procedure and ends up missing out on the role of a lifetime. Things only get worse when the life he always dreamed up ends up in the hands of a rival actor, himself facially deformed. Writer-director Aaron Schimberg combines body horror with a Shakespearean-level of ironic romantic tragedy to tell a nightmarish story about one man’s journey to reshape – and ultimately undo – himself.  Read More

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Sundance ‘24: ‘LOVE LIES BLEEDING’ Is a Blood-Stained Queer Love Affair on Steroids

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Rose Glass’ Love Lies Bleeding melds a greasy crime drama with a gritty love story, presenting an American saga steeped in steroid-fueled rage, white trash aesthetics, and memorably bad haircuts. Glass leans into B-movie intrigue with an elite level of execution, creating a visually provocative and impressively-performed world of high crimes and low sleaze and populating it with scumbags and weirdos. A followup to her excellent religious-horror debut Saint Maud, Love Lies Bleeding furthers Glass’ exploration of those on the fringes of society. In this case, it’s late-80s Nevada, a dried-up rural wasteland where the local gun club is the center of all cultural and sociopolitical activity, as well as the epicenter of its deeply-integrated criminal enterprise. Read More

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Sundance ‘24: ‘A REAL PAIN’ Interrogates The Overlap Between Individual and Family Trauma

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Kieran Culkin shines in Jesse Eisenberg’s tender sophomore feature A Real Pain. A poignant meditation on loss, grief, and family history that’s part autobiographical and entirely heartfelt, Eisenberg has seemingly found his groove as a creator interested in melding melancholic human stories with relationship-driven good humor. “Anything that I’ve written that’s good is very personal,” Eisenberg shared at the premiere and with A Real Pain, he’s excavated situations and characters from his own life and translated them into a good-natured and provocative little drama with wide-reaching appeal.  Read More