Sundance ‘24: Buzzy and Mind-Bending ‘IT’S WHAT’S INSIDE’ Pulls Off a Terrific Magic Trick

January 20, 2024 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews, Most Popular Tagged Alycia Debnam-Carey, Brittany O'Grady, David Thompson, Gavin Leatherwood, Greg Jardin, Horror, It's What's Inside, James Morosini, Madison Davenport, Nina Bloomgarden, Reina Hardesty, Sundance, Sundance 2024 10 Comments

Eight former college friends reunite the evening before their friend’s wedding to play a heady game with far-reaching consequences. Such is the set-up for Greg Jardin’s utterly transfixing debut feature, a precisely-constructed explosion of creativity that smashes together the college reunion comedy, puzzle box thrillers, and a Shane Carruth-esque level of science-fiction precision. Skillfully paced to snatch your attention early on and never lose it for a moment, experiencing It’s What’s Inside is like watching a flawlessly executed magic trick for the very first time. Read More

Sundance ‘24: Tortured ‘I SAW THE TV GLOW’ Reaches Through the Screen

January 20, 2024 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews, Most Popular Tagged Brigette Lundy-Paine, I Saw the TV Glow, Jane Schoenbrun, Justice Smith, Sundance, Sundance 2024 5 Comments

Jane Schoenbrun’s audacious followup to their attention-grabbing debut We’re All Going to the World’s Fair is billed as a horror feature but it takes careful time developing said horror. And delivers a wallop. A quietly remarkable film, and one that spurred a handful of walkouts during its Sundance premiere, I Saw The TV Glow is not an easily accessible film. But with just a little thought, investment, and excavation, this handsomely-mounted ethereal slowburn will be sure to worm its way deep under your skin and suck you into the screen. Read More

Sundance ‘24: ‘FREAKY TALES’ A Disjointed Tapestry of Stories, Ideas, and Tones, with Nazis

January 19, 2024 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Angus Cloud, Anna Boden, Ben Mendelsohn, Freaky Tales, Jay Ellis, Pedro Pascal, Ryan Fleck, Sundance, Sundance 2024 2 Comments

Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden’s Freaky Tales, a madcap 1987 Oakland-set anthology, is a lot. Told in four loosely threaded together chapters, this interconnected story of the intersection of corruption, subculture, and violence in Reagan-era west coast America bites off more than it can chew, becoming more of an implosive collision than a meaningful exploration of much as it stretches on. As is often the case with anthological features, each individual story only feels half-baked, the germ of a story not afforded the room to grow and develop into something more. They’re connected in only the loosest of senses, making the sloppy whole certainly less than the sum of its sometimes interesting parts. Read More

Sundance ’24: ‘HOW TO HAVE SEX’ and the Obliteration of Carefree Youth

January 18, 2024 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews, Most Popular Tagged Enva Lewis, How to Have Sex, Lara Peake, Laura Ambler, Mia McKenna-Bruce, Molly Manning-Walker, Samuel Bottomley, Shaun Thomas, Sundance, Sundance 2024 2 Comments

When three British teenage friends, Tara (Mia McKenna-Bruce), Skye (Lara Peake) and Em (Enva Lewis), abscond for a weekend holiday of hard partying, thumping clubs, and fast sex, they find that their freewheeling existence is more fragile than imagined. Tara, or “Taz” when she’s in full party animal mode, is the rowdy, raunchy heart and soul of the party and the film. She has yet to lose her virginity, and her mates won’t let her forget this fact. The trio embarks on their holiday with a clear goal: to explore their sexualities, particularly Tara’s. This setup is familiar for a coming-of-age romp but How to Have Sex quickly becomes something much deeper and more penetrative. Read More

Sundance ’22: Finnish Horror ‘HATCHING’ Gives Birth to Fowl Play

January 24, 2022 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Hanna Bergholm, Hatching, Siiri Solalinna, Sophia Heikkilä, Sundance, Sundance 2022 Leave a comment

An ooey, gooey suburban creature feature about motherhood and maintaining the illusion of perfection, Hatching expertly blends the weirder side of horror with a deeper message. Motherhood – at any age – requires great sacrifice. It’s often nasty, inglorious business. Hatching is not elevated horror. Nor is it shlock. Instead, this Finnish import about a newly hatched bird-human hybrid pulls from E.T. and Troma films, utilizing great practical effects to pluck at ideas of puberty and motherhood. Read More

SUNDANCE ’22: Carla Juri Shines in Understated Romance ‘BLOOD’

January 24, 2022 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged blood, Bradley Rust Gray, Carla Juri, Reviews, Sundance, Sundance 2022, Takashi Ueno Leave a comment

Following the death of her husband, photographer Chloe (Carla Juri) moves to Japan to try to start anew in blood. She’s welcome by their jovial old friend and traveling musician Toshi (Takashi Ueno) as well as the beguiling mysteries that every new city holds. As Chloe wanders the city streets and inviting countryside with her camera, she makes new acquaintances, including a man whose wife is battling cancer, a kind-hearted kindred spirit florist, and a dance choreographer. But none quite see her as fully as Toshi does. As a yearning and perhaps forbidden attraction takes root, the widowed Chloe must contend with allowing herself to feel romantically for someone again. Read More

SUNDANCE ’22: Love and Lust Challenges High School Girls in Thoughtful ‘GIRL PICTURE’

January 24, 2022 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Aamu Milonoff, Alli Haapasalo, Eleonoora Kauhanen, Girl Picture, Linnea Leino, Sundance, Sundance 2022 Leave a comment

Mimmi (Aamu Milonoff) and Rönkkö (Eleonoora Kauhanen) are Finnish High School students and ride-or-die best friends. In Alli Haapasalo’s Girl Picture, the inseparable duo attend school before working together at the mall where they hawk smoothies with names like “It Takes Two to Mango” or “Just Breathe”. On the clock, they dish about romantic trysts and the upcoming Friday’s party, sometimes to the chagrin of their customers. When Emma (Linnea Leino), their classmate and an obsessive figure skater who dreams of becoming the future European Champion, falls into Mimmi’s orbit, the pair flirt with first love. Meanwhile Rönkkö struggles through a series of unsatisfying romantic entanglements with a revolving door of expectant young men. Read More

Sundance ’22: Existential Sci-Fi ‘AFTER YANG’ Grapples With the Great A.I. Beyond

January 24, 2022 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged A24, After Yang, Alexander Weinstein, Colin Farrell, Jodie Turner-Smith., Justin H. Min, Kogonada, Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja, Sundance, Sundance 2022 Leave a comment

On being, Descartes famously opined, “I think therefore I am.” Well, actually, he said, “Cogito, ergo sum,” but no one speaks Latin these days so you get the gist. After Yang, an existential science fiction movie from video essayist turned director Kogonada (Columbus), takes a step beyond the 17-century French philosopher to ponder what constitutes being in a world where humans and artificially-intelligent robots known as “technosapien” co-exist. Read More

SUNDANCE ’22: The Hefty Cost of Righteousness in ‘GOD’S COUNTRY’

January 23, 2022 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged God's Country, Jefferson White, Joris Jarsky, Julian Higgins, Kai Lennox, Reviews, Sundance, Sundance 2022, Thandiwe Newton Leave a comment

When a red truck is left parked on her property, a public speaking professor inadvertently begins an escalating feud with two townie hunters. Based on the short story “Winter Light” by James Lee Burke, God’s Country is a frosty thriller about bad blood in the Alaskan backcountry where an attempt to be reasonable breaks down into white hot confrontation. Led by a commanding turn from Thandiwe Newton, the debut film from Julian Higgins spotlights the spurned Sandra approaching a breaking point, as her better judgment is overtaken by frustration with a community that doesn’t see her as an equal or want to take her seriously. Read More

Sundance ’22: ’Til Distance Do Us Part With ‘ALICE’

January 23, 2022 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Alice, Common, Jonny Lee Miller, Keke Palmer, Krystin Ver Linden, Sundance, Sundance 2022 Leave a comment

’Til distance do us part. Not death. These are the vows of the slave – or “domestic” – in Krystin Ver Linden’s Alice. But death may always interfere. And distance – through space and through time – proves to be but an illusion. Alice (Keke Palmer) is a slave. She wants for liberation, daring for escape from the Spanish moss-covered Georgian plantation where she was raised. Freedom, it turns out, is just beyond her front door. All she needs is distance. Read More