Most Anticipated Films of the Sundance Film Festival 2026

December 10, 2025 by Matt Oakes Posted in Lists, Most Popular Tagged American Doctor, Carousel, Frank & Louis, Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass, Hanging by a Wire, I Want Your Sex, In The Blink of An Eye, Rock Springs, Run Amok, Saccharine, See You When I See You, Sundance, Sundance 2026, The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist, The Gallerist, The History of Concrete, The Incomer, The Invite, The Musical, The Shitheads, Union County, zi 2 Comments

Sundance Film Festival 2026 officially announced its lineup on December 10 and the reveal already feels weighted with more significance than usual. This will be the festival’s final year in Park City before it relocates to Boulder—a move that ends decades of proximity to the epic Wasatch slopes and closes the chapter on a place that helped define Sundance’s identity as much as the films themselves. It also arrives in the shadow of Robert Redford’s passing. As the festival’s founder and longtime steward, Redford shaped the trajectory of American independent cinema. His absence gives the 2026 Sundance festival a real end-of-an-era energy. Read More

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

February 3, 2025 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Carey Mulligan, James Griffiths, Sundance, Sundance 2025, The Ballad of Wallis Island, Tim Key, Tom Basden 3 Comments

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

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

February 2, 2025 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Geraldine Viswanathan, Logan Lerman, Molly Gordon, Oh Hi!, Sophie Brooks, Sundance, Sundance 2025 7 Comments

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

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

January 31, 2025 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Emilie Kristine Blichfeldt, Lea Myren, Sundance, Sundance 2025, The Ugly Stepsister 6 Comments

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

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

January 30, 2025 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews, Most Popular Tagged Archie Madekwe, Lurker, Sundance, Sundance 2025, Théodore Pellerin 6 Comments

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

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

January 28, 2025 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Ali Lopez-Sohali, Didn't Die, George Basil, Katie McCuen, Kiran Deol, Meera Menon, Rupak Ginn, Samrat Chakrabarti, Sundance, Sundance 2025, Vishal Vijayakumar 2 Comments

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

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

January 26, 2024 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged (Izaac Wang), Chang Li Hua, Didi, Joan Chen, Mahaela Park, Reviews, Sean Wang, Sundance, Sundance 2024 3 Comments

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

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

January 26, 2024 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Between the Temples, Carol Kane, Jason Schwartzman, Nathan Silver, Reviews, Sundance, Sundance 2024 4 Comments

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

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

January 22, 2024 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged A Different Man, Aaron Schimberg, Adam Pearson, Renate Reinstve, Reviews, Sebastian Stan, Sundance, Sundance 2024 4 Comments

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

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

January 21, 2024 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Anna Baryshnikov, Dave Franco, Katy O'Brian, Kristen Stewart, Love Lies Bleeding, Reviews, Sundance, Sundance 2024 5 Comments

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