Sundance 2021: Porn Industry Is More Business, Less ‘PLEASURE’ In Phenomenal Star Is Born Cum-Up

February 1, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews, Most Popular Tagged Casey Calvert, Chris Cock, Dana DeArmond, Evelyn Claire, Kendra Spade, Mark Spiegler, Ninja Thyberg, Peter Modestij, Pleasure, Reviews, Sofia Kappel, Sundance, Sundance 2021 2 Comments

The porn industry is first and foremost just that: an industry. Pleasure, the stunning expansion of Swedish writer-director Ninja Thyberg’s 2013 short of the same name, takes an unfiltered and decidedly hardcore look at how the porn industry operates through the lens of newcomer “Bella Cherry” (an incredible Sofia Kappel). A Swedish transplant that just arrived in LA with her mind set on being the next big thing in porn, Bella declares at passport control that she’s in the States for pleasure but soon discovers that she’s there for business. And business can be a sticky situation. Read More

Sundance 2021: Clifton Collins Jr.’s Work As a ‘JOCKEY’ is Backbreaking but Soul-Affirming

January 31, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Clifton Collins Jr., Clint Bentley, Greg Kwedar, Jockey, Moises Arias, Molly Parker, Sundance, Sundance 2021 1 Comment

Every rider has a laundry list of injuries: cracked ribs, broken collar bones, shattered hips, busted noses. Riding on a professional circuit comes with no shortage of physical, social, and spiritual wear and tear and Jackson (Clifton Collins Jr.) is already well into his sunset years in Clint Bentley’s spirited but gentle horse drama Jockey. Read More

Sundance 2021: Robin Wright Proves Herself in Wyoming-Set ‘LAND’

January 31, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Demian Bichir, Erin Dignam, Jesse Chatham, Land, Robin Wright, Sundance, Sundance 2021 1 Comment

Everybody hurts sometimes. But for Edee (Robin Wright), hurt has pervaded every nook and cranny of existence in Wright’s somber, self-reflective directorial debut Land. We know of Edee’s loss only through fragments: the glimpses of a husband and son inauspiciously missing. The thinly-veiled threats of self-harm made to her sister (Kim Dickens.) Edee is an irrevocably altered force for reasons that are all too clear. Read More

Sundance 2021: Twisty Holocaust Survivor Doc MISHA AND THE WOLVES’ Is Not What It Appears To Be

January 31, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Documentary, Jane Daniel, Misha and the Wolves, Misha Defonseca, Sam Hobkinson, Sundance, Sundance 2021 Leave a comment

At the center of Sam Hobkinson’s stirring documentary Misha and the Wolves is a beautiful story of youthful resilience: a 7-year old girl in Nazi-occupied Belgium trying to find her parents is taken in by a wolf pack. Through German forests, she evades and searches for her captive mother and father, the pack helping the young girl to survive both the elements and the Nazis that lay in her path. Read More

Sundance 2021: You Simply Cannot Unplug From Chilling Documentary ‘A GLITCH IN THE MATRIX’

January 30, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged A Glitch in the Matrix, Documentaries, Rodney Ascher, Sundance, Sundance 2021 Leave a comment

No one can wring more documentarian juice from a conspiracy theory than Rodney Ascher. With A Glitch in the Matrix, the director of Room 237 – a deconstruction of the multitude of fan theories centered around Stanley Kubrick and his making of The Shining (including the oft-trend myth that the film included a subtle confession that Kubrick helped fake the moon landing) – and The Nightmare – an eerie, if wonky, study of the terrors of sleep paralysis – has settled soundly into his niche, creating his most complete and haunting film to date as he begs the question, “Are we living in a simulation?” Read More

Sundance 2021: Stalker Thriller ‘SUPERIOR’ An Identity-Driven Throwback to the 80s

January 30, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Alexandra Mesa, Ani Mesa, Erin Vassilopoulos, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Sundance, Sundance 2021, Superior 1 Comment

The year is 1987. Halloween is on the horizon. You can tell because there’s a calendar hanging in the kitchen marking down the days. More importantly, the footage of Erin Vassilopoulos’ Superior is intentionally dated-looking, reflecting the lo-fi technology and grainy look of the end of the Regan era. After escaping a dangerous ex, Mary retreats to her unsuspecting identical twin sister’s suburban home, the perfect (and only) hideout she can think of in her unsuspecting Middle America hometown. Read More

Sundance 2021: A Hijacker Can’t Hack It In Polish ‘PRIME TIME’

January 30, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Bartosz Bielenia, International Movies, Jakub Piątek, Łukasz Czapski, Prime Time, Sundance, Sundance 2021 Leave a comment

The largely uneventful wanna-be Polish thriller Prime Time portends to be an inditement of the modern addiction to online attention, achieved so easily through social media platforms and their endless call to share, but as a narrative feature, it largely fails to stir up much storytelling juice to serve that purpose. Read More

Sundance 2021: ISIS Sex Slave Doc ‘SABAYA’ Uncovers Hell on Earth

January 30, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Hogir Hinori, ISIS, Sabaya, Sundance, Sundance 2021 1 Comment

Hogir Hinori’s haunting POV documentary Sabaya takes us to hell itself: Syria’s ISIS-run Al-Hol encampment. There, captured Yazidi (Kurdish religious minorities) women are kept as sex slaves. Beaten, raped, sold into marriage. Forced to convert to Islam. Sold again. Raped. Beaten. Sold. They are known as Sabaya. In the Yazidi Home Center in northeastern Syria, Mahmud, Ziyad, and an extremely brave and bold network of former Sabaya women plot, plan, and execute the rescue of these women. Read More

Sundance 2021: ‘IN THE EARTH’ Combines Axe Slashers and Lovecraftian Horror With Hallucinogenic Style

January 29, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews, Most Popular Tagged Clint Mansell, Ellora Torchia, Hayley Squires, Horror, In the Earth, Joel Fry, Reece Shearsmith, Sundance, Sundance 2021 2 Comments

Creating horror has been and will always be a sociopolitical act and with In The Earth, British auteur Ben Wheatley reflects the reality of the pandemic back at us in startling, disorienting fashion. The result has notes of all kinds of horror, but most distinctly a tent-in-the-woods slasher crossed with Lovecraftian cosmic horror, all set to the backdrop of some airborne viral infection that’s driven the population into quarantine and starved them for a cure. Read More

Sundance 2021: Two Emotionally Wounded BFFs Are Going to Kill Themselves ‘ON THE COUNT OF THREE’

January 29, 2021 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews, Most Popular Tagged Christopher Abbott, Henry Winkler, J.B. Smoove, Jerrod Carmichael, On the Count of Three, Sundance, Sundance 2021, Tiffany Haddish 2 Comments

Jerrod Carmichael and Christopher Abbott do a high wire balancing act in tragicomic suicide bromance On the Count of Three, a movie that’s sure to leave viewers shaken and maybe just a bit disturbed, but nonetheless absolute certain of what Carmichael came to say. Read More