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SUNDANCE 2020: Amusing ‘DOWNHILL’ Remake Assumes American Stance, Lets Comic Giants Ride

A remake of the critically-acclaimed Swedish drama Force Majeure, Downhill is kind of exactly like most American remakes of critically-acclaimed foreign dramas: amusing but unnecessary. A blue-square redo of a double-black-diamond story. With the hard-packed dual casting of Will Ferrell (who’s better here than he’s been in years) and Julia Louis-Dreyfus (who also produced), the dramedy from The Way Way Back co-writers and directors Nat Faxon and Jim Rash borrows the premise and some of the critical breaking points from Ruben Östlund’s film but also finds room for new traumas and dark comedic moments to unfold. Read More

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Out in Theaters: ‘THE POST’ 

The Post, a Steven Spielberg-directed drama about the Washington Post’s critical role in discriminating the notorious Pentagon Papers, has Very Important Movie Streep written all over it. A newspaper procedural starring awards giants Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep, lit to resemble an Oscar winner by Janusz Kaminski and following a script from first-timer Liz Hannah and Josh Singer (The Fifth Estate, Spotlight) that touts the importance of its subject at every turn (sometimes in painfully obvious soliloquy), The Post is part important meditation on the unimpeachable import of the First Amendment, part desperate plea for Award’s attention and part Spielberg doing his Dramatic Spielberg thing.  Read More