CINXE.COM

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss version="2.0" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/" xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/" > <channel> <title>Showbuzz Daily</title> <atom:link href="https://showbuzzdaily.com/feed" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" /> <link>https://showbuzzdaily.com</link> <description></description> <lastBuildDate>Tue, 11 Feb 2025 19:35:36 +0000</lastBuildDate> <language>en-US</language> <sy:updatePeriod> hourly </sy:updatePeriod> <sy:updateFrequency> 1 </sy:updateFrequency> <generator>https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.2</generator> <item> <title>Sundance Film Festival Reviews 2025: “Hal & Harper”</title> <link>https://showbuzzdaily.com/reviews/movies/film-festival-movies/sundance/sundance-film-festival-reviews-2025-hal-harper.html</link> <comments>https://showbuzzdaily.com/reviews/movies/film-festival-movies/sundance/sundance-film-festival-reviews-2025-hal-harper.html#respond</comments> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Mitch Salem]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Tue, 11 Feb 2025 19:35:36 +0000</pubDate> <category><![CDATA[Film Festival]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Movie Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sundance]]></category> <category><![CDATA[adults playing children]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Betty Gilpin]]></category> <category><![CDATA[completed TV series]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Cooper Raiff]]></category> <category><![CDATA[family]]></category> <category><![CDATA[growing up]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Hal & Harper review]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Lili Reinhart]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Mark Ruffalo]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Showbuzzdaily Sundance Film Festival reviews 2025]]></category> <category><![CDATA[siblings]]></category> <category><![CDATA[spotlight]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sundance Film Festival 2025]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sundance film festivals 2025]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://showbuzzdaily.com/?p=181880</guid> <description><![CDATA[  HAL & HARPER (no network):聽 Cooper Raiff launched his career as an actor-writer-director with Shithouse, which won the Narrative Grand Jury Award at SXSW.聽 He parlayed that into聽Cha Cha Real Smooth, which was less well-regarded but nevertheless bought by Apple for $15M out of Sundance.聽 Like many indie filmmakers, he’s now shifted into television, […]]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[  HAL & HARPER (no network):聽 Cooper Raiff launched his career as an actor-writer-director with Shithouse, which won the Narrative Grand Jury Award at SXSW.聽 He parlayed that into聽Cha Cha Real Smooth, which was less well-regarded but nevertheless bought by Apple for $15M out of Sundance.聽 Like many indie filmmakers, he’s now shifted into television, but not in an ordinary way.聽 The producers of聽Hal & Harper, including Lionsgate, have fully financed the 8 episodes of the series (running well over 4 hours), without any network attached.聽 The advantage in theory is that Raiff and his partners now have a completed piece of work ready for air immediately, and which won’t have to deal with the specter of network notes.聽 The risk, of course, is that this could turn out to be a considerable investment of time and money with no return.聽 Raiff’s concept here is his most ambitious thus far.聽 In the present day, siblings Harper (Lili Reinhart) and her younger brother by 2 years Hal (Raiff) cope with the issues of people in their late 20s:聽 romance, careers, and in their case, the fact that their father (Mark Ruffalo) is marrying his pregnant girlfriend Kate (Betty Gilpin), and since he’s moving in with her, selling their childhood house.聽 Hal and Harper are never far from their childhoods, however, which were marked by a tragedy that broke their father for many years and forced them to a great extent to raise themselves, and much of the show is in flashback.聽 More than that, though, most of the flashbacks take place when Harper in 9 and Hal is 7, and during that year (but no other), Reinhart and Raiff play those parts.聽 Adding another level of complexity, Raiff plays Hal as a 7-year old, while Reinhart’s Harper has the personality of a 28-year old.聽 It makes conceptual sense–Harper became an adult that year, while her brother stayed a child–but it’s somewhat weird and confusing to watch.聽 The causes and consequences of codependency are at the heart of the series, a theme that gets repeated more than developed.聽 Despite the excellent acting by Reinhart, Ruffalo and Gilpin (as in his other films, Raiff remains somewhat unformed as an actor), the episodes of Hal & Harper feel overlong even at 30 minutes or so, and largely lack dramatic tension.聽 None of Raiff’s work has relied much on structure, and drift is much harder to take spread over multiple hours. ]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>https://showbuzzdaily.com/reviews/movies/film-festival-movies/sundance/sundance-film-festival-reviews-2025-hal-harper.html/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>0</slash:comments> </item> <item> <title>Sundance Film Festival Reviews 2025: “Omaha” & “Ricky”</title> <link>https://showbuzzdaily.com/reviews/movies/film-festival-movies/sundance/sundance-film-festival-reviews-2025-omaha-ricky.html</link> <comments>https://showbuzzdaily.com/reviews/movies/film-festival-movies/sundance/sundance-film-festival-reviews-2025-omaha-ricky.html#respond</comments> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Mitch Salem]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Tue, 11 Feb 2025 00:28:42 +0000</pubDate> <category><![CDATA[Film Festival]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sundance]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Cole Webley]]></category> <category><![CDATA[criminal justice system]]></category> <category><![CDATA[desperate father]]></category> <category><![CDATA[ex-convict]]></category> <category><![CDATA[John Magaro]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Lin Que Ayoung]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Molly Belle Wright]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Omaha review]]></category> <category><![CDATA[parole]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Rashad Frett]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Ricky review]]></category> <category><![CDATA[road trip]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Robert Machoian]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sheryl Lee Ralph]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Showbuzzdaily Sundance Film Festival reviews 2025]]></category> <category><![CDATA[spotlight]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Stephan James]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sundance Film Festival 2025]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sundance film reviews 2025]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Titus Welliver]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Wyatt Solis]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://showbuzzdaily.com/?p=181867</guid> <description><![CDATA[  OMAHA (no distrib):聽 A tiny tragedy that doesn’t reveal the true depths of its sadness until the very end.聽 One morning, a widowed father (John Magaro) hurries his children, 9-year old Ella (Molly Belle Wright) and 6-year old Charlie (Wyatt Solis), out of their house as it’s being foreclosed, and tells them to pack […]]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[  OMAHA (no distrib):聽 A tiny tragedy that doesn’t reveal the true depths of its sadness until the very end.聽 One morning, a widowed father (John Magaro) hurries his children, 9-year old Ella (Molly Belle Wright) and 6-year old Charlie (Wyatt Solis), out of their house as it’s being foreclosed, and tells them to pack up for a festive family vacation in Omaha.聽 Ella perceives that there’s something desperate in her father’s determination that they have a good time (even as he keeps a worried eye on their remaining funds), but she’s not capable of understanding the specifics.聽 Charlie rarely thinks ahead, but he’s very much in his father’s and sister’s minds.聽 Omaha, directed by Cole Webley from a script by Robert Machoian (himself director of the Sundance film聽The Killing of Two Lovers), is a beautifully controlled piece of observation, as Ella enjoys the treats and excursions (to a multiplex and the zoo, among other places) their father is giving them while also absorbing that their lives are being pulled apart.聽 She’s hopeful and also fearful, aware that this story probably won’t have a happy ending.聽 It doesn’t, and the reveal of why their destination was Omaha is heartbreaking, but Omaha is also about spontaneity and love.聽 Webley wisely keeps the running time to a slim 83 minutes, so even when the family is just driving, there’s constant motion and incident.聽 There aren’t a lot of dimensions to Omaha–like Ella, we don’t know exactly what we’re watching until it’s done–but it captures the dynamics of fatherhood and childhood, stretched to their extremes, in a memorable manner. RICKY (no distrib):聽 Director Rashad Frett (and co-writer Lin Que Ayoung) bring sincerity and compassion to Ricky, but one has to ask:聽 has there ever been a story about an inner city ex-con returning to his neighborhood where things didn’t go badly?聽聽Ricky (Stephan James) is particularly primed for suffering, as we learn that his 15 years in prison (which began when he was himself 15) were so long because he wouldn’t give up his cousin Terrence (Sean Nelson), who was part of the crime.聽 Terrence says he wants to help Ricky now with a new job, but he’s only willing to help if there’s no risk to himself.聽 Ricky has some people on his side, like his parole officer (Sheryl Lee Ralph, showcasing her range beyond Abbott Elementary) who has a complicated relationship with Ricky’s mom and their community, and a kindly neighbor with a car to sell (Titus Welliver), and he’s also met a single mom (Imani Lewis) who seems genuinely nice.聽 However, Ricky’s younger brother (Maliq Jackson) is less then sympathetic, and a sexual encounter with a fellow ex-con from his support group (Andrene Ward-Hammond) moves swiftly from ill-judged to catastrophic.聽 Ricky聽has an earnest message to deliver about recidivism and personal integrity, and in James the filmmakers have an empathic actor capable of making the worst decisions comprehensible and his character deserving of some luck.聽 In its storytelling, though, Ricky聽feels old-fashioned and even predictable.聽 It rarely departs from the one-lane downward track of its sad road. ]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>https://showbuzzdaily.com/reviews/movies/film-festival-movies/sundance/sundance-film-festival-reviews-2025-omaha-ricky.html/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>0</slash:comments> </item> <item> <title>Sundance Film Festival Reviews 2025: “Love, Brooklyn” & “Sunfish & Other Stories On Green Lake”</title> <link>https://showbuzzdaily.com/reviews/movies/film-festival-movies/sundance/sundance-film-festival-reviews-2025-love-brooklyn-sunfish-other-stories-on-green-lake.html</link> <comments>https://showbuzzdaily.com/reviews/movies/film-festival-movies/sundance/sundance-film-festival-reviews-2025-love-brooklyn-sunfish-other-stories-on-green-lake.html#respond</comments> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Mitch Salem]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Sun, 09 Feb 2025 20:52:30 +0000</pubDate> <category><![CDATA[Film Festival]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Movie Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sundance]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Andrew Holland]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Brooklyn bourgeoisie]]></category> <category><![CDATA[DeWanda Wise]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Domonic Bogart]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Emily Hall]]></category> <category><![CDATA[gentrification]]></category> <category><![CDATA[growing up]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Jim Kaplan]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Karsen Liottta]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Love Brooklyn review]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Maren Heary]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Nicole Beharie]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Paul Zimmerman]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Rachael Abigail Holder]]></category> <category><![CDATA[romantic triangle]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Roy Wood Jr]]></category> <category><![CDATA[short stories]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Showbuzzdaily Sundance 2025 film reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sierra Falconer]]></category> <category><![CDATA[spotlight]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sundance 2025 film reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sundance Film Festival 2025]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sunfish review]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sunrish & Other Stories Around Green Lake review]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Tenley Kellogg]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://showbuzzdaily.com/?p=181858</guid> <description><![CDATA[  LOVE, BROOKLYN (no distrib):聽聽Roger (Andre Holland) is a successful magazine writer who’s hung up on his latest piece, because it requires him to come to grips about how he feels regarding the Brooklyn bourgeoisie of which he’s a part, and the gentrification that’s taking increasing hold of the borough.聽 Is disruptive change something to […]]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[  LOVE, BROOKLYN (no distrib):聽聽Roger (Andre Holland) is a successful magazine writer who’s hung up on his latest piece, because it requires him to come to grips about how he feels regarding the Brooklyn bourgeoisie of which he’s a part, and the gentrification that’s taking increasing hold of the borough.聽 Is disruptive change something to be regretted or embraced?聽 Roger’s writers block is mirrored by his personal life.聽 Casey (Nicole Beharie) is his ex and now best friend, but the two of them behave like soulmates, and one has the feeling that they could resume their old relationship at any moment.聽 Casey is also a local gallery owner whose place is actively being pursued by the corporate interests buying up the rest of her block.聽 Meanwhile, though, Roger is trying to build something with Nicole (DeWanda Wise), a masseuse who’s launching her business.聽 She and Roger had something casual, but Nicole is a single mom whose daughter Ally (Cadence Rose) has increasing curiosity about her mother’s new friend, and once she’s involved, there is no casual.聽 Roger is constantly in motion, biking around Brooklyn to dinners, dates, gallery and museum openings, hanging out with his buddy Alan (Roy Wood, Jr.) and worrying about his story, yet he’s also frozen in place.聽 Director Rachael Abigail Holder and screenwriter Paul Zimmerman–both first-timers– have created a diverting romantic triangle loaded with local color (the vibrant photography is by Martim Vian) and character incident.聽 The cast is marvelous, and the pace is easygoing but purposeful at 97 minutes.聽 What Love, Brooklyn聽lacks is a sense of meaningful stakes.聽 No one apart from Roger cares what opinion he expresses in his story, and the women in his life are both pretty wonderful.聽 Roger can’t really go wrong, which makes his decisions mildly interesting but no more than that.聽 Love, Brooklyn聽favors warm light over meaningful heat. SUNFISH & OTHER STORIES ON GREEN LAKE (no distrib):聽 Sierra Falconer’s debut is a mildly appealing quartet of short stories, covered briskly in under 90 minutes.聽 They’re all set around a Michigan lakeside community, and all are concerned with aspects of growing up. The title story gives us Lu (Maren Heary), a 14-year old more or less dumped with her rural grandparents when her mother decides to follow her surprise wedding with a surprise honeymoon.聽 Lu is mildly disgruntled, but before long she’s discovered grandpa’s sailboat, and is happily navigating the lake, blessed with a new sense of independence.聽 Meanwhile, Jun (Jim Kaplan), an attendee at a highly prestigious聽 band camp on the lake, struggles with the pressures of his stage mother while he tries to have some kind of social life amid the striving for first chair.聽 Elsewhere, in the “biggest” of the tales, a bartender (Karsen Liotta) joins one of her patrons (Dominic Bogart) to steal a harpoon and go after the big fish he swears he’d sighted.聽 In the final story, sisters (Tenley Kellogg and Emily Hall) cope with the final days before the older leaves for culinary school.聽 Falconer establishes a pleasing atmosphere and a set of likable characters, if little else.聽 Sunfish, which began as the filmmaker’s master’s thesis at UCLA, proves her polish and abilities with actors, but her postgraduate work will need more commitment to narrative. ]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>https://showbuzzdaily.com/reviews/movies/film-festival-movies/sundance/sundance-film-festival-reviews-2025-love-brooklyn-sunfish-other-stories-on-green-lake.html/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>0</slash:comments> </item> <item> <title>Sundance Film Festival Reviews 2025: “Plainclothes” & “Bunnylovr”</title> <link>https://showbuzzdaily.com/reviews/movies/film-festival-movies/sundance/sundance-film-festival-reviews-2025-plainclothes-bunnylovr.html</link> <comments>https://showbuzzdaily.com/reviews/movies/film-festival-movies/sundance/sundance-film-festival-reviews-2025-plainclothes-bunnylovr.html#respond</comments> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Mitch Salem]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Sun, 09 Feb 2025 01:36:47 +0000</pubDate> <category><![CDATA[Film Festival]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Movie Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sundance]]></category> <category><![CDATA[1990s]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Bunnylovr review]]></category> <category><![CDATA[cam girl]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Carmen Emmi]]></category> <category><![CDATA[chronology]]></category> <category><![CDATA[client relationship]]></category> <category><![CDATA[coming out]]></category> <category><![CDATA[film stocks]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Katarina Zhu]]></category> <category><![CDATA[long-lost father]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Maria Dizzia]]></category> <category><![CDATA[paranoia]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Plainclothes review]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Rachel Sennott]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Russell Tovey]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Showbuzzdaily Sundance Film Festival reviews 2025]]></category> <category><![CDATA[spotlight]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sundance Film Festival 2025]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sundance film reviews 2025]]></category> <category><![CDATA[The Conversation]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Tom Blyth]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://showbuzzdaily.com/?p=181846</guid> <description><![CDATA[  PLAINCLOTHES (no distrib):聽 A coming-out story laced with paranoia.聽 It’s 1997 in upstate New York, and the cops are running undercover operations in public restrooms to lead gay men into indecent exposure charges.聽 For Lucas (Tom Blyth), this is a particularly difficult assignment, because his own desires are deeply in the closet, not just […]]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[  PLAINCLOTHES (no distrib):聽 A coming-out story laced with paranoia.聽 It’s 1997 in upstate New York, and the cops are running undercover operations in public restrooms to lead gay men into indecent exposure charges.聽 For Lucas (Tom Blyth), this is a particularly difficult assignment, because his own desires are deeply in the closet, not just from the rest of the squad but from his traditionalist family.聽 One day, though, the designated target is Andrew (Russell Tovey), and Lucas can’t do his job, instead arranging for the first assignation of his life.聽 The decision to act on his sexuality frees and terrifies him, and filmmaker Carmen Emmi conveys the latter with a barrage of techniques (not to mention excerpts from The Conversation, the reigning classic of paranoia).聽 Emmi fiddles with the aspect ratio, intercuts 1990’s-quality VHS footage with film, and jumbles the chronology without clear signposts as to where we are in time.聽 All of this certainly gives us insight to the churning emotions Lucas is feeling, and helps us understand some of his increasingly desperate moves–but sometimes at the cost of clarity.聽 Blyth makes Lucas’s tangle of dreams and fears gripping, and Tovey provides a strong, steadying presence as an older gay man who understands what Lucas is going through but has his own issues.聽 Maria Dizzia also has some moving moments as Lucas’s mother, although some of the other relatives are a bit ethnically over the top.聽 Plainclothes is delivering a narrative we’ve seen before in one way or another, and it’s rough around the edges.聽 It does, however, tell its story with force. BUNNYLOVR (no distrib):聽 Rebecca (writer/director Katarina Zhu) is a cam girl, who flirts with a gallery of men online for tokens while in a state of semi-undress.聽 That alone won’t pay the bills, so she also has a day job working for a businessman, and she poses for her artist friend Bella (Rachel Sennott in a different, funnier and perhaps more entertaining movie).聽 Her life becomes more intense with the arrival of two men:聽 the return of her long-lost gambler father William (Perry Yung), a fun but unreliable figure, and John (Austin Amelio), an aggressive internet client who pays extra for private sessions that are both seductive and disturbing.聽 Rebecca is drawn to John–and she needs the money–but she’s aware that the blankness of the web means that may not be at all what he tells her he is.聽 When he gifts her with a perfect white bunny, it becomes a vehicle for exploring what he wants and what she’s willing to do.聽 Bunnylovr聽is only occasionally sexual (Rebecca also has an on-and-off ex, Carter played by Jack Kilmer) and in 2025 style even when it is, it’s almost never explicit, yet at times it can dig into the relationship between attraction and repulsion, desire and rage.聽 Mostly, though, it’s a drifting story about drifting, with a low-fi Brooklyn aesthetic that’s familiar from other indie debuts.聽 It must have taken years of effort to get聽Bunnylovr made, and still the result feels inessential. ]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>https://showbuzzdaily.com/reviews/movies/film-festival-movies/sundance/sundance-film-festival-reviews-2025-plainclothes-bunnylovr.html/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>0</slash:comments> </item> <item> <title>Sundance Film Festival Reviews 2025: “Atropia” & “Bubble & Squeak”</title> <link>https://showbuzzdaily.com/reviews/movies/film-festival-movies/sundance/sundance-film-festival-reviews-2025-atropia-bubble-squeak.html</link> <comments>https://showbuzzdaily.com/reviews/movies/film-festival-movies/sundance/sundance-film-festival-reviews-2025-atropia-bubble-squeak.html#respond</comments> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Mitch Salem]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Mon, 03 Feb 2025 03:36:54 +0000</pubDate> <category><![CDATA[Film Festival]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Movie Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sundance]]></category> <category><![CDATA[actors]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Alia Shawkat]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Atropia review]]></category> <category><![CDATA[award winner]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Bubble & Squeak review]]></category> <category><![CDATA[cabbage]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Callum Turner]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Dave Fanco]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Evan Twohy]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Hailey Gates]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Himesh Patel]]></category> <category><![CDATA[marriage]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Matt Berry]]></category> <category><![CDATA[middle east]]></category> <category><![CDATA[military training site]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sarah Goldberg]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Showbuzzdaily Sundance 2025 reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[spotlight]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Steven Yuen]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sundance Film Festival 2025]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sundance film reviews 2025]]></category> <category><![CDATA[world-building]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://showbuzzdaily.com/?p=181833</guid> <description><![CDATA[  ATROPIA (no distrib):聽 A setting in search of a movie.聽 The US military operates training camps in remote locations around the country that are designed to give soldiers the most accurate possible preparation for time in a location where they may have to serve, including actors portraying innocent citizens or dangerous insurgents, dummy munitions […]]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[  ATROPIA (no distrib):聽 A setting in search of a movie.聽 The US military operates training camps in remote locations around the country that are designed to give soldiers the most accurate possible preparation for time in a location where they may have to serve, including actors portraying innocent citizens or dangerous insurgents, dummy munitions and bombs, and even smells that can run the gamut from tasty local food to burning flesh.聽 Hailey Gates’s Atropia (which won the Audience award for US Competition films) takes place at one of those camps, simulating Iraq (it’s 2006) in the desert between LA and Las Vegas.聽 The film is much at its best when it simply observes the silliness of the place:聽 because of the proximity to Hollywood, the actors are constantly auditioning and waiting to hear from their agents about real jobs when they’re not grousing about their props and the size of their roles, while the officers who run the place import sushi from Vegas to make sure they’re spending their full budget.聽 There’s a great little cameo from an actual movie star who shows up to rehearse for his own war movie and gets sucked into the experience.聽 Unfortunately, a plot has to kick in, and Atropia falls fairly limp as it recounts the troubled romance of actress Fayruz (Alia Shawkat) and the US soldier on leave from the front who’s playing insurgent Abu Dice (Callum Turner).聽 Both of them have secrets that aren’t terribly interesting, and the more Gates commits to their relationship as the key story of the film, the more she seems to lose grasp of what was making Atropia work.聽 The fringes of the script are far more insightful and involving than the center. BUBBLE & SQUEAK (no distrib):聽 Absurdism… for what purpose, exactly?聽 Evan Twohy does an impressive job of world-building, creating an Eastern European country where the inhabitants were so scarred by their wartime years when there was nothing to eat but cabbage that it’s been banned, and not only are their laws against it, but holidays and festivals celebrating their collective cabbage-loathing.聽 While the older generation despises the stuff, though, there are young people for whom it’s forbidden fruit, leading to a dangerous cabbage-smuggling black market.聽 When American newlyweds Declan (Himesh Patel) and Delores (Sarah Goldberg) arrive for their honeymoon, it’s obvious to just about everyone except Declan that his wife’s trousers are filled with what turn out to be 29 cabbages.聽 (She says she suffers from tumors.)聽 They’re arrested by Customs and are soon on the run in local forests, chased by a posse led by Shazbor (Matt Berry, speaking with a unique accent).聽 Among their adventures are encounters with a cabbage-smuggler in a bear suit (Dave Franco) and a stay in a church made entirely of hay.聽 Some of this is amusing, but the movie’s edifice is built almost entirely of free-standing variations on a single gag.聽 Delores doesn’t seem to have any reason to have loaded herself up with cabbages other than a sense of adventure (she has no particular plan to sell them), and Declan is just clueless throughout.聽 Very late in the game, Bubble & Squeak positions itself as a metaphor about marriage and ill-matched couples, but by that point it feels like an afterthought.聽 While Twohy has a touch for vaudevillian gags, his film isn’t nimble or varied enough to satisfy at feature length. ]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>https://showbuzzdaily.com/reviews/movies/film-festival-movies/sundance/sundance-film-festival-reviews-2025-atropia-bubble-squeak.html/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>0</slash:comments> </item> <item> <title>Sundance Film Festival Reviews 2025: “Train Dreams” & “Lurker”</title> <link>https://showbuzzdaily.com/reviews/movies/film-festival-movies/sundance/sundance-film-festival-reviews-2025-train-dreams-lurker.html</link> <comments>https://showbuzzdaily.com/reviews/movies/film-festival-movies/sundance/sundance-film-festival-reviews-2025-train-dreams-lurker.html#respond</comments> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Mitch Salem]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Sun, 02 Feb 2025 10:25:35 +0000</pubDate> <category><![CDATA[Film Festival]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Movie Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sundance]]></category> <category><![CDATA[20th century]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Alex Russell]]></category> <category><![CDATA[All About Eve]]></category> <category><![CDATA[American history]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Archie Madekwe]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Clint Bentley]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Felicity Jones]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Greg Kwedar]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Joel Edgerton]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Kerry Condon]]></category> <category><![CDATA[logging]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Lurker review]]></category> <category><![CDATA[music industry]]></category> <category><![CDATA[old west]]></category> <category><![CDATA[power plays]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Showbuzzdaily Sundance film reviews 2025]]></category> <category><![CDATA[spotlight]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sundance Film Festival 2025]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sundance film reviews 2025]]></category> <category><![CDATA[superfan]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Theodore Pellerin]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Train Dreams review]]></category> <category><![CDATA[William H. Macy]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://showbuzzdaily.com/?p=181823</guid> <description><![CDATA[  TRAIN DREAMS (Netflix – TBD):聽 Train Dreams was one of only two films acquired for wide distribution during Sundance, and while Netflix clearly regards it as an awards contender, barring overwhelming critical support 9 months from now, it’s hard to see Clint Bentley’s quiet historical saga achieving a major impact among the mountains of […]]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[  TRAIN DREAMS (Netflix – TBD):聽 Train Dreams was one of only two films acquired for wide distribution during Sundance, and while Netflix clearly regards it as an awards contender, barring overwhelming critical support 9 months from now, it’s hard to see Clint Bentley’s quiet historical saga achieving a major impact among the mountains of the streamer’s content.聽 Bentley (writing with Greg Kwedar–they also wrote Sing Sing and Jockey together–and adapting a novella by Denis Johnson) covers the first half of America’s 20th Century through the life of one man.聽 Despite the title, Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton) only briefly works on trains.聽 He’s a logger, who has a small farm where he spends a few months each year during the off-season with his wife Gladys (Felicity Jones) and young daughter, but then goes out on the road to fell trees throughout the Pacific Northwest.聽 He doesn’t have a fixed employer, but goes wherever the work is, although he runs into some fellow loggers more or less regularly (a colorful old munitions expert is played by William H. Macy).聽 He comes into passing contact with war, racism, and the consequences of industrialism.聽 Much sooner than he could have expected, he suffers a terrible tragedy, and although he goes on living and working, he never really comes back from that.聽 As the decades pass, people drop into and out of his life, and the country around him changes, partly through the railroads and new technologies.聽 He comes to see cities and televisions, while pondering his place in the developing history around him.聽 Train Dreams is beautifully made, with gorgeous photography by Adolpho Veloso, and an always-convincing production design by Alexandra Schaller.聽 Edgerton, who can push too hard in some roles, is intense but controlled here, and Kerry Condon contributes a few welcome scenes towards the end.聽 Train Dreams seems to be exactly the film its makers intended; the question is whether others will be enthused by its focus on one ordinary man and his existential place in the world. LURKER (no distrib):聽 There was very little good to be said for Sam Levinson’s flop HBO series The Idol, but once in a while it would fix upon the power plays among a rock star’s entourage, and become momentarily interesting.聽 Alex Russell’s Lurker centers on that dynamic, and particularly what happens when a bomb is thrown into it.聽 The bomb in this case is Matthew (Theodore Pellerin), an employee at a moderately tony LA clothing store where rising star Oliver (Archie Madekwe) drops in.聽 Matthew is passive-adoring, with a sense for what remark will most appeal to Oliver’s vanity, and he ingratiates himself enough to get invited to Oliver’s house.聽 Oliver already has an assortment of hangers-on, most of whom have known him since childhood, and they’re not at all happy to see a new arrival.聽 They try in ways petty and nasty to get rid of Matthew, but they underestimate his ingenuity and hidden ferocity.聽 Soon enough he’s designated to work on Oliver’s video team, and it becomes evident that Matthew’s facility for scheming and climbing the ranks edges toward the sociopathic.聽 Lurker isn’t a thriller, exactly, and it’s not a social comedy like All About Eve (Matthew doesn’t want to be Oliver as much as he wants to manipulate him).聽 Russell has a knowledge about the rancid interplay between celebrity, social media and power, and he keeps us off-balance visually by switching film and video stocks.聽 His plotting is less secure–the entire last act rests upon something Matthew has that seems like the kind of problem a music label takes care of on a regular basis.聽 Nevertheless, Pellerin gives Matthew a weirdly disarming mix of insecurity and ruthlessness, and Russell is careful to make clear that no one, including Oliver, is innocent in their interplay.聽 Lurker is a provocative and sometimes gripping poison pellet. ]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>https://showbuzzdaily.com/reviews/movies/film-festival-movies/sundance/sundance-film-festival-reviews-2025-train-dreams-lurker.html/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>0</slash:comments> </item> <item> <title>Sundance Film Festival Reviews 2025: “The Ballad of Wallis Island” & “Jimpa”</title> <link>https://showbuzzdaily.com/reviews/movies/film-festival-movies/sundance/sundance-film-festival-reviews-2025-the-ballad-of-wallis-island-jimpa.html</link> <comments>https://showbuzzdaily.com/reviews/movies/film-festival-movies/sundance/sundance-film-festival-reviews-2025-the-ballad-of-wallis-island-jimpa.html#respond</comments> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Mitch Salem]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Sun, 02 Feb 2025 04:21:48 +0000</pubDate> <category><![CDATA[Film Festival]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Movie Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sundance]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Amsterdam]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Aud Mason-Hyde]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Ballad of Wallis Island review]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Carey Mulligan]]></category> <category><![CDATA[concert]]></category> <category><![CDATA[family]]></category> <category><![CDATA[folk rock]]></category> <category><![CDATA[James Griffith]]></category> <category><![CDATA[John Lithgow]]></category> <category><![CDATA[LGBT]]></category> <category><![CDATA[lottery winner Jimpa review]]></category> <category><![CDATA[nonbinary]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Olivia Colman]]></category> <category><![CDATA[queerness]]></category> <category><![CDATA[reunion]]></category> <category><![CDATA[semiautobiography]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Showbuzzdaily Sundance 2025 reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sophie Hyde]]></category> <category><![CDATA[spotlight]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sundance Film Festival 2025]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sundance reviews 2025]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Tim Key]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Tom Basden]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://showbuzzdaily.com/?p=181812</guid> <description><![CDATA[  THE BALLAD OF WALLIS ISLAND (Focus/Universal – March 28):聽 A low-key British charmer.聽 A decade ago, Herb (Tom Basden) had a successful run as part of a folk duo with Nell (Carey Mulligan), which ended when they broke up both personally and professionally.聽 Now, Herb is still trying to establish himself as a solo […]]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[  THE BALLAD OF WALLIS ISLAND (Focus/Universal – March 28):聽 A low-key British charmer.聽 A decade ago, Herb (Tom Basden) had a successful run as part of a folk duo with Nell (Carey Mulligan), which ended when they broke up both personally and professionally.聽 Now, Herb is still trying to establish himself as a solo artist when he’s offered a small fortune to give a concert on remote Wallis Island.聽 Herb imagines a glamorous gig for tycoons, but of course he doesn’t know the whole story.聽 His host, Charles (Tim Key) is an eccentric who won the national lottery not once but twice, the concert is a private performance only for him, and the island consists of little more than Charles’s house and a few local storefronts.聽 Also, unbeknownst to Herb, Charles has invited Nell too, because he doesn’t care about Herb as a solo act, his obsession is with the original pair.聽 The Ballad of Wallis Island was expanded by director James Griffiths and writers Basden and Key from a short they all did more than a decade ago (Basden and Key have also written all the original songs, and Basden and Mulligan sing them), and it glows with the nurturing the group has given it.聽 The script is filled with the kind of wordplay and gentle life lessons we associate with the pre-Monty Python era of UK comedy, and it’s unfailingly kind to its characters.聽 (Consumer note:聽 as her “and” billing suggests, Mulligan has more of a supporting role than a lead, although she does all one could ask with it.)聽 Key is lovably batty, and Basden can make a slow burn simmer for minutes at a time.聽 Griffiths, who’s gone on since the short to an extremely successful career as a TV director, guides the material beautifully, not letting it dawdle while preserving the underlying emotions of its characters.聽 Ballad of Wallis Island is getting a theatrical release, and whether its small-scale, modest pleasures can attract a significant audience will say something about the state of the indie marketplace. JIMPA (no distrib):聽 A film that strains the “semi” in semiautobiography.聽 In real life, Sophie Hyde is an Australian filmmaker whose father came out of the closet when she was a child.聽 For a while, he and her mother co-parented Sophie and her sister, but then he moved to Amsterdam, where he forged a new life as an LGBT and community activist and professor.聽 He and Sophie were never estranged, but they lived mostly separate lives, until late in his life after he’d had a stroke, she, her partner and their nonbinary teen Aud Mason-Hyde came to visit.聽 During the trip, Aud and their grandfather bonded, Sophie tried to work out her complicated issues with her father, and ultimately it became clear that this would be their last time together.聽 Jimpa tells more or less this exact story, even to the point that while Hyde has cast Olivia Colman (here named Hannah) and John Lithgow (Jim) as father and daughter, Aud plays a version of themself, named Frances.聽 It’s hard to know how to evaluate this as a narrative.聽 It goes far beyond the meta-comedy of something ilke Curb Your Enthusiasm, where characters have the performers’ real names but are taking part in clearly fictional storylines.聽 In Jimpa, when Hyde makes a point of showing that Hannah is so desperate to avoid conflict that she overlooks her father’s conspicuous, if winning, narcissism, is that self-criticism or something imposed on the story?聽 Putting aside the confessional nature of the work, Colman and Lithgow are as always joys to watch, and Jim has a collection of adorable elderly gay friends who have their own opinions about such recent developments as the use of the word “queer” and nonbinary pronouns.聽 Jimpa has moments that are moving and funny.聽 Over its 123 minutes, though, a lot of it feels like diary entries created more for the person keeping the journal than for the public at large. ]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>https://showbuzzdaily.com/reviews/movies/film-festival-movies/sundance/sundance-film-festival-reviews-2025-the-ballad-of-wallis-island-jimpa.html/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>0</slash:comments> </item> <item> <title>Sundance Film Festival Reviews 2025: “The Wedding Banquet” & “Last Days”</title> <link>https://showbuzzdaily.com/reviews/movies/film-festival-movies/sundance/sundance-film-festival-reviews-2025-the-wedding-banquet-last-days.html</link> <comments>https://showbuzzdaily.com/reviews/movies/film-festival-movies/sundance/sundance-film-festival-reviews-2025-the-wedding-banquet-last-days.html#respond</comments> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Mitch Salem]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Sat, 01 Feb 2025 10:24:04 +0000</pubDate> <category><![CDATA[Film Festival]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Movie Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sundance]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Andrew Ahn]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Ang Lee]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Ben Ripley]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Bowen Yang]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Han Gi-Chan]]></category> <category><![CDATA[India]]></category> <category><![CDATA[James Schamus]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Joan Chen]]></category> <category><![CDATA[John Allen Chau]]></category> <category><![CDATA[justin lin]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Kelly Marie Tran]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Ken Leung]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Last Days review]]></category> <category><![CDATA[LGBT]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Lily Gladstone]]></category> <category><![CDATA[missionairy]]></category> <category><![CDATA[parenthood]]></category> <category><![CDATA[remake]]></category> <category><![CDATA[same-sex marriage]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Showbuzzdaily Sundance film reviews 2025]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sky Yang]]></category> <category><![CDATA[spotlight]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sundance 2025]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sundance film reviews 2025]]></category> <category><![CDATA[The Wedding Banquet review]]></category> <category><![CDATA[true story]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Youn Yuh-Jung]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://showbuzzdaily.com/?p=181802</guid> <description><![CDATA[  THE WEDDING BANQUET (Bleecker Street – April 18):聽 Ang Lee’s 1993 comedy needed to be rethought before it could be remade, since its plot turned on a woman marrying her gay landlord so that she could get a green card and he could placate his parents, since same-sex marriage was illegal.聽 Since that’s no […]]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[  THE WEDDING BANQUET (Bleecker Street – April 18):聽 Ang Lee’s 1993 comedy needed to be rethought before it could be remade, since its plot turned on a woman marrying her gay landlord so that she could get a green card and he could placate his parents, since same-sex marriage was illegal.聽 Since that’s no longer (currently) an issue, Andrew Ahn–who co-wrote, as did Lee originally, with James Schamus–had to go to some lengths to create a parallel structure.聽 This time, while Korea-born Min (Han Gi-Chan) has been in a years-long relationship with Chris (Bowen Yang), Chris is commitment-phobic and won’t accept Min’s proposal, so Min makes a deal to obtain his green card by marrying lesbian buddy Angela (Kelly Marie Tran) in exchange for Min financing the IVF treatment for Angela’s girlfriend Lee (Lily Gladstone).聽 It takes a fair amount of screenwriting shoe leather to put all of this into place, but once the characters are on their appointed paths, this Wedding Party is a satisfying remix of its predecessor.聽 As was the case then, things are thrown into chaos when the international parent (here it’s Min’s imperious grandmother, played wonderfully by Minari‘s Youn Yuh-jung) shows up and insists on a traditional Korean wedding banquet, which doesn’t go as planned.聽 Ahn, who directed Fire Island (as well as episodes of Bridgerton), has a feel for clockwork romantic complications that go sideways, and the cast (which also includes Joan Chen as Angela’s mother, who’s made being an LGBT ally part of her professional identity) is charming.聽 It’s particularly nice to see Gladstone play a role where she gets to crack a smile, and Yang is impressively restrained, only occasionally reminding us that’s an expert sketch comic.聽 The Wedding Banquet resolves itself in a way that provides plenty of laughs while saying something about families both biological and found.聽 It’s a tidy, heartfelt piece of craft. LAST DAYS (no distrib):聽 Justin Lin’s career began at Sundance, with the indie Better Luck Tomorrow.聽 After that, though, he proceeded quickly to the center of the mainstream, directing multiple Fast & the Furious movies as well as successful procedural TV pilots.聽 Last Days is an uneasy attempt to combine the threads of his career, fusing a reflective and upsetting piece of recent history with the technical sheen of his Hollywood projects.聽 The true-life tale, somewhat reminiscent of Into the Wild, follows John Allen Chau (Sky Yang) through the last several years of his life.聽 Like Christopher McCandless, Chau walked away from a respectable middle class life–in his case, a berth at medical school, where he would have followed in the footsteps of his doctor father (Ken Leong)–in pursuit of an obsession.聽 For Chau, the dream was to become a Christian missionary, but not a conventional one–he wanted to go to the most remote and dangerous regions of the world, where the indigenous people had never been exposed to Christianity and killed all intruders.聽 His particular target was North Sentinel Island, off the coast of India, and since the Indian government prohibits outsiders from traveling to the island for their own safety, Chau essentially had to become a spy, eradicating all traces of his religion from his record and journeying to other regions to establish himself as an ordinary tourist before he could finagle his way to a route to his goal.聽 Lin, working from a script by Ben Ripley and with cinematographer Oliver Bokelberg and production designer Jan Roelfs, films these adventures lushly, making them picturesque and exciting even though they’re not really what the story is about.聽 Even more oddly, while Lin and Ripley delve into the father-son relationship, they seem loathe to probe too deeply into Chau’s messianic Christianity, even though that’s what drove him.聽 They’re limited by the fact that some of what’s believed about Chau’s movements come from his journals, which may or may not be reliable, and they’ve invented an Indian detective character searching for Chau to cover some of the exposition.聽 The climactic sequence, which is entirely created by the filmmakers (only those on the island know what actually happened) feels overthought as it tries to make a statement about Chau’s life.聽 In Last Days, Lin appears torn between trying to say something meaningful and delivering an entertaining ride, and he doesn’t fully accomplish either one. ]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>https://showbuzzdaily.com/reviews/movies/film-festival-movies/sundance/sundance-film-festival-reviews-2025-the-wedding-banquet-last-days.html/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>0</slash:comments> </item> <item> <title>Sundance Film Festival Reviews 2025: “Kiss of the Spider Woman” & “Two Women”</title> <link>https://showbuzzdaily.com/reviews/movies/film-festival-movies/sundance/sundance-film-festival-reviews-2025-kiss-of-the-spider-woman-two-women.html</link> <comments>https://showbuzzdaily.com/reviews/movies/film-festival-movies/sundance/sundance-film-festival-reviews-2025-kiss-of-the-spider-woman-two-women.html#respond</comments> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Mitch Salem]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Sat, 01 Feb 2025 03:15:14 +0000</pubDate> <category><![CDATA[Film Festival]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Movie Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sundance]]></category> <category><![CDATA[argentina]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Bill Condon]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Broadway musical]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Catherine Leger]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Chloe Robichaud]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Diego Luna]]></category> <category><![CDATA[fantasy]]></category> <category><![CDATA[female sexuality]]></category> <category><![CDATA[gender]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Hecto Babenco]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Hollywood musicals]]></category> <category><![CDATA[jennifer lopez]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Karine Gonthie-Hyndman]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Kiss of the Spider Woman]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Laurence Leboeuf]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Manuel Puig]]></category> <category><![CDATA[prison]]></category> <category><![CDATA[remake]]></category> <category><![CDATA[sex farce]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Showbuzzdaily Sundance 2025 reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[spotlight]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sundance 2025]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sundance 2025 film reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sundance Film Festival]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Tonatiah]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Two Women review]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://showbuzzdaily.com/?p=181798</guid> <description><![CDATA[    KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN (no distrib):聽 The exercise in narrative that began with Manuel Puig’s 1976 Argentinian novel has found an enduring place in popular culture, first through a 1983 theatrical version adapted by Puig himself, then Hector Babenco’s 1985 film (which was nominated for Best Picture and Best Director and won […]]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[    KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN (no distrib):聽 The exercise in narrative that began with Manuel Puig’s 1976 Argentinian novel has found an enduring place in popular culture, first through a 1983 theatrical version adapted by Puig himself, then Hector Babenco’s 1985 film (which was nominated for Best Picture and Best Director and won William Hurt his Oscar), than in a 1993 Broadway musical written by Terrence McNally (book), John Kander (music) and Fred Ebb (lyrics), directed by Hal Prince, which practically ran the table at that year’s Tony Awards (Prince didn’t win).聽 Now that musical has itself been filmed by Bill Condon, who wrote the script for the film of Chicago, and wrote and directed Dreamgirls, featuring Jennifer Lopez in the role that won Chita Rivera a Tony, as well as Diego Luna and Tonatiuh.聽 It all made for the kind of splashy premiere more often associated with Cannes or Venice than Sundance.聽 Of course, he conflict between harsh reality and lavish fantasy is the very substance of Kiss Of the Spider Woman, and as screenwriter Condon has made some smart changes to sharpen the focus.聽 In this version, the gay window dresser Molina (Tonatiuh) is deliberately placed in the cell of political prisoner Valentin (Luna) in order to extract information from his cellmate, and rather than Molina bonding himself to Valentin by telling him stories of various movies starring Molina’s idol Ingrid Luna (Lopez), they’re all wrapped into the single tale of “The Kiss Of the Spider Woman.”聽 (The timeframe of the story has also been adjusted to provide for a more historically definitive ending.)聽 The two men are excellent, and watching Lopez glide through the richly colored “Hollywood” scenes (photography by Tobias A. Schliesser) is like seeing an alternate universe in which she could have been a glamorous star of a previous movie era.聽 Where Spider Woman falters is in trying to fit these complicated pieces together.聽 The prison scenes are gritty but lack shape, and so much effort is required for the fantasy sequences–which are only somewhat comprehensible since Condon is telling them as a single story–that they come to feel more like stunts than exhilarating flights of fancy.聽 Since Lopez never appears as a “real” person, the concept limits her ability to make emotional contact the way he co-leads can.聽 (It also has to be said that although there are a few standout numbers, Spider Woman isn’t in the first rank of Kander & Ebb scores.)聽 The poetry of the concept never quite meets the prose, and while Kiss of the Spider Woman is worthy, it doesn’t pull off the transportive experience that it’s trying to deliver. TWO WOMEN (no distrib):聽 Chloe Robichaud’s film, written by Catherine Leger, is a remake of a 1970 film that made a bigger splash in its native Canada than it did elsewhere.聽 This version has been updated but tells the same basic story.聽 Florence (Karine Gonthier-Hyndman) and Violette (Laurence Leboeuf) are neighbors in a Quebec co-op apartment complex who become friends via their misery in their long-term relationships, and particularly their starvation for sex.聽 Florence’s partner David (Mani Soleymanlou), with whom she has a 10-year old son, throws himself into his job and the community’s eco-conscious greenhouse, so unwilling to have relations with her that he’d prefer either of them take antidepressants and be unable to perform.聽 Meanwhile, Violette’s husband Benoit (Felix Moati) is having an affair with a co-worker.聽 Violette, obsessing while on her maternity leave, believes at first that she hears crows, and then becomes convinced that the sounds are Florence next door having orgasms.聽 When Florence informs her that couldn’t be the case, the women determine that there must be something they can do.聽 Luckily, their town has a seemingly endless supply of hunky delivery, repair, and installation men who would like nothing more than to have their customers leer and throw themselves at them for casual sex.聽 Naturally, this arrangement can go on forever, and there’s an enjoyable farcial wind-up that has some heart.聽 The cast is likable, and the pace keeps things moving.聽 Much of Two Women, though, feels silly and antique, a remnant of the days when “Last of the Red Hot Lovers” and “Cactus Flower” were big hits on Broadway.聽 In 2025, Two Women feels like a movie that could have been an email. ]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>https://showbuzzdaily.com/reviews/movies/film-festival-movies/sundance/sundance-film-festival-reviews-2025-kiss-of-the-spider-woman-two-women.html/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>0</slash:comments> </item> <item> <title>Sundance Film Festival Reviews 2025: “Sorry, Baby” & “Dead Lover”</title> <link>https://showbuzzdaily.com/reviews/movies/film-festival-movies/sundance/sundance-film-festival-reviews-2025-sorry-baby-dead-lover.html</link> <comments>https://showbuzzdaily.com/reviews/movies/film-festival-movies/sundance/sundance-film-festival-reviews-2025-sorry-baby-dead-lover.html#respond</comments> <dc:creator><![CDATA[Mitch Salem]]></dc:creator> <pubDate>Fri, 31 Jan 2025 09:55:36 +0000</pubDate> <category><![CDATA[Film Festival]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Movie Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sundance]]></category> <category><![CDATA[assault]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Ben Petrie]]></category> <category><![CDATA[cult movie]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Dead Lover review]]></category> <category><![CDATA[directing debut]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Eva Victor]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Frankenstein]]></category> <category><![CDATA[gothic comedy]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Grace Glowicki]]></category> <category><![CDATA[John Caroll Lynch]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Kelly McCormack]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Louis Cancelmi]]></category> <category><![CDATA[low budget]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Lucas Hedges]]></category> <category><![CDATA[midnight movie]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Naomi Ackle]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Showbuzzdaily Sundance reviews 2025]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sorry Baby review]]></category> <category><![CDATA[spotlight]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sundance 2025]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Sundance film reviews]]></category> <category><![CDATA[trauma]]></category> <category><![CDATA[university politics]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://showbuzzdaily.com/?p=181782</guid> <description><![CDATA[  The 2025 Sundance Film Festival is still going on, and will continue through February 2.聽 However, at this point all the major titles have premiered, and the at-home part of the festival has kicked in, so it seems fair to say that it was a fairly dispiriting edition, especially for those who judge Sundance […]]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[  The 2025 Sundance Film Festival is still going on, and will continue through February 2.聽 However, at this point all the major titles have premiered, and the at-home part of the festival has kicked in, so it seems fair to say that it was a fairly dispiriting edition, especially for those who judge Sundance as an indication of the state of the union for indie movies.聽 Although some very good films were screened, there didn’t seem to be a single breakout title, one that could find a significant audience beyond arthouse fans or low-budget horror enthusiasts, or that could even make a serious awards run.聽 Notably, as the festival entered its second week, a grand total of 2 films had been sold for general distribution, the body-horror romance Together (bought by Neon, in the hope it can build on MUBI’s hit with The Substance), and the contemplative logger story Train Dreams (an Oscar play by Netflix).聽 For those of us on the scene, there was a more amorphous but evident lame-duck feeling in Park City, where the festival lost another once-regular venue, and the one-time 24/7 supermarket now shuts its doors at 10PM (11PM on weekends).聽 Sundance will soon announce its new location deal that will kick in beginning in 2027, and while Utah is still one of the contenders (along with Boulder and Cincinnati), that bid emphasizes Salt Lake City over Park City.聽 One way or another, it feels like an era is turning a new and uncertain corner. SORRY, BABY (no distrib):聽 For all that, Sundance at its best can still showcase new and exciting talent.聽 Eva Victor has achieved some notice as a performer (she was one of the few members of the Billions ensemble who didn’t give way to that show’s hard-charging, scenery-chewing style of declamation), but as star, writer and director of Sorry, Baby she proves herself to be a filmmaker with a distinct and appealing voice.聽 The story Sorry, Baby tells is not, at its root, unfamiliar:聽 Victor plays Agnes, a grad student in English Literature at a small northeastern college, who suffers a sexual assault and spends the next several years dealing with the resulting trauma.聽 But Victor refuses to give way to the tropes of that narrative.聽 She plays with chronology, so that we know the post-assault Agnes before we know that she’s been assaulted.聽 Much as Agnes herself tries to distance herself from what’s happened to her, the script nibbles at the edges of her trauma, concentrating on her close friendship with fellow student Lydie (Naomi Ackle), her awkward semi-romance with neighbor Gavin (Lucas Hedges), and the paltry internal politics of the college as Agnes moves into academia, infuriating a rival (a hilarious Kelly McCormack).聽 Victor’s writing has the fullness of a novel, with room for scenes of serious emotion and also for what are almost self-contained skits, like a random lunch Agnes has with a sandwich store owner (John Carroll Lynch), and a disastrous day of jury duty.聽 Victor takes Agnes very seriously, but Agnes often doesn’t take herself seriously at all, and much of the writing is bracingly funny.聽 (Victor’s script won the festival’s Screenwriting award.)聽 Although the visuals are graceful (Mia Cioffi Henry was the cinematographer), this is a low-budget first film that rests on its acting and writing more than its technical virtuosity.聽 Sorry, Baby is the kind of calling card that should establish Eva Victor as an exciting arrival on the movie scene. DEAD LOVER (no distrib):聽 Even by Sundance standards, Grace Glowicki’s gothic-horror-sex-comedy seems to have been made on a budget that would barely fill the gas tank of an SUV.聽 Shot entirely on soundstages, with the barest of sets and props, and “special effects” that are more nods to the idea of effects than actual ones, it’s a Frankenstein story, with Glowicki as a lonely gravedigger who can’t find love because she stinks of corpses.聽 Finally she meets a man (played by co-writer Ben Petrie–he and Loren Morrow and Leah Doz play all the other characters) who isn’t turned off by her odor, and they have a fine raunchy time together until he dies tragically at sea.聽 That sets the gravedigger on a mission to bring him back in some form even though all that’s survived is his finger.聽 This eventually embroils a Count, the Count’s dead opera-singer wife, and assorted town busy-bodies, fishermen, nuns and others.聽 Dead Lover is trying way too hard to be an instant cult movie, with performances that are pitched at the high end of hysteria, silly make-up and accents, and a reliance on giggling sexuality and oozing body parts.聽 It feels both overthought (Look, German Expressionism!) and like something tossed-off after a single long night of edibles.聽 At 84 minutes, it feels exhaustingly long.   ]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>https://showbuzzdaily.com/reviews/movies/film-festival-movies/sundance/sundance-film-festival-reviews-2025-sorry-baby-dead-lover.html/feed</wfw:commentRss> <slash:comments>0</slash:comments> </item> </channel> </rss>