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Sundance Film Festival / DJ Ahmet Review: Music Throbs in Timeless, North Macedonian Charmer

©Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival In a scene in DJ Ahmet, the winner of the Special Jury Award: World Cinema Dramatic, a horde of escaped sheep crash a rave party in the countryside. The beats pulsate as the sheep bleat. The bells jingle in the blinking lights while cool dudes dance and spray graffiti. But in…

2025 Sundance Recap Pt 2: ‘Brides,’ ‘bunnylovr,’ ‘Love, Brooklyn,’ ‘Bubble & Squeak’

Hopefully, you’ve read and enjoyed the first part of my Sundance wrap-up which included reviews of some of the best things I’ve seen over the past few days of virtual viewing, but not everything at Sundance Film Festival can be wine and roses, and now, here are four reviews of some of the weaker offerings….

Sundance Film Festival: ‘Last Days’ is an Intriguing Story of One Man’s Deadly Quest for Unachievable Salvation

In 2018, American missionary John Allen Chau was killed on North Sentinel Island, located off the coast of India and home to a tribe that has had very minimal contact with the outside world. Some described Chau’s death as a tragedy, while others blamed him for breaking the law and attempting to approach a population…

Sundance Review: ‘Two Women’ is an Entertaining Showcase of Two Great Leads

Society has different expectations for men and women, due in large part to millennia of patriarchal systems where women were typically responsible for staying home to take care of the children. In a modern world, mothers can work after giving birth and function similarly to men, but there are still maternal connections that they’ll make…

‘Green and Gold’: A Tribute to the Persistence of Grace in the American Heartland

©Green and Gold Movie  Directed by Anders Lindwall, Green and Gold follows the tribulations of an elderly and grizzled Wisconsin dairy farmer as he tries to save his family farm from foreclosure. Though the film is set in the heart of America’s dairyland, there is nothing cheesy about this movie, largely due to the superb…

Sundance Film Festival: ‘Peter Hujar’s Day’ is a Surprisingly Interesting Dramatization of a Rather Banal Conversation

©Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival. In 1974, photographer Peter Hujar sat down with his friend, writer Linda Rosenkrantz, to tell her everything he did the day before, part of a planned book by Rosenkrantz speaking with all her well-connected friends about their daily lives. The book didn’t end up happening and apparently the tape of…

Sundance Film Festival: ‘LUZ’ is a Visually Hypnotic Tale About Our Disconnected World

©Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival Twelve years after her first-feature film bends, the director Flora Lau brought at the Sundance Film Festival – World Cinema Dramatic Competition – LUZ, another psychological drama set in Chongqing and Paris. The main story follows two completely different people: Wei (Xiadong Guo) is trying to reconnect with the daughter…

Sundance Film Festival: ‘The Perfect Neighbor’ Recounts the Consequences of Self-Defense Legislation

©Sundance Film Festival Police procedurals have long garnered attention and intrigue among audiences for the extreme measures characters take to protect the way of existence they have grown accustomed to – or feel entitled to – in their lives. The new documentary, The Perfect Neighbor explores the extreme measures some people, including Marion County resident…

2025 Sundance Recap Pt 1: ‘Atropia,’ ‘André is an Idiot,’ ‘Ricky,’ ‘East of Wall,’ ’Train Dreams’

The 2025 Sundance Film Festival will be wrapping up this weekend, although for those of us covering it virtually, we’ve gotten a bit of a late start. There have been quite a few themes with the movies at this year’s festival, including many films written and directed by actors starring in their own films, as…

Sundance Film Festival: ‘The Dating Game’ is an Amusing Look at Romance in China That’s Best When It Gets Serious

It’s not always easy to find a partner, but there can be exacerbating circumstances that make it even more difficult. As a result of China’s one child’s policy, which was ended a decade ago, there are 30 million more men than women. Those odds aren’t great even for the most socially well-adjusted individuals with unlimited…

“Dog Man” : Dav Pilkey Offers Amusing, Low-Stress Entertainment!

©Courtesy of Universal Pictures  The catalyst for this comic book character’s conception was sort of like The Breakfast Club. Technically, he was created by author-illustrator Dav (No “E”) Pilkey, through his fictional school children, George Beard and Harold Hutchins, who dreamed up the crime-fighting canine while serving detention together. (The creative duo also supposedly “invented”…