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Sundance Film Festival Review – ‘Magazine Dreams’ Shows the Destructive Power of Societal Standards

People will go to incredible lengths to be perceived as beautiful. What that looks like is different by culture and by gender, and celebrities often embody the worst ideals, which then encourage devoted fans to mimic them in their own lives. There are diets and workout programs that promise participants supposedly healthy and fit bodies…

Sundance Film Festival Review – ‘Jamojaya’ is a Contemplative Portrait of Father, Son, and Fame

The first 10pm screening I ever attended at the Sundance Film Festival was Justin Chon’s Ms. Purple, which, while melodically slow, was absolutely captivating and well worth the late hour. Chon starred in his subsequent film, Blue Bayou, a more conventional drama about a family torn apart by unexpected immigration news. His latest, Jamojaya, is…

Sundance Film Festival : Review / Aum : The Cult at the End of the World

Two months after the Great Hanshin Earthquake Disaster killed 6,433 people and caused more than $100 billion in damages, a sarin gas attack took place in a Tokyo subway in 1995. Harrowing sounds echoed throughout the subway which sent shivers down to the spine of a first responder. The incident shocked the world, and was…

Review: There are Varying Temperatures in the “Infinity Pool”

There’s no denying the connective tissue of filmmaking between heralded auteur David Cronenberg and his son Brandon. In the grand scheme though, while David’s use of body horror is used to convey his life long theme of humanities evolutions; Brandon’s path leads down a slightly more conventional road. While not mainstream pieces of fluff, his…

Sundance Film Festival Review: Scoot McNairy and Emilia Jones Capture the Complexities of Father-daughter Relationships in Fairyland

Sometimes the most emotionally fulfilling relationships, which shape a person’s entire life perspective and development, prove to be the ones that society deems to be unconventional. While society is often unwilling to accept the seemingly unconventional connections people can develop, some of the most emotionally captivating films are character-driven stories that chronicle and celebrate those…

Sundance Film Festival : “Little Richard: I Am Everything” Review / Director Lisa Cortés Made an Uneven Tribute to a Flamboyant Artist

“Little Richard: I Am Everything” is a documentary about the life and career of the late legendary Rhythm & Blues singer. Born Richard Wayne Penniman, he was a queer black man from Macon, Georgia, whose flamboyant lifestyle and energetic showmanship burst onto the rock and roll scene. Even though he had difficulty with his father,…

Sundance Film Festival Review – ‘Fair Play’ is a Stressful Cautionary Tale Against Workplace Romances

People often meet the loves of their lives while working together. An office environment can be exactly the right place for a romance to begin and mature, but it can also be a toxic setting where ambition and ego run counter to the personal feelings people have for each other outside of work. There may…

Sundance Film Festival Review – ‘STILL: A Michael J. Fox’ is a Stirring and Creative Portrait of the Actor

Michael J. Fox was an incredibly popular actor in the 1980s, winning Emmy Awards for the sitcom Family Ties and starring in the science fiction film Back to the Future. He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease the next decade at a very young age, something he kept hidden from the world for several years. Since then, he has…

Sundance Film Festival : Review / “Kim’s Video,” A Renowned New York Video Store for Cinephiles Finally Gets its Own Documentary

The Sundance Film Festival brings audiences back to the theaters in Park City after two years of employing the virtual model. With that in mind it seems appropriate to dive right into “Kim’s Video” a documentary about the video store which satisfied the New York City cinephiles for almost more than two decades. Located on…

Sundance Film Festival Review – Daisy Ridley Anchors the Entertaining Human Comedy ‘Sometimes I Think About Dying’

It’s often hard to explain natural impulses and the things that fill our dreams, or even our waking moments. Thinking frequently of one’s own death might seem morbid or terrifying, but it can also provoke a more neutral curiosity. That’s the case for the protagonist of Sometimes I Think About Dying, an antisocial office worker who…

Sundance Film Festival Review – ’20 Days in Mariupol’ is a Vital Journalism Documentary from Ukraine

One of the primary functions of documentary filmmaking is to educate audiences, and to expose something previously unknown to a wider breadth of people. The hope is that the world learning about an injustice will help to prevent it from happening again. Yet, unfortunately, that’s not always the case, and history all too often repeats…