Tag: Sundance

After Rebecca Hall’s stunning directorial debut Passing premiered at Sundance last year, she is back at the festival, starring in Andrew Semans’ Resurrection. Hall plays Margaret, a career-driven woman and mollycoddling single mother of teenage Abbie (Grace Kaufman). Behind a seemingly pristine life, Margaret’s façade starts to crack when she sees a man from her… Continue reading Sundance 2022: ‘Resurrection’—A Frightening Mess of a Movie

In a documentary filmmaking course, my professor always said that documentarians are always obscure compared to their counterparts in narrative filmmaking. Ask a person if they know a director and they will give you familiar names like Scorsese, Tarantino, Nolan, and many others known for their narrative films. Out of the names I’ve mentioned, Scorsese… Continue reading Sundance 2022: ‘The Exiles’—A Look Into the Eccentric Christine Choy

After the successful festival run of Julia Ducournau’s Titane—even winning the highly regarded Palme d’Or in a Cannes run by the eccentric Spike Lee—body horror is gaining resurgence within mainstream audiences as it gives insight into our fixation on how far human bodies can endure. Hanna Bergholm’s Hatching, elicited mixed responses as expected in most… Continue reading Sundance 2022: ‘Hatching’—A Beautiful Take on the Body and Creature Horror Genre

Five years after Kogonada’s debut Columbus, he’s back at Sundance with his sophomore feature fresh from its Cannes premiere last July. In a more ambitious artistic endeavor, Kogonada continues to improve himself with After Yang. After Yang is adapted from Alexander Weinstein’s short story “Saying Goodbye to Yang”, a sci-fi tale set in the future… Continue reading Sundance 2022: ‘After Yang’ – A Solemn Take on the Humanity of the Posthuman

In Martika Ramirez Escobar's director statement, she talks about a famous action star without any political background nabbing the most powerful position in the country. She reflects on how this ties to the Filipino people’s love for movies, especially action. Decades later, a macho man that seemed straight out of “bakbakan” (fighting) films became the… Continue reading Sundance 2022: ‘Leonor Will Never Die’ – A Love Letter to Filipino Cinema

In an adaptation of his five-hour audio play for Audible, Jesse Eisenberg gives us a look into Evelyn Katz (Julianne Moore), who runs a domestic violence shelter, and her son Ziggy (Finn Wolfhard), a teen preoccupied with internet fame. As Eisenberg introduces his film to an all-virtual Sundance audience, yet again for the second year… Continue reading Sundance 2022: ‘When You Finish Saving the World’ – Jesse Eisenberg’s Directorial Debut is a Thin Mother-Son Drama

The dating world is now more complex than ever thanks to the emergence of dating apps. You will find creeps, friends with benefits, or someone who you’ll date for maybe a month, but only if you’re lucky.  Such is the case for Noa, played by Daisy Edgar-Jones fresh from her Normal People fame, who is… Continue reading Sundance 2022: ‘Fresh’ – A Fun and Horrifying Take on the Dangers of Dating

Judas and the Black Messiah is a film from a rising Black director, starring two of the most talented Black actors in Hollywood, about one of the most prominent figures of the Black Panther Party: Fred Hampton. As someone who isn’t American, I knew very little about the Black Panther Party other than their open… Continue reading ‘Judas and the Black Messiah’: A Powerful Film with the Best Performances of the Year

It starts with Amin finally telling his story to his filmmaker friend, the documentary’s director, under the condition that his name and the places mentioned are changed to conceal his identity. This led to the choice of telling this story through animation, with some mix of archival footage. Rasmussen and Amin knew each other when… Continue reading Sundance 2021: ‘Flee’—A Beautiful Documentary Dealing with a Man’s Journey to Freedom and Identity