Sundance: ‘Fremont’ is an endearing immigrant journey

By Abe Friedtanzer

 

There are many stories about the immigrant experience and people struggling to fit into a new life. Fremont, which makes its debut in the NEXT category spotlighting innovative cinema at Sundance, comes as a refreshing spin on that familiar genre. It manages to be both funny and worthwhile as it empowers its protagonist to express herself and attempt to take charge of her situation when she’s not set up to be able to do so. 

Anaita Wali Zada makes her film debut as Donya, a Kabul native who, after working as a translator for the U.S. Army, flees Afghanistan to settle in Fremont, California. In Fremont she works at a fortune cookie company...

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Sundance: 'Talk to Me' is a handshake with Hell itself

by Jason Adams

See one horror movie about grief and you've seen every horror movie, or so it feels sometimes. Dead children, siblings, parents, spouses -- the genre is littered with beloved corpses winking back at us from the other side of oblivion. I'm writing this on day one of virtual Sundance and I've already seen three movies of this sort! But we keep coming back to the Babadook Special because it works. It's what we fear the most. Death for ourselves is one thing, but seeing the people we love the most slip away is something tangible; something that we'll all experience and then be expected to exist on the other side of. When I was little it was losing my parents that I feared the most of all.

For teenager Mia (newcomer Sophie Wilde), the lead in the Philippou brothers' unsettling new horror flick Talk To Me (playing Sundance 2023's Midnight program), it is her Mom that she's grieving...

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Review: Adam Sandler's SAG-nominated ‘Hustle’

By Abe Friedtanzer

Twenty long years ago, popular comedian Adam Sandler was in serious awards conversation for the first time for his dramatic collaboration with Paul Thomas Anderson in Punch-Drunk Love. Three years ago, a handful of prominent citations and an Independent Spirit Award for Uncut Gems looked like it might finally help him breakthrough to a first Oscar nomination (it did not). Now, Sandler is somewhat unexpectedly making an awards play (sports reference?) again thanks to a surprise SAG nomination for his basketball drama Hustle, which is streaming on Netflix.

Sandler stars as Stanley Sugerman, a scout for the Philadelphia 76ers who becomes tired of missing his daughter’s birthdays each year while he’s traveling throughout Europe or somewhere else in search of the next great talent...

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Doc Corner: A to Z of the Longlist (Part 2)

By Glenn Dunks

The Academy may have released their shortlist for the Best Documentary Feature category, but we’re going to continue our A to Z skim through the 144-wide longlist as a means of playing catch-up before I do my annual best of documentary list for the year. Last time we looked at Shaunak Sen’s sorta-frontrunner All That Breathes, Paweł Łoziński’s EFA nominee The Balcony Movie, and Hà Lệ Diễm’s dark horse contender Children of the Mist.

DESCENDANT

This week, themes of racism, authoritarianism and war are a heady and heavy mix. All of them come with some sort of Oscar pedigree, although only one has made it to the next round of the Academy’s race to a nomination...

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Review: Say hello to 'M3GAN' our new favorite Horror Princess

by Jason Adams

If you look at the episodes of Shudder’s documentary series “Behind the Monsters” – each of which was devoted to its own Horror Icon – one thing became painfully clear right up front: Where the hell are our female horror icons? I don’t mean the survivors – we all know our Final Girls, they are legion. I mean the villains. Where is our Jasine Voorhees? Our Frederica Krueger? Why does nothing happen if I say “Candygal” five times in the mirror??? 

Well the past couple of years have finally begun to right that gendered wrong, bringing us the return of Isabella Fuhrman’s Esther in her Orphan franchise (hopefully TBC, as the second film was a total hoot) as well as Mia Goth’s ax-welding and Oscar-worthy turn in Pearl (in both the titular prequel as well as X). Finally some iconic Halloween costumes for the Lizzie Borden lovers among us! And now this weekend makes for three with M3GAN, director Gerard Johnstone’s riotously entertaining new slasher, which merges Chucky with Mean Girls to gift us with an insta-icon for the horror ages.

M3GAN stands for “Model 3 Generative Android”... 

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