Abe’s Sundance Jury of One

By Abe Friedtanzer

Pedro Pascal in Freaky Tales | Sundance Institute

This was my ninth time being in Park City for the Sundance Film Festival, and even though a family occasion meant I only arrived on Sunday (the festival started Thursday), I still saw twenty-five films in person and three before the fest. I did three days of five movies back-to-back, which is an incomparable thrill that can also prove quite exhausting. Fortunately, there was plenty of good fare worth remembering, and some of it is even coming soon to a screen of some sort near you!

Because there’s just so much playing, I didn’t actually see most of the official award winners, but you can peruse that list here. For my “jury of one,” here are my top ten films and a few other assorted honors. My reviews, if available, are hyperlinked, as well as notes on distribution if available...

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Sundance Review: Getting Through Life and COVID with ‘Stress Positions’

By Abe Friedtanzer

John Early in "Stress Positions"

Since March 2020, a number of films and TV series have addressed the life-altering COVID-19 pandemic in their storylines. Often it’s fodder for comedy, since looking back at people furiously wiping down groceries and staying far, far apart from each other can be humorous in retrospect. In some cases, it’s just an extra obstacle to make life a little bit harder and more complicated. In filmmaker Theda Hammel’s feature debut, Stress Positions, staying afloat in a chaotic and isolating time is a considerable challenge for its memorable characters.

John Early stars as Terry, a recently divorced Brooklyn resident watching over his nineteen-year-old nephew from Morocco, Bahlul (Qaher Harhash), as he recovers from an accident...

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Sundance Review: Tracing the History of the Police in ‘Power’

By Abe Friedtanzer 

Police reform is a hot-button issue, with calls from the left to "defund the police" and responses from the right that “blue lives” matter. Complicating those concepts is the fact that every American has grown up with the police as an established reality. Considering what something else could look like requires an acknowledgment that it hasn’t always been this way and perhaps shouldn’t be. Yance Ford’s documentary Power looks at the history of the police and how that’s shaped where we as a country now.

So much of present-day policing stems from racist institutions, beginning with slave catchers as the original model for police forces, which first began in Boston and quickly spread throughout the country...

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Meet the New Honorary Oscar Winners!

by Cláudio Alves

On Saturday, November 28th, at this year's Governors Awards, we'll finally see the amazing Angela Bassett with an Oscar statuette befitting her talents and incredible career. After she lost the Best Supporting Actress trophy at the 95th Academy Awards, netizens everywhere decried another injustice committed against one of the most important African-American thespians working today, mourning an Oscar-less status many think should have been rectified way back in 1993. Hopefully, they feel vindicated now. Indeed, if nothing else, this proves how much the industry is behind Bassett, making one wonder how close the vote was between her and Jamie Lee Curtis...

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Sundance review: Judy Reyes and Marin Ireland give the pregnancy horror 'birth/rebirth' its juice

by Jason Adams

Let me just stop you right here, at the start, and admit that I am going to be terribly biased in this review of writer-director Laura Moss’ horror film birth/rebirth. Why? Do I know the director? Have I played ping pong with the cinematographer? Did the boom mic operator donate a kidney to my mum? No no nothing like that – it’s just the entirely sane fact that I love love love the actress Judy Reyes with all of my being and seeing her be given a leading role in a movie is too much for me to bear, qualitatively speaking. 

Here at The Film Experience, within this safe space of actressexuals, I know I can admit this freely. But I just feel an upfront warning is due...

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