Sundance: Zac Efron is "Extremely Wicked..."

Abe Fried-Tanzer reporting from Sundance

Everyone knows the name Ted Bundy, but I’m not sure that everyone knows as much as they think they do about him. I certainly didn’t going into Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, the Sundance premiere from director Joe Berlinger, an Oscar nominee back in 2011 for the documentary Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory. The key curiousity here is the casting of Zac Efron, onetime star of High School Musical, as the notorious killer...

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Sundance: Awkwafina in "The Farewell"

Murtada Elfadl reporting from Sundance

Big family gatherings can be tough. Especially when the gathered family are dispersed all over the world and live disparate lives. In The Farewell, a family gathers in China, ostensibly for a cousin’s wedding. Some flew in from Japan, some from the United States and some are, of course, local. As the conversation gets real and tense about living in different places, what values and opportunities you get and lose when you leave the home country, the film hit me hard. It reminded me of my own family and gatherings like this. When reality forces families to disperse, the push/pull of old vs new country can get contentious, emotional, and raw. Writer/director Lulu Wang captures this exact tension acutely. She also writes with love and authenticity about family so The Farewell hits an emotional bullseye.

Front and center is Awkwafina as a young Chinese-American artist, Billi, living in New York with her immigrant parents...

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Sundance: Zora Howard in "Premature"

Murtada Elfadl reporting from Sundance

Once in a while, a film comes along where the actual experience of watching it is so enjoyable, it stirs a cozy reaction. A certain contentment, a satisfied smile washes over you as you spend time with the characters and the story. The type of film, the rhytyms, the stories that stir that reaction in me can differ but Rashaad Ernesto Green’s Premature is one of those movies.

The film follows Ayana (played by Zora Howard who co-wrote the screenplay with the director) through her last summer in Harlem before she leaves New York for college...

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Sundance: A whole new Shia Labeouf in "Honey Boy"

Abe Fried-Tanzer reporting from Sundance

Shia Labeouf and Noah Jupe, pictured at Sundance, play father and son in "Honey Boy"

Shia LaBeouf’s career hasn’t gone how anyone expected. At age fourteen, he was starring on the popular Disney comedy series Even Stevens. By the time he turned twenty-one, he anchored the movie Disturbia and then blew up as star of the Transformers franchise. More serious performances like the one he delivered in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps and his bizarre forays into public self-reflection and public self-destruction provide contradictory images of the actor, who is now thirty-two. 

His best performance to date was in Andrea Arnold’s American Honey, but he may just have outdone himself in his new picture, which he also wrote based on his own experiences. Honey Boy is the feature film debut from respected documentary filmmaker Alma Har’e (Bombay Beach) and LaBeouf is at first almost unrecognizable as a version of his own father...

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Tweetweek @ Snowy Sundance

A+ usage of fav Addams Family Values quote

pic.twitter.com/KO9D1o0dYj

— Bryan Fuller (@BryanFuller) January 25, 2019

After the jump, searching for hobbies post Filmstruck, post-Oscar nomination giggles, and several tidbits from Sundance Film Festival featuring Selma, Children of Men, Shia Labeouf, Annette Bening, Julianne More, and more...

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