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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Sundance review: Eliza Scanlen proves ecstatic anew in 'The Starling Girl'

by Jason Adams

Usually when I write about getting “representation” on-screen I’m talking about the gay stuff – like when Call Me By Your Name knocked me flat with its warmly lyrical depiction of a neurotic gayling’s first same-sex longings. And there was gay stuff at Sundance this year that I felt deep in my bones – the darkly funny internalized homophobia of Sebastián Silva’s Rotting in the Sun squarely hit the mark.  But no movie felt more like a mirror at this year’s fest than did writer-director Laurel Parmet’s debut film The Starling Girl, which explores the world of rural Christian fundamentalism with the crystal cold precision of one who barely survived that very thing. I speak from my own experience...

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Abe’s Sundance Jury of One

We will have a few more Sundance reviews from Jason and Nathaniel who attended the festival virtually. Abe Friedtanzer was there in person so here's his wrap-up - Editor

Eve Hewson and Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Flora and SonIt was great to be back in-person at the Sundance Film Festival for the first time since 2020, when future Oscar-winning films Promising Young Woman, Minari, and The Father all made their debuts. It was also my first real taste of winter since the start of the pandemic, and it was quite chilly! But I had a wonderful time and there’s something very unique about this festival. I saw 33 films while in Park City, plus a few more online. I didn’t manage any days of five movies but averaged three or four. It was also a nice surprise to see two of the best films on the last two days. A few of these have distribution already, and if that’s the case, it’s noted. My favorites are after the jump...

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Sundance Review: 'A Thousand and One' and Teyana Taylor shine bright

by Jason Adams 

Sneaking up on you like an A train out of a dark subway tunnel, first-time feature writer-director A.V. Rockwell’s A Thousand and One (which just won the U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and is hitting screens on March 31st) is one of those magical small movies that plays its big dramas so low-key that the tumult you find your heart in by its last act comes as a total surprise. With a tremendous and blessedly unsentimental performance at its heart from singer-turned-actress Teyana Taylor, A Thousand and One wears its Moonlight influences proudly on its sleeve but still manages to be its own thing - and what a beautiful thing it manages...

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