Features
The film frames masculinity as endless, at times excruciating showmanship . . . The director articulates poignantly the heartbreak of familial love crudely bound up in the performance of power.
Even in this capacity-reduced iteration, one sensed the anticipation of what felt like largely local crowds returning to the program, perhaps for the first time since 2020, at each sold-out Forum screening.
In the murky waters of documentary ethics, responsible filmmaking is not always a question of authorship, but of perspective. It is not just about who is behind the camera, but who is seen through its lens.
Bemoaning or simply acknowledging the metastasis of the “Sundance film” has an obvious tendency of obscuring the nonfiction and non-English narrative entries that premiere at the festival and aren’t likely to be sought out by viewers, especially virtual ones.
Viewers watching this year’s Sundance films are being asked to interrogate their ways of seeing, coming up against films that examine perspective by more thoroughly investigating the relationship between who’s behind the camera and what we see on screen.
Years in Review
It’s always a relief to finally unveil our annual 2 Cents column. It allows us to squeeze out every last inch of both love and bile and subsequently put the year to bed.
One of Bugs Bunny’s greatest attributes is that he transcends the rational to become one of Hollywood entertainment’s greatest anti-establishment heroes.
Years in Review
So, 2021 wasn’t quite the rejuvenating year we all hoped for. Yet in terms of movies, it nearly did the trick. With impressive, even spectacular films from so many of our greatest living filmmakers and major arrivals from very exciting new voices, we feel yanked back from the precipice of doom.
A mysterious fascination keeps one watching as On Cinema chugs along, playing out like a never-ending purgatory of what in most universes would have been a short curiosity sketch.
Its creative interactivity distinguishes TikTok from image-based social networks like Instagram, and also explains its dominance as a short-form video app, a larger trend in China.
A Few Great Pumpkins
Ghost Story of Yotsuya, Lord Shango, Malignant, Dracula, Carnival of Souls, Silent Night Deadly Night 3, When a Stranger Calls
The crime remains so notorious in the town that, at one point, a longtime neighbor who resides by the now-shuttered family grocery refuses to discuss it with the director or even appear on camera.
Several films on view continued to reckon, indirectly or otherwise, and to varying degrees of success, with our era of disrupted intimacy and heightened loneliness. Titles include Quickening, The Humans, and The Power of the Dog.
The TIFF Wavelengths program remains an essential overview of the goings-on in contemporary experimental cinema. Titles include Polycephaly in D, Dear Chantal, Inner Outer Space, The Capacity for Adequate Anger, and more.