Sundance

There’s a lot at stake in the final scene of The Witch, the terrifying feature film debut from writer/director Robert Eggers, and it’s not as unambiguous as it may seem. As Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy) descends into the woods, ostensibly joining the coven which has been terrorizing her family, Eggers appears to validate the concerns voiced throughout the film: Witches are real, and they can entice former Christians to join them. But Thomasin very well may just have an active imagination, one fueled by her anger towards the patriarchal Christianity her father attempts to impose on her, and no one other than Black Phillip is around to confirm the reality of Thomasin’s experience. Either way, the ending depicts Thomasin’s clear rejection of one system in favor of another, and it therefore captures the true conflict at the movie’s core.

Morris from America Written and Directed by Chad Hartigan U.S., 2016 Having done well at the festival back in 2013 with This is Martin Bonner, writer/director Chad Hartigan returns to Sundance with Morris from America, a mostly generic crowd-pleaser with a good amount of charm. The plot follows young 13-year old African-American Morris Gentry (Markees Christmas), as he moves …

Kate Plays Christine Directed by Robert Greene U.S., 2016 One of the interesting things about Sundance this year is that two different films about the same subject matter have screened. In 1974 in Sarasota, Florida, TV reporter Christine Chubbuck shot herself on camera, an incident that reportedly served as an inspiration for Network. There was …

  Swiss Army Man Written and Directed by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert U.S., 2016 One of the hopes that people come to the Sundance Film Festival with is that they will see something wholly unique, something that they have never seen or imagined before. Swiss Army Man is that film. This feeling happens pretty quickly, as …

Meru may be a meaningless name to those who aren’t a part of the climbing community, but for three American alpinists, veteran Conrad Anker, photographer Jimmy Chin and freestyle extraordinaire Renan Ozturk, making the first successful ascent of the treacherous peak in the Gharwal Himalayas was a goal bordering on obsession. The documentary of their …

The feature debut of writer-director Sara Colangelo, Little Accidents is an intense small town drama that premiered to positive notices at the 2014 installment of the Sundance Film Festival, and is now seeing a release one year on. Starring Elizabeth Banks, Boyd Holbrook, Jacob Lofland, Josh Lucas and Chloë Sevigny, it concerns several players in a …

6. The Spoils of Babylon The Spoils of Babylon is an upcoming American comedy miniseries by Saturday Night Live veterans Andrew Steele and Matt Piedmont, directed by Piedmont (Casa de Mi Padre), and starring Tobey Maguire, Kristen Wiig, Tim Robbins, Jessica Alba, Val Kilmer, Haley Joel Osment, Michael Sheen, and Will Ferrell. It’s doubtful that any …

The Kings of Summer is a coming of age film born from the spirit of the American sitcom. Built on the public’s enduring obsession with what it means to be a man, the film undercuts the self-seriousness of this notion through its use of sitcom-branded comedy. The film depicts the story of three teenage boys who are tired of their oppressive parents, so they find an isolated pocket in the forest to build themselves a house where they plan to live off the land.

In William Gibson’s 2003 novel Pattern Recognition a mysteriously binary filmmaker slowly and anonymously drip feeds footage of his homebrew masterpiece to an eagerly seduced audience of intellectually curious, avant-garde aligned internet film fanatics.

The beginning of April, for those in the Southwest, heralds an all-new Phoenix Film Festival. This year, the Phoenix Film Festival kicks off its 13th annual edition with impressive celebrity guests, independent feature premieres, seminars, workshops, parties, and more. The festival, which runs from April 4 to April 11, boasts some star-studded new films and …

Big Sur Directed by Michael Polish Written by Michael Polish 2013, USA A melancholic exploration of Jack Kerouac’s mind during his trips to poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s remote cabin on the pacific coast, Big Sur quietly captivates with a moody mix of striking scenery and rapid-fire narration. Kerouac used his prose to break away from the …

One of the most talked about films at this year’s Sundance Film Festival is Randy Moore’s Escape From Tomorrow. To shoot his film, set in Disney World, Moore purchased a season pass to the park and secretly filmed his actors without the park’s knowledge. There is no question that, at a minimum, Moore violated the …

Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles Directed by Jon Foy 2011, USA, 88 mins. “Toynbee idea / in Kubrick’s 2001 / resurrect dead / on planet Jupiter” – this message, appearing in colourful tiles sunk into asphalt, has appeared in cities across the US and in several in South American. Toynbee tiles have …

Academy Award-winning director Director Kevin Macdonald (State of Play, Last King of Scotland, Touching the Void ) set out to create the world’s largest user-generated film compiled from 4,500 hours of footage sent in from 192 countries, with each selected contributor credited as a co-director. The landmark film, culled from 80,000 video submissions, is intended …

Winter’s Bone Directed by Debra Granik A critical darling since its Sundance debut, Debra Granik’s second feature (following the touching drug-addiction drama Down to the Bone) cements her, along with Kelly Reichardt and Andrea Arnold, as one of the most skilled female directors of the new century – even if it doesn’t cohere into quite …