Category: Movies

‘I’m Fine (Thanks for Asking)’ is the first great pandemic-era film | SXSW review
I’m Fine (Thanks for Asking) follows a young mother as she tries to collect enough money to pay for an apartment for her and her daughter in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic

I’m Fine (Thanks for Asking), with its highly empathetic approach to telling a story of financial struggle during the coronavirus pandemic, is one of the best films about 2020. Entertaining, emotional, and highly effective, it will be a film we go back to a decade from now and marvel at our resilience.

Even though I’m Fine (Thanks for Asking) takes place during the pandemic, it’s not about the pandemic. It’s about what we do to ourselves (and each other) in times of strife. It’s about the inability to give an honest answer to “how are you?” It’s about those small nuances in our human existence that make us so resilient — and so fragile. Because of those things, I’m Fine (Thanks for Asking) is the first great movie about the cursed year that is 2020.

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When we first meet Danny (co-director Kelley Kali), a recently widowed hairdresser, and her 8-year-old daughter Wes (Wesley Moss) they’re sleeping in a tent just off the side of the road — a “fun camping trip” as Danny puts it to Wes. However, we soon find out that their fun camping trip isn’t exactly optional as they lost their home during the pandemic following the death of Danny’s husband Sam.

Now with just one day to collect the money for a security deposit on an apartment, Danny crisscrosses around the city in her rollerblades taking hair clients, running delivery service gigs, and chasing down any avenue to make the payment. It doesn’t go well.

Kelley Kali, co-director and star of I’m Fine (Thanks for Asking). Premiering at the 2021 Online SXSW Film Festival. Credit: Elton Anderson

A series of unfortunate events set her back every step of the way leaving her tired, depressed, and angry at her situation. It oddly plays like a suspenseful slow-burn thriller that is set against a racing clock — Uncut Gems comes to mind — but with a charm and humor to it. However, Kali and co-director Angelique Molina never let the movie stray into absurd. What they’re telling is a very real tale.

Despite her frustrations, Danny doesn’t actually tell anyone the predicament that she’s in, whether out of pride, embarrassment, or not wanting to make someone feel uncomfortable. More than once someone asks her how she’s doing to which she responds, “I’m fine, thanks for asking.” However, the people asking don’t want their real answer. In one scene, an acquaintance equates Danny’s husband dying to losing her husband’s cousin’s coworker.

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That is the brilliance of I’m Fine (Thanks for Asking). The cultural objects of the pandemic are present — the masks, the distancing, the closed shops — but it instead focuses on the individual struggle and the keenly human nature of making every situation about yourself. How can one be empathetic to another’s struggle when you’re “struggling” yourself?

After accidentally tripping into a puddle while high — a long story — Danny finds herself underwater. Money, her husband’s ring, and her rollerskates float around her. She is quite literally drowning. Of course, this is just a hallucinatory dream caused by the unintentionally powerful weed her friend gave her thinking it’s what she needed — instead of actual help. That’s the feeling that I’m Fine (Thanks for Asking) is trying to make you empathetic to. Even though the pandemic was hard for you, there are people that are actually drowning. You just have to take a second and ask, “how are you doing?”

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March 17, 2021
‘See You Then’ untangles the nuances of being a transwoman | SXSW review

See You Then follows two college exes, one of whom has come out as a transwoman, who reunite more than a decade after a contentious split

See You Then explores and challenges the nuances of being a woman and being a transwoman through a deeply satisfying conversation between two exes — masterfully portrayed by Pooya Mohseni and Lynn Chen.

What is most remarkable about See You Then, which premiered in the narrative spotlight section of the 2021 Online SXSW Film Festival, is how unremarkable it treats its story of two old college friends catching up after a sudden breakup. And it is remarkable because the main impetus of the story is Kris (Pooya Mohseni) coming out as trans and catching up with her ex-girlfriend Naomi (Lynn Chen) after a decade of silence.

Instead of adding over-the-top dramatics or watershed emotional grandstands, writer/director Mari Walker allows the conversation, which takes place over one night on their old college campus, to unfold organically. Truly, just two people whose lives intersected for a moment in time untangling their pasts and how it’s affected their present.

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As we learn in the first strained minutes of their reunion, Kris and Naomi once dated in college before Kris was out as a transwoman. However, just as she started to discover those feelings she left without notice leaving Naomi devastated. Now, thirteen years later, Kris has returned to make amends and explain her disappearance.

It’s a slow burn as the women’s experiences over the past decade come into focus — Kris transitioned and is living in Arizona and Naomi is married with two kids having given up her art career to become a professor. However, both of their lives are filled with regrets. Kris deals with the goon of time stealing away the time she could have had as her real self while also dealing with the limitations of being a transwoman, in particular those around love. Naomi, on the other hand, struggles with the stability that married life and motherhood present. Both experiences feel lived in and real.

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However, the restrained direction eventually gives way to a powerhouse final scene where Walker uses every tool available to her to deliver an emotional gut-punch that leaves you stunned. The mix of visuals, sound, and two massively impressive performances by Mohseni and Chen catapult us into a neat, but profound end that is worth the trip for.

Perhaps See You Then will be a film that cispeople will watch and begin to understand the nuances of being trans. “My life didn’t even begin until 14 years ago,” Kris says in one scene. The film explains that while there is something to gain from the trauma of being trans and transitioning, it’s not as empowering as people think it is. Our society doesn’t let it. See You Then gives us a moment to meditate on that.

? Hey, I’m Karl! Thanks for reading. Follow me on Twitter and Letterboxd. I’m also a Tomatometer-approved film critic.

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March 16, 2021
‘The End of Us’ is the first pandemic rom-com | SXSW review
The End of Us follows a couple who unfortunately breaks up just as the world locks down in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic

How it Ends try to make a relatable pandemic-set romantic-comedy, instead the overwhelming feeling is “too soon.”

It’s oddly fitting that The End of Us, directed by Henry Loevner and Steven Kanter, is premiering at the SXSW Online 2021 Film Festival when last year’s edition was the first major event canceled by the coronavirus pandemic. The film follows the first few months through the eyes of Nick (Ben Coleman) and Leah (Ali Vingiano), a couple that unfortunately decides to break up just as the nation goes into lockdown, leaving them stranded together.

Unlike any other large historical event, the very nature of the pandemic allowed it to be documented in almost real-time. And while in some iterations it could be effective — see Shudder’s brilliant Host — the result with The End of Us is a resounding “too soon.”

Because the film begins with Nick and Leah’s breakup, we only see the worst of both of them. Instead of humorously skewering millennial relationships or LA culture, both characters just seem, to be frank, terrible people. Leah is particularly shown in a bad light, which feels a bit icky considering the film is based on Coleman’s real-life breakup.

The first 30 minutes of the film is dedicated to a “previously on” recap of the pandemic. Leah is forced to work from home while Nick loses his bartending job as the country locks down. However, instead of triggering a visceral reaction — like when you see and meme and say, “heh, relatable” — it feels oddly dated. Perhaps if we saw this in a decade it’d feel more like poignant rather than taking advantage of a moment.

What I was really craving was a story about two exes forced together by extraneous circumstances, that’s where the interesting story lies. Instead, the film focuses on baking bread, arguing about masks, and pandemic hookups. By the time we get to the actual substance, it feels like we didn’t actually go anywhere or learn anything about the pair.

The final scene, which could have had an impact had this been a different film, is a glimpse into what could have been. The End of Us is a prime example of a great premise done at the wrong time. In a few years and with more perspective on the pandemic (and the breakup), perhaps this would be a time capsule of our current era. Instead, it’s just an artifact of the time itself.

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March 16, 2021
‘Nomadland’ finds people on the margins | movie review
Nomadland follows a widow as she tours the west living out of her van with just her fellow nomads for help, company, and strength

Quick cut: Chloé Zhao makes Nomadland‘s melancholic but hopeful story of nomads traversing the American West a stunningly complex character study of life on the margins of society.

Chloé Zhao makes Nomadland‘s melancholic but hopeful story of nomads traversing the American West a stunningly complex character study of life on the margins of society.

It’s often drilled into us from a young age to seek stability. Find a steady job, settle down with someone, buy a house, save your money. So, why do we leave? Why do we stay? What motivates us to keep moving forward—or keep retracing our steps? For the subjects of Chloé Zhao’s new film Nomadland—which was the centerpiece selection at the 58th New York Film Festival—movement is life and staying still is something of a finality.

The film, which is adapted from the non-fiction book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century, centers on Fern (two-time Oscar winner Frances McDormand), a former resident of a Nevada company town called Empire where both she and her late husband worked at a gypsum plant for decades. Following his passing and the collapse of the town after the plant’s closure, Fern takes to the road living out of a van jumping from job to job and nomad settlement to nomad settlement. A “houseless” living as she says instead of homeless.

In each settlement, she often sees familiar faces of those she’s met before on the road including Dave (David Strathairn), another nomad whose devotion to the lifestyle may be wavering, and a few other characters played by real-life nomads. However, there’s rarely a moment to latch onto—but that doesn’t make them unimportant. McDormand, whose greatest talent is to emote without saying a word, plays across these people and hears their stories. They divulge their reasons for moving—losing a loved one, making the most of their life, making the most of their death—which Fern absorbs with a quiet intensity as she evaluates her own reasons for being.

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Nomadland is quiet by design. Fern doesn’t speak more than she has to, none of the characters do. It echoes their deep understanding of each other. They know little about each other, but what they do know is they’re all wanderers and that is enough for them to bond together. We explore the small wonders of living on the go—how you use the bathroom, find a place to park for the night, keep warm—but what is more important is the wonders of deciding to live as a nomad in the first place.

The moment that soars Nomadland to greatness and gives Zhao her greatest argument to be the first woman of color to be nominated for Best Director at the Oscars belongs to a non-professional actor and real-life nomad named Swankie. Charlene Swankie, both the character and person, has a long history on the road. And in the film, she is one of the three mentors that helps Fern in her journey.

She recounts to her how she found herself on the road and what it means to her. The heartbreaking but hopeful monologue—I won’t spoil its contents—tells us everything we need to know about being a nomad. It’s what people have done for years to survive and for these people, it’s no different. It casts a melancholy tone over the film, one underlined by Ludovico Einaudi’s stunningly homegrown score and Joshua James Richards’s nostalgic cinematography. Zhao doesn’t chastise her characters for their choice, however, she doesn’t shy away from the trade-offs.

Nomadland was the centerpiece selection at the 58th New York Film Festival.

However, it isn’t just survival. There’s joy in the experience. There’s simple joys in every day of living an unattached life. Beneath the melancholy of it all there’s something so primally joyous about watching this group of largely elderly folk enjoy each other’s company around a campfire. It’s almost the antithesis of Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson. In that film, he finds the simple joys in routine and the places and people you see everyday. Nomadland flips it around and finds joy in the fleeting moments between destinations.

Underneath it all is the subtext of how the United States has largely failed the working class. The town where Fern lived with her husband, happily—as she works through in an Oscar-worthy monologue, was destroyed because of the 2008 financial crises. Her largely seasonal jobs are unstable and just enough to supplement the little income she receives from social security. Under those circumstances, being a nomad becomes a necessity.

However, as McDormand delivers in her signature deeply moving but opaque style of performing, it may have been a necessity, but it slowly morphed into a choice. Why participate in a system that isn’t stacked in your favor? In this foreign universe of nomads, we learn why each person moves or stays. More importantly, though, we learn that it’s never for the same reason—and none of those reasons are wrong.

Nomadland will be released on December 4, 2020.

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September 27, 2020
Streaming on Hulu: ‘Love & Basketball’

Two decades later, Love & Basketball is still one of the most empathetic romances and sports drama

? This recommendation for Love & Basketball was originally published in our newsletter. Sign up here.

Happy Thursday! If you live in New York City, there will be an emergency rally on Saturday in Washington Square Park protesting the violence again Asian-Americans in recent weeks. If you’re able and comfortable please come out and support!

▶ Streaming on Hulu | Today’s movie is Gina Prince-Bythewood’s romance Love & Basketball. Despite cementing itself in pop culture in subsequent years, the semi-autobiographical film actually flopped in the box office. But what counts is where it’s at at the end of the game, and Love & Basketball certainly scored a homerun (sports!).

Childhood next-door neighbors Quincy McCall (Omar Epps) and Monica Wright (Sanaa Lathan) slowly fall in love over the years as they pursue their respective basketball careers through high school and college. [Trailer]

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Sanaa Lathan and Omar Epps in Love & Basketball. Courtesy of Giphy.

Why you should watch it: After its release, Love & Basketball has become one of the most known and admired romances that came out of the 2000s. However, even with its newfound reputation, it’s somehow still underrated. The movie is beautifully complex with layers upon layers of achingly human emotions in each of the characters. Prince-Bythewood’s direction is brilliant as it shifts you in and out of the characters’ POV.

At its core, the film is a deeply intelligent and subversive character study about dreams, love, relationships, gender roles. However, what makes the film great is its memorable and irresistible cast of characters — in particular, Lathan, Epps, Alfre Woodard, and Debbi Morgan, who hits buckets in every scene she’s in (more sports!).

Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood
Runtime 124 mins
Year 2000

Hi, I’m Karl ? Follow me on Twitter and Letterboxd! I’m also a Tomatometer-approved critic on Rotten Tomatoes ?

Chloé Zhao makes Nomadland‘s melancholic but hopeful story of nomads traversing the American West a stunningly complex character study of life on the margins of society.

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February 27, 2021
‘Minari’ grapples with the American dream | Sundance movie review
Minari follows a Korean-American family as the set down roots and builds a farm in rural Arkansas in the 1980s

Minari is a beautifully told family drama about chasing the American dream and all the costs and beauty that entails. Terrifically acted by the entire cast, Minari is perhaps the best movie to come out of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.

▶︎ Minari is available to purchase on all platforms, including Prime Video.

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See all our reviews from the 2020 Sundance Film Festival here.

I can’t begin to describe how it feels to have so many Asian-American stories being told through film in recent years. From Lulu Wang’s remarkable The Farewell to the delightful Crazy Rich Asians or John Cho in thriller Searching. It feels like each is more personal than the last, and Minari is yet another great entry in that canon. However, that’s not to discount it as just another film with Asian leads. It is singular in its story — it is partially based on director Lee Isaac Chung’s own life — and style.

Set in1980s rural Arkansas (is that an oxymoron?) — the time period doesn’t really play into the narrative — Minari follows the Yi family as they pull up to their new home. The modest trailer, that’s missing stairs up to the front door, is set on a large plot of land with no neighbors in sight. The patriarch Jacob (Steven Yuen) is excited by the move from California, where he and his wife Monica (South Korean actress Yeri Han) made a living determining the gender of chickens (sexing is the technical term) for a decade. For him, this move represents a step forward as he’s determined to use the five-acre plot to build a farm and start a business.

Monica isn’t quite so ecstatic. All she sees is a waste of space, no community, and a house on wheels. She might have a point too. The couple has two kids, Anne (Noel Kate Cho), a young teen girl seemingly wise for her years, and a curious seven-year-old boy named David (Alan Kim) who is suffering from a heart murmur. Despite her begging and a blow-up argument between them that could marvel the one in Marriage Story, Jacob is adamant that this is where they need to be.

They compromise by bringing Monica’s mother (Youn Yuh-Jung) over from Korea to care for the kids while they are at work. Soonja, who hasn’t seen her daughter for years, is exactly the foul-mouthed, sassy grandmother we all we wish we had. Upon her arrival, it’s clear that David is put off by her — he was born after they moved to the States. She’s not the picture of an American grandma. In addition to her crass language, she gifts him a Korean card game that involves gambling (he should learn early, she says), makes him drink a concoction including deer antlers and at one point makes them hike deep into the forest to plant minari, which is a Japanese herb. David also makes it a point to say she smells like Korea.

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Lee Isaac Chung, director of Minari, an official selection of the U.S. Dramatic Competition at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute

However, her presence does ease some of the tension between Jacob and Monica. Jacob has time to get his farm up and running with odd but well-meaning local Paul (Will Patton) and Monica starts to fall into a routine trying to make the house a home and practicing sexing so she can make more money to support the family. She’s particularly helped by her mother’s presence as outlined in a hilarious scene where her mom shows her all the food and spices she brought from Korea — Monica cries when she sees she brought chili powder. Still, the financial burden of supporting the farm and the constant worry about David’s health makes Monica question her husband’s priorities.

Though the plot sounds like it could tread into melodramatics it never actually gets there. There is so much warmth and life in Minari. Chung grounds the movie in something real — since it is his own experience. None of the characters feel like caricatures. Even larger-than-life Soonja and precocious David — their banter is a highlight. And though set in 1980s Arkansas, they experience little overt racism. Instead, we see them suffer from microaggressions, like Monica being called “cute” by some of her fellow church parishioners or a little girl asking Anne if any of the words she’s saying are real Korean words before launching into verbal diarrhea that includes the words “ching” and “chong.” None of it is done out of malice and instead ignorance.

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This is the Yi’s internal story. In particular, Minari explores identity in the face of struggle and change. Jacob and Monica came to the States to find a better life. Jacob still seeks that out. He feels he’s destined for something more. That he owes it to his family to be successful. However, that’s the very thing that hurts the family. Monica struggles to find a place in Jacob’s dream and in the town they settle in. Soonja learns how to be the “right” kind of grandmother for David. An Americanized one that bakes cookies and doesn’t teach him how to gamble. But most importantly, we see the movie largely through David who more than anything wants to be a “normal” kid, even if that’s not attainable.

Minari is the kind of movie that wins you over with its sweetness and comedic edge — some of David and Soonja’s antics will have you in stitches — but keeps you in with its richly complex themes and characters. It’s an irresistible movie. I might even go as so far as to say that this is one of the great families in cinema.

All of it is aided by Emile Mosseri’s (coming off last year’s The Last Black Man in San Francisco) dreamlike score and cinematographer Lachlan Milne warmly lit cinematography. Whether or not it’s meant to feel like a dream is up to Chung to explain. However, it feels like Minari is someone looking back on their life with sadness but ultimately fondness.

The final scene escalates to great heights and ends with an emotional shot of the family that will leave you in tears of happiness. And in the moment before the movie cuts to black I realized how much I’d miss seeing these characters on the screen. I wish I could watch their lives continue to develop and watch them grow. That is how I know Minari is a great movie — perhaps a masterpiece of a family drama.

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January 28, 2020
SUPER LTD Acquires North American Rights to Theo Anthony’s ‘All Light, Everywhere’
All Light, Everywhere is a provocative and timely documentary that won Sundance Film Festival Special Jury Prize for Non-Fiction Experimentation

NEW YORK, NY | February 17, 2020 – SUPER LTD, the boutique division and incubator from NEON, have acquired North American rights to Theo Anthony’s All Light, Everywhere, which made its World Premiere to critical acclaim in the U.S. Documentary Competition section at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, where it won a Special Jury Prize for Non-Fiction Experimentation. Written, directed, and edited by Anthony, the film is a MEMORY production in association with Sandbox Films, produced by Riel Roch-Decter and Sebastian Pardo for MEMORY, and Jonna McKone. It is executive produced by Greg Boustead and Jessica Harrop for Sandbox Films. It features an original score by Dan Deacon.

All Light, Everywhere is an exploration of the shared histories of cameras, weapons, policing and justice. As surveillance technologies become a fixture in everyday life, the film interrogates the complexity of an objective point of view, probing the biases inherent in both human perception and the lens. Roger Ebert said All Light, Everywhere is a “vital criticism about American policing”, with the New Yorker describing it as “a film of individual and immediate fascinations”, and the Hollywood Reporter adding it is “a brilliant and chilling study in watching the watchers”.

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Ayo Kepher-Maat and Jeff Deutchman negotiated the deal for SUPER LTD with CAA Media Finance on behalf of the filmmakers. Autlook is handling international rights.

All Light, Everywhere marks Theo Anthony’s sophomore feature following Rat Film, which received critical acclaim following its premiere at the Locarno and True/ False Film Festivals, and was nominated for a 2017 Gotham Award for Best Documentary Feature film as well as Cinema Eye Honors for Best Debut Feature.

SUPER LTD recently acquired master director Gianfranco Rosi’s Notturno, Italy’s official submission for this year’s Academy Awards® which was shortlisted for Best Documentary Feature. Super LTD’s principals Darcy Heusel and Dan O’Meara were the team behind NEON’s Honeyland, which was the first non-fiction feature to land Academy Award nominations for Best Documentary and Best International Feature Film in the same year, and Victor Kossakovsky’s Gunda which was also shortlisted for Best Documentary Feature.

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February 17, 2021
‘Prisoners of the Ghostland’ is Nic Cage’s ballsy Mad Max | Sundance movie review
Nicolas Cage is on a mission to return a missing woman in the Japanese Wild West post-apocalyptic hellscape that is Prisoners of the Ghostland

Prisoners of the Ghostland is easily the wildest film of Nicolas Cage’s epic career. Mixing elements of Escape from New York and Mad Max: Fury Road with acid, the result is a psuedo-western-samarai post-apocalyptic action film that is going to be a midnight screening staple for years to come.

In the words of Trinity the Tuck, “I don’t know what the f—k she’s saying, but girl, I am living.” Prisoners of the Ghostland is an assault on the eyes, ears, mind, and sanity as Nicolas Cage rips through a Japanese Wild West post-apocalyptic hellscape littered with *checks notes* mutated corpses of prisoners. Yeah, I think I got that right.

To say that director Sion Sono, who is making his English-language debut with the 2021 Sundance Film Festival premiere of this film, is one of the most subversive filmmakers working today is an understatement. This satirical pseudo-western-samurai film feels like it has never existed before in any form. Yes, comparisons could be made to George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road or Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill or John Carpenter’s Escape from New York, but it’s his amalgamation of all those films, combined with some inventive East meets West production and costume design, that makes Prisoners of the Ghostland a singular property.

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Hero (Cage) is tasked by the Governor (Bill Moseley) to rescue his daughter Bernice (Atomic Blonde’s Sofia Boutella) from a mysterious outpost just past the ghostland where unknown nightmares await. And that’s really the entire plot. Nothing else is going on — and nothing else needs to go on. All you need to enjoy this film is the wildly inventive staging of this incredibly built world, the surprisingly adept action, and some of ballsy humor and line delivery from Nicolas Cage — this is a pun.

I could go on and on about Prisoners of the Ghostland. I could tell you about the testicle-exploding suit or the interpretive dance explaining a nuclear explosion or the bank heist gone wrong with famed actor John Cassavetes son, but I’m just going to let you experience this acid trip of a film on its own. Is it good? I mean, objectively, no. It’s dramatically inert, devoid of character, and confusing as all hell. Did I enjoy every minute of it? You’re damn right.

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Chloé Zhao makes Nomadland‘s melancholic but hopeful story of nomads traversing the American West a stunningly complex character study of life on the margins of society.

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January 31, 2021
‘Judas and the Black Messiah’ is essential cinema | Sundance movie review
Judas and the Black Messiah is an electrifying and contemplative biopic about Black Panther party chairman Fred Hampton and the plot to bring him down

Chloé Zhao makes Nomadland‘s melancholic but hopeful story of nomads traversing the American West a stunningly complex character study of life on the margins of society.

Of the movies that have come out after last year’s Black Lives Matter protests, Judas and the Black Messiah is perhaps the most essential. A raw and in the trenches look at the Black Panther party through the eyes of Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya returning to Chicago after his incredible turn in Widows), the chairman of The Illinois chapter, and FBI informant William O’Neal (Lakeith Stanfield), director Shaka King’s sophomore feature feels like a magnum opus.

That’s stunning considering his last feature, which also premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, came out six years ago to little fanfare. However, what makes Judas and the Black Messiah so essential is its ability to switch between electric moments of rebellion against an oppressive system and quiet moments of beauty, sadness, and love in the movement.

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To properly communicate my feelings towards the movie, I have to talk about my very visceral reaction to watching it. In one scene after returning from prison for a throwaway charge, Hampton gives a speech to a packed church of party supporters. Kaluuya is brimming with emotion — happiness, pride, rage — as his onlookers cheer him on. I was shaking like I was in the room, unable to sit any longer.

In another moment, as Hampton is talking to the mother of his child, Deborah Johnson (played sensitively by Dominique Fishback). She recites a poem to him about the fear of bringing a child into this “war zone.” Not the war between the party and the cops, the war between the country and Black people. It’s impossible not to ache physically. To feel empathetic for the experience of being Black in America.

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I’m writing this review immediately after watching the film and I’m having trouble communicating what makes it work so well. It’s above plot and above character. It’s a feeling. It’s purely human. Even O’Neal, seen as a traitor to many, is humanized. However, as Stanfield put in the post screening Q&A, that humanization isn’t meant to explain away his behavior. It’s meant to show us he felt guilty, but did what he did anyway.

Judas and the Black Messiah is perhaps the closest I’ve gotten in this long quarantine to feeling engulfed by a film like it is to watch one in a theater. It’s oscillation between electric moments of genre storytelling — thrilling moments of action — and quiet introspective studies of character keep you spellbound. That’s the word I’ve been looking for this whole review. It’s a spellbinding movie. One that will be studied for years to come.

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February 1, 2021
‘Coming Home in the Dark’ is a perfect midnight feature | Sundance movie review
Coming Home in the Dark follows a family on a road trip in the New Zealand mountains that is isolated and tormented by an unknown assailant

While Coming Home in the Dark doesn’t bring anything new to the thriller genre, it is an anxiety-inducing mean and lean entry that is the perfect kind of Midnight screening at Sundance 2021.

Coming Home in the Dark is like the best of home invasion thrillers — slow-burning, shocking, and continually shifting circumstances — except it’s not set in a home. The movie takes us off a hiking trail and on the road across the New Zealand landscape. If there is a perfect film to screen in the Midnight section of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, it is this one.

The plot is simple. A family is on a road trip to do some hiking in the mountains of New Zealand. There’s father Hoaggie (Erik Thomson), mother Jill (Miriama McDowell), and their two sons. With sweeping vistas captured by cinematographer Matt Henley, it’s clear that the family is alone.

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That is until Mandrake (Daniel Gillies) and his quiet sidekick Tubs (Matthias Luafutu) come walking over the ridge towards the picnicking family wielding a powerful rifle and nothing to lose. The entire ordeal, which takes place over a chilling twenty or so minutes is reminiscent of the infamous lake scene in Zodiac or perhaps the eggs scene in Funny Games. It’s restrained, simmering with tension — until it’s not.

Director James Ashcroft, who wrote the film alongside Eli Kent, said at the start of the screening, “I hope it gets under your skin.” And it does. Coming Home in the Dark is built for maximum anxiety-inducing suspense that can turn into violence — though not glorified — at the drop of a hat. That opening scene, one of the best of the fest, is the perfect example of that.

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As the story moves from the mountains to a car driving to an unknown location in the dark, the claustrophobic atmosphere becomes all the more apparent thanks to Gillies’ committed and unpredictable performance. However, unlike many other home invasion-inspired movies, Mandrake and Tubs aren’t torturing the family for no reason — like The Strangers’s infamous “because you were home” line. No, they have a purpose, which makes things feel all the more hopeless.

Coming Home in the Dark doesn’t necessarily reinvent the thriller genre. Instead, it takes all its best elements and puts them to good use. The result is a sleek, well-shot, mean, and lean — it clocks in at 93 minutes — entry that leaves you satisfied knowing that you got exactly what you were looking for.

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Chloé Zhao makes Nomadland‘s melancholic but hopeful story of nomads traversing the American West a stunningly complex character study of life on the margins of society.

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February 1, 2021
‘Mass’ tries to find the end of grief | Sundance movie review
Mass watches as four people come together to talk through an old wound that has been preventing them from moving on with their lives

Mass is a stunningly raw and emotional journey through trauma, grief, and healing featuring four tour-de-force performances that’ll leave you breathless.

Four people gather in a small room in the back of a Church basement. We know that they have a history considering the meeting is being coordinated like a sitdown between mafia bosses, but we don’t quite know what. And to truly appreciate Mass, which premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, you should keep it that way. The movie will tell you eventually, but it’ll earn that reveal.

Although, if you’re reading this review you likely already know it, so I’m not holding back.

Fran Kranz, perhaps best known as the stoner Marty in my beloved The Cabin in the Woods, directed the film from a script he wrote. His debut in both roles. But you would never know it from how assured the film is. Something happened to Gail (Martha Plimpton) and Jay (Jason Isaacs). Something so traumatic that they’ve been in therapy for years working up the courage to face Linda (Hereditary’s Ann Dowd) and Richard (Reed Birney).

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Director of the Sundance Film Festival Tabitha Jackson and director Fran Kranz at the virtual Premiere of Mass by Fran Kranz, an official selection of the Premieres section at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. © 2021 Sundance Institute.

The first 45 minutes of the film are spent skirting around the subject. Blessedly sparing us from any clunky exposition. We don’t need it anyway. All we need to know is the emotions. Gail is angry and hesitant. Jay is also angry but willing to hear things out. Linda is regretful. And Richard… well, Richard is detached. We sit in these roles through simmering, slow-burn dialogue where the couples catch up. Clearly not friends but connected. And then that moment happens. When Gail finally stops being hesitant and runs headlong into it all. “Well, your son killed my son, so I’d like to know.”

It’s revealed that Linda and Richard’s son killed Gail and Jay’s son in a mass shooting at their school. After years of therapy, Gail and Jay feel ready to ask Linda and Richard the questions that have been preventing them from moving on. Did they see the signs ahead of time? What happened in his childhood to make this happen? Do they blame themselves?

That last question holds a lot of weight for both couples. That’s because Gail and Jay want to find someone to blame, Richard wants to explain it away, and Linda is still trying to figure out whether or not she is to blame. Kranz’s screenplay shows incredible restraint by rarely veering into anything that feels overwrought or inauthentic — perhaps the one thread of conversation that does is about gun control.

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For a premise that is prime for melodrama, Mass has little of it. There is a flow to the conversation. A flow that starts out as a leek before becoming a tsunami in the third act. There are threads about parenting, consequence, and grief that take you on an emotional rollercoaster driven by four stunning and committed performances that is a watershed moment in each of the actors’ careers — Plimpton and Dowd steal the show though.

One theme that you’d expect me to list is forgiveness. But from my perspective Mass isn’t about that. Perhaps forgiveness is a part of it somehow, but it is simply a means to an end. At its core it is about healing. It is about hope. How in the darkest moments of life we have the capacity to heal our spirits. We have the means to do that but simply have to be willing to do the work. Mass shows us the work.

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Chloé Zhao makes Nomadland‘s melancholic but hopeful story of nomads traversing the American West a stunningly complex character study of life on the margins of society.

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January 31, 2021
‘John and the Hole’ needed more hole | Sundance movie review
John and the Hole follows a teen named John who holds his entire family captive in a deep concrete hole in the middle of the woods.

John and the Hole as an intriguing enough premise holds you for some of its running time, but its lack of commitment to the black comedy or biting satire that it begs for leaves you wanting it to dig deeper.

A boy named John (Charlie Shotwell) stumbles through the woods looking for his lost drone and instead happens upon a nearly ten-meter deep concrete hole in the ground. Cue title card John and the Hole. Fascinatingly we don’t get that title card until about thirty minutes into the film when we cut away from John’s narrative to a young girl in an alternate story (universe?) who asks her mother to tell her the story of “John and the Hole.”

That aside does a lot for the film, which premiered in the U.S. Dramatic Competition at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. It tells us that this is a cautionary tale rather than a depiction of real life. That’s partly why it feels so akin to director Yorgos Lanthimos’ work like Dogtooth or The Killing of the Sacred Deer. It’s clear that John and the Hole director Pascual Sisto — this is his directorial debut — was at least inspired by those films. It also explains why this film was a selection at the canceled 2020 Cannes Film Festival — Lanthimos was a favorite.

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We don’t learn much about the titular John other than the fact that he’s motivated to be an adult, which partially explains why one night he systematically and quietly drugs his family — father Brad (Michael C. Hall), mother Anna (Jennifer Ehle) and sister Laurie (Taissa Farmiga) — and places them at the bottom of the titular hole with no way out.

Outside of the hole John drives his parents’ car, buys himself food with money he withdraws from the ATM, and even tries and propositions Anna’s friend. It’s like a twisted version of Home Alone. Meanwhile, in the hole, the family struggles to understand why John is doing this to them. From what little interaction we see it seems the family is well-adjusted and loving. And John still cares for them by bringing them water and food — he even cooks them risotto at one point, the only time he actually addresses them.

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And while this setup and much of the plot feels prime for some Lanthimos-like black comedy or a stinging satire on parenting, it feels like the movie is just kind of there. Sisto noted that he got the inspiration for the film after reading an article about “snowplow parenting,” a strategy where parents clear any potential obstacles or challenges for their children to succeed. And while I can see the story pushing for some commentary on the subject, it never really scratches the surface.

There’s so much potential in a movie with the premise (hell, even the title) of John and the Hole. But what makes Lanthimos such a successful and singular filmmaker is his ability to find the outsized versions of humanity in his absurdist situations. John and the Hole is almost too realistic in its approach to even hold your attention. Honestly, a little less John and a little more hole would have done wonders for this movie.

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Chloé Zhao makes Nomadland‘s melancholic but hopeful story of nomads traversing the American West a stunningly complex character study of life on the margins of society.

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January 30, 2021
‘In the Earth’ is peak folk horror | Sundance movie review
A doctor and a park ranger venture into the forest to find a research hub that went quiet in In the Earth. However, after a run-in with a stranger, they get more than they bargained for.

In the Earth is a hypnotic, psychedelic, and anxiety-inducing assault on the senses that invokes comparisons to the best of folk horror, body horror, slashers, and science fiction, yet still comes out as a singular — and stunning — piece of filmmaking.

In the Earth, director Ben Wheatley’s newest film that premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival this week, is clearly derived from a broad range of cinematic influences spanning multiple genres. Yet it still feels like a singular piece of work and perhaps his most successful film to date.

I’ll be candid, I struggle with Wheatley’s films. They’re well-made, intriguing for a moment, but I’m left cold in the end. With In the Earth, Wheatley is able to capture your attention with an ever-changing narrative that makes slight shifts to constantly keep you on the edge of your seat.

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In the first act, which harkens back to the best of folk horror — The Blair Witch Project, The Wicker Man, and the more recent The Ritual come to mind — we’re introduced to Dr. Martin Lowery (Joel Fry), who makes his way to a checkpoint on the edge of a forest where he is meant to meet with the park ranger to guide him.

There are allusions to our current day, masks, hand sanitizer, temperature checks. However, it’s not explicitly stated what is happening in the world. The movie isn’t about that. The park ranger, Alma (Ellora Torchia), is tasked with taking Martin into the forest on an arduous two-day hike to meet with his research colleague who has stopped responding to his correspondence.

The hike is underscored by an incredible synth-infused score by frequent Wheatley and Darren Aronofsky composer Clint Mansell and isolating cinematography by Nick Gillespie that invokes the feeling of dread so often associated with folk horror. It’s a slow-burn until a terrifying attack in the middle of the night leaves Martin and Alma injured, shoeless, and looking for help.

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They run into Zach (Reece Shearsmith), a man living in the woods who shows them kindness by tending to their wounds, giving them food, and shoes. But not all is as it seems. Eventually, the pair find themselves in the middle of a slasher movie complete with The Shining-like imagery and edited with masterful precision for maximum anxiety.

There are so many comparisons I could make to try to help you understand what In the Earth is. In addition to the folk horror and slasher elements, there are flashes of body horror — like last year’s Possessor (produced by Wheatley), high-concept science fiction reminiscent of Upstream Color or Annihilation, and even moments of fantasy. However, In the Earth stands completely on its own.

It would be a disservice to divulge any more of the plot than I already have, but what I can say is that In the Earth is an assault on the senses — your eyes, your ears, even touch. In the Egyptian theater at the center of Park City, this film would have swallowed the audience whole. Even from my living room, I felt untethered. It’s psychedelic, hypnotic, and impossible to not lose yourself.

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Chloé Zhao makes Nomadland‘s melancholic but hopeful story of nomads traversing the American West a stunningly complex character study of life on the margins of society.

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January 30, 2021
'Herself' rebuilds a woman's life — Sundance review

Herself follows a domestic abuse survivor and her two daughters as they literally rebuild their lives by building their own house

See all our reviews from the 2020 Sundance Film Festival here.

The opening scene of Phyllida Lloyd’s Irish drama Herself, which premiered in the World section at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, features a devastating act of domestic violence that is difficult to watch. It’s made even more difficult considering Sandra’s (co-screenwriter Clare Dunne) children were there. It isn’t what you’d expect from the director that brought us Mamma Mia!, perhaps one of the most benign movies ever made. However, for the better, the movie begins to show incredible empathy and warmth in the face of such tragedy.

After the attack, Sandra separates from her husband Gary (Ian Lloyd Anderson) and moves her two young girls Molly (Molly McCann) and Emma (Ruby Rose O’Hara) into a hotel with the help of a women’s shelter. However, revealing a flaw in the system, Gary still has visitation rights and sees the girls on the weekend, much to Sandra’s dismay. Life has become a struggle for her. She’s working multiple cleaner jobs — at a bar and the house of a doctor suffering from an injured hip — looking for permanent housing for her and the girls, all the while with a broken hand.

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Incensed by the system’s inability to find her a permanent home and an offer of a plot of land on her property from Peggy (Harriet Walter), a doctor who Sandra’s mother worked for, Sandra makes the decision to build a house for her and her daughters. She finds a plan online and sets out to try to make her dreams come true. However, building a home on top of her other responsibilities and Gary breathing down her neck proves difficult. So, she seeks out the help of a contractor (Game of Thrones’ Conleth Hill) to help steer the project, which eventually attracts more volunteers.

We’ve seen this kind of story before. However, Herself differentiates itself by avoiding a lot of the pitfalls of this kind of empowerment story. Rarely does it wade into melodrama and instead remains relatively grounded. That’s partially thanks to Dunne’s massively winning performance as Sandra, who is defiant in the face of her obstacles but clearly overwhelmed — as most people would be. The screenplay that she co-wrote with Malcolm Campbell effectively build Sandra as a character while also giving us a chance to really understand the pitfalls of the system — both governmentally and societally — that make it difficult for her to get back onto her feet.

The movie has a deep understanding of the character’s plights and particularly how those plights make her stronger, but also how they sometimes defeat her. But in the face of it all Sandra persists with the help of those around her. The message of the movie is one of community, strength, and empowerment. And despite some questionable needle drops it never preaches that to you. Instead it gets its point across using its story. And what a story that is. It’s no wonder Amazon Studios acquired the film. It’s the kind of heartwarming project you want to sit on the couch and lose yourself to.

January 30, 2020
‘Promising Young Woman’ has high ambitions | movie review
The titular Promising Young Woman spends her nights baiting male predators into taking her home with them and teaching them a lesson they’ll never forget

Promising Young Woman balances its serious subject matter with a darkly comedic tone and satisfyingly entertaining revenge narrative that feels like a centerpiece of the #MeToo era. Add in a career-best performance by Carey Mulligan and you have a unique gem of a film.

▶︎ Available on-demand and in theaters on Christmas Day.

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If points were being awarded for level of difficulty, Promising Young Woman would score a ten. The incredible amount of thematic, tonal, and character weight that director and writer Emerald Fennell has to balance in the film—her debut—is admirable. Does it all work? Most of the time. Sometimes it gets away from her, but even when it does it’s hard to look away.

The movie, which makes a play for my heart by instituting Charli XCX’s “Boys” to great effect, opens with Cassie Thomas (Carey Mulligan) doing her best impression of me at a bar pre-pandemic. She’s sh!tfaced, barely able to hold her head up. Watching from afar, of course, are a group of men just off of work on the prowl. Fennell captures the group like predators—which you’ll see why—stalking their prey.

One of them, however, seems like a nice guy. Jerry (Adam Brody) chastises the men for objectifying Cassie before offering to help her get home. And that seems like the plan at first, but while in the car her makes a last minute decision to take her to his apartment. There he begins to try and have sex with her even though she’s passed out. However, he’s horrified to find you that she’s not drunk.

This is what Cassie does over and over every night as a way of scaring men into never preying on women again. We dig into exactly why Cassie is doing this throughout the movie in bits and pieces, but the core is because of an incident in college where her friend Nina was raped and, as the story often terribly goes, wasn’t believed. Though it’s never said, it’s heavily implied that Nina eventually killed herself.

After a swoon-inducing meet cute with Ryan (Bo Burnham), an old classmate, Cassie decides to finally enact revenge on the people that led to Nina’s suicide—a friend that didn’t believe her (Alison Brie), the dean of the school (Connie Britton), the lawyer who bullied her into silence (Alfred Molina), and the man who did it (Chris Lowell).

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This is the point when Promising Young Woman hits its stride with a keen handle on its darkly comedic tone mixed with devilishly fun revenge thrills—the movie is broken into sections as Cassie takes them down one by one. However, what elevates the movie is the sensitive exploration of Cassie’s complex and fractured psyche. We explore her motivations and why she’s chosen the life she’s chosen—with interludes with her parents played by Clancy Brown and the legend Jennifer Coolidge and her boss Gail (Laverne Cox). She was once on track to be a doctor, but this incident threw her life off track like it does many women.

The observations about men, sexism, and the systems in place—both societal and institutional—that allow predators to often get off free are both broad and specific, giving an acute insight into the plights of being a women in a society that doesn’t protect them. And that very ambition is admirable of Fennell.

The film does feel uneven at points. There’s a lot of story and development to get through—and to pack it up in a glossy and entertaining experience makes it even more difficult to pull off. However, Mulligan’s performance, emotional without being overwrought and campy without being over-the top, keeps us grounded in something real. She’s a revelation.

Even with a questionable ending, Promising Young Woman is one of those movies that you’ll find yourself coming back to. Its a heavy subject that it’s trying to cover, but Fennell does it with both reverence and a bit of cheeky fun that only someone who has a deep understanding of its complexities can pull off.

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Hey! I’m Karl. You can find me on Twitter and Letterboxd. I’m also a Tomatometer-approved critic.

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December 14, 2020