Category: sundance 2017

The characters in Luca Guadagnino’s quietly staggering Call Me by Your Name are members of an incredibly wealthy family. These “Jews of discretion” whose family tree covers most of Western society and who spend summers and holidays at their country...

The Polka King, from directors Maya Forbes and Wallace Wolodarsky, aspires to be a stranger-than-fiction account of an eccentric real life swindler with a heart of gold. And, technically, that’s what it is. Its true purpose, however, eventually reveals itself...

In the first full scene of Alex Ross Perry’s Golden Exits, a palpable tension hangs over the seemingly innocuous preparation for a small dinner party. An archivist named Nick (Adam Horovitz) is about to introduce to his wife Aly (Chloe Sevigny) and...

Mudbound is not just a clever name for Dee Rees’ extraordinary new film. Rain and the thick, brown, sticky slop that ensues are a constant presence. In the opening scene, which we’ll soon learn is a flash-forward, two brothers (Jason Clarke...

There’s more than a bit of a wink to the casting of Sam Elliott in Brett Haley’s The Hero. The veteran Western actor and prolific TV commercial spokesman plays a veteran Western actor and prolific TV commercial spokesman. Luckily that’s more...

Nacho Vigalondo’s Colossal is the best kind of genre movie, the kind that uses its fantastical elements as exaggerated yet incisive metaphors to illustrate its more human stories. In fact, Vigalondo goes beyond that, managing skillfully to slot various interpretations into his metaphors...

If it weren’t for the fact that it’s a harrowing tale of survival in the dangerous, freezing mountains, Alex and Andrew Smith’s Walking Out would serve as a hell of an advertisement for the Montana tourism board (to certain types, it still...

Francois Ozon’s Frantz is set, at least initially, in small town Germany in the immediate aftermath of the First World War. That this defeated nation is already a breeding ground for the nationalism that will give rise to Nazism years later is...

Two features in, it continues to be difficult to talk about director Gillian Robespierre without comparing her to Woody Allen. Her new film Landline may trade Allen’s Upper West Side for Downtown but the Jewish middle class milieu and the autumnal New...