We’re taking a breather from the Sundance Film Festival, and re-energizing as Berlin looms on the horizon, but looking back at how things went down in Park City, it was a pretty good year. But as always, you simply can’t see everything, and something we’re bummed to have missed was “When The Street Lights Go On.”

READ MORE: Best And Worst Of The 2017 Sundance Film Festival: ‘Call Me By Your Name,’ ‘Get Out’ And Snow

Initially ordered as a pilot for Hulu, the streaming service has since moved on, leaving the show seeking a network home, and buzz certainly indicates that if someone takes a chance, it could very well find an audience.

Continue reading Trailer For Hotly Buzzed Sundance TV Pilot ‘When The Street Lights Go On’ Which Still Needs A Network Home at The Playlist.

Frankly, it’s our guess the gatekeepers of the Sundance Film Festival are just happy they made it through this year’s installment alive. Somewhat unexpectedly, the weather and politics played a huge part in the 2017 edition of America’s most prestigious film festival and the usual sense of euphoric excitement was often missing. That’s not to insinuate there weren’t incredible films shown. There were quite a few (which you can find here), but when everyone is focusing on their phones for the latest news updates it put a bit of a grey cloud over the proceedings.

Continue reading Best And Worst Of The 2017 Sundance Film Festival: ‘Call Me By Your Name,’ ‘Get Out’ And Snow at The Playlist.

The 2017 Sundance Film Festival has come to an end and it’s time for the awards. There was snow (I mean, lots of snow), power outages, cyber attacks, a Women’s March with 8,000 participants, and some pretty damn good films.

READ MORE: The 30 Breakout Performances & Filmmakers Of The 2017 Sundance Film Festival

An awards ceremony hosted by Jessica Williams took place in the middle of an insane day with the world reacting to Trump’s Muslim ban.

Continue reading Full 2017 Sundance Film Festival Award Winners List at The Playlist.

Manana lives elbow to elbow in her Tbilisi apartment with her husband, Soso; her two children, Lasha and Nino; her mother; her father; and Nino’s husband, Vakho. If she wants to get dressed for the day, she has to sneak into Nino’s room and quietly sort through the family wardrobe that everyone keeps their clothes in, and she has to be careful, or the wardrobe creaks and wakes up Nino. Peace and quiet are foreign concepts to her.

Continue reading ‘My Happy Family’ Is A Compassionate & Complex Look At Liberation [Sundance Review] at The Playlist.

PARK CITY – After three feature screenplays including the semi-underrated “Lola Versus,” Zoe Lister-Jones has finally jumped in the director’s chair with “Band Aid.” The often funny and often slightly serious dramedy debuted at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival this past week and while it might not be a complete smash it proves Hollywood studios should give Lister-Jones serious consideration when broadening their search for new filmmakers.

Continue reading Fred Armisen Steals Zoe Lister-Jones’ Funny Relationship Dramedy ‘Band Aid’ [Sundance Review] at The Playlist.

During the first act of the wholly necessary “extreme” action sequel “xXx: Return Of Xander Cage,” human/boulder hybrid Vin Diesel’s character requests to put together his own team of badasses in order to go after a MacGuffin thingamajig. Of course, this leads to a series of tongue-in-cheek sequences where we meet members of the team one-by-one. One of these scenes opens on an assassin in the African wilderness, presumably about to shoot a lion.

Continue reading Documentary ‘Trophy’ Is An Important, Heartbreaking Look At The World Of Big Game Hunting [Sundance Review] at The Playlist.

There are few tropes as deeply ingrained as those of the horror genre. More often than not, even a luddite could spot a horror film in the first minute. But in a way, this overwrought frame that we have all become so familiar with has pushed many young filmmakers to buck against the cliches and create some truly surprising and downright chilling movies.; last year alone we got “The Wailing,” “The Witch,” “The Invitation,” and “Green Room,” most of which feature at least a semblance of those same well-trodden narrative devices and archetypal characters.

Continue reading Taut And Shocking ‘Killing Ground’ Is An Assured, Disturbing Debut Feature [Sundance Review] at The Playlist.

PARK CITY – The first scene of James Strouse’s “The Incredible Jessica James,” which premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival Thursday night, is a star-making showcase for the talents of its leading lady Jessica Williams. The former “Daily Show” correspondent, actress, comedian, actress and “2 Dope Girls” podcast co-host plays another Jessica, a struggling playwright on a Tindr date with a guy who may never realize how much he’s being played.

Continue reading Jessica Williams Can’t Help ‘The Incredible Jessica James’ Live Up To Its Name [Sundance Review] at The Playlist.

24-year-old German filmmaker Helene Hegemann might be a little obsessed with her own life, the blissed-out teenage years of drugs, sex, night club escapades, strung-out mornings and all forms of her cathartic excess. Yet the writer/director is also a little fixated on magical beasts; a unicorn here, some llamas there, a cute little waddling penguin appearing out of nowhere and of course, the strange little axolotl.

The central metaphor of “Axolotl Overkill” is a little too on the nose, or perhaps too on the tail of the weird, translucent-looking creature.

Continue reading ‘Axolotl Overkill’ Is A Stylish, Striking Flame Of Youth In Revolt [Sundance Review] at The Playlist.

The early scenes of the contemporary romance “Newness” make it seem like the movie is going to be a frank critique of dating in the iPhone age, when apps make it easier to find a mate — at least for the night —but also make it easier to ignore them once the sex is over. Director Drake Doremus and his frequent writer/producer partner Ben York Jones open “Newness” with a frenzied montage of swiping and screwing, facilitated by a dating app called Winx.

Continue reading Drake Doremus’ ‘Newness’ Starring Nicholas Hoult Puts A Fresh Spin On Familiar Relationship Problems [Sundance Review] at The Playlist.

PARK CITY — Danny Strong is a two-time Emmy-winning screenwriter who wrote “Game Change,” “Recount” and “Lee Daniels’ The Butler.” He also co-created a little series you might have heard of called “Empire.” Tackling the life of one of America’s greatest literary voices might have been a bit much for his directorial debut. That’s the thought that starts to percolate through your mind as you sit through the J.D.

Continue reading Nicholas Hoult Is J.D. Salinger In The By-The-Numbers Biopic ‘Rebel In The Rye’ [Sundance Review] at The Playlist.

We’re a week into the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, and, like American democracy, things are starting to wind down. Most of the major movies have premiered, critics have their favorites (and least favorites), and many of the hot-ticket movies have already been snapped up by distributors, with the box-office success of “Manchester By The Sea” fueling a healthy market for sellers. There’s plenty more to come — we’ll be filing more reviews in the days ahead — but we wanted to start to take a view of the festival as a whole.

Continue reading The 30 Breakout Performers & Filmmakers Of The 2017 Sundance Film Festival at The Playlist.

“Please don’t let it be a cell,” Lakeith Stanfield whispers every morning as lights stream into his eyes and he begins to awaken in the prison drama “Crown Heights.” He’s hoping his bleak, unjust imprisonment is all a dream, but every day that he rises, he finds himself trapped in a waking nightmare. Based on the true story of Colin Warner and his wrongful incarceration that lasted 20 years, “Crown Heights,” by director Matt Ruskin, is an excoriating look at the judicial system, the prison-industrial complex and the war on crime perpetrated by three generations of Presidents (Reagan, Bush, Clinton) who were reacting to the so-called crime epidemic in the ’80s and early-’90s.

Continue reading Lakeith Stanfield’s Got Soul, But The Prison Drama ‘Crown Heights’ Needs More [Sundance Review] at The Playlist.

PARK CITY – Bradford Young earned his first Oscar nomination today for “Arrival,” Denis Villeneuve’s moving sci-fi drama, the night before his second collaboration with director Andrew Dosunmu, “Where Is Kyra?,” debuted at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. Both films are examples of his expert cinematography skills, as there are few people on this planet that can light a room like it’s the canvas of a 17th-century Vermeer.

Continue reading ‘Where Is Kyra?’ With Michelle Pfeiffer And Kiefer Sutherland Is Beautifully Lit But An Inert Slog [Sundance Review] at The Playlist.

So far during her movie career, Cate Blanchett has done uncanny imitations of Katharine Hepburn and Bob Dylan, and has played characters ranging from queens to elves to identical cousins. But she’s never made a film quite like “Manifesto.” Stitched together from a gallery installation by artist/filmmaker Julian Rosefeldt, “Manifesto” sees Blanchett playing 13 different characters — with 13 different accents — in a series of tableaux that have her reciting passages from various fiery old artistic declarations of principles, from the Dadaists to Dogme 95.

Continue reading Cate Blanchett Is Thrilling & Brings Cinematic Verve To ‘Manifesto’ [Sundance Review] at The Playlist.

PARK CITY – Small town underdog looking to make it in the music business isn’t exactly the most original idea for a movie. And throwing in a hip-hop angle is familiar territory even at Sundance (see 2005’s “Hustle & Flow”). It’s a huge credit to writer and director Geremy Jasper then that “Patti Cake$,” which debuted at the 2017 edition of the festival on Monday, breaks through that familiar convention with flying colors.

Continue reading Danielle Macdonald Takes The Mic In Crowd-Pleaser ‘Patti Cakes’ [Sundance Review] at The Playlist.

The world inhabited by Dayveon (Devin Blackmon) is filled with the wild, raw beauty of the South, the barely existent convenience stores in derelict shopping strips that prop up the grim economy of rural neighborhoods, and the beat up clapboard houses where everyone struggles to make ends meet. To this thirteen year-old teenager, everything around him is “stupid” as he intones in the opening voiceover of the low-key “Dayveon,” the debut film from Amman Abbasi which acts as a calling card for strong directorial talents that are first displayed here, but are sure flourish even more powerfully in future efforts.

Continue reading Director Amman Abbasi Displays A Compelling Cinematic Voice With The Lyrical ‘Dayveon’ [Sundance Review] at The Playlist.

There is a recognizable tradition of arthouse home invasion movies, one that includes Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “Theorem” or more recently, 2013 Cannes Competition entry “Borgman.” Chilean helmers Alicia Scherson and Cristián Jiménez collaborate in their riff on this sub-genre with the beguiling “Family Life,” part of the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival.

Continue reading ‘Family Life’ Is A Strange, Caustic & Funny Chilean Cinema Discovery [Sundance Review] at The Playlist.

Only a filmmaker as talented as Alex Ross Perry could make a movie as misbegotten as “Golden Exits.” With his past features “Impolex,” “The Color Wheel,” “Listen Up Philip,” and “Queen of Earth,” Perry has established himself as one of American independent cinema’s best young writer-directors, equally interested in the quality of his images and the richness of his characters.

Continue reading Alex Ross Perry’s ‘Golden Exits’ Is A Collection Of Half-Realized Ideas And Characters [Sundance Review] at The Playlist.

Eliza Hittman first came onto our radar with “It Felt Like Love,” and she’s a filmmaker we’ve kept an eye out for ever since. She’s back this year with “Beach Rats,” a new film premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, and it promises another intimately drawn story.

Inspiration for the movie came during the making of “It Felt Like Love” from an unlikely source — a single image on Facebook.

Continue reading Sundance Exclusive: New Poster & Photos For Eliza Hittman’s ‘Beach Rats’ at The Playlist.

If recent critical darlings “Neon Bull” and “Aquarius” are something to go by, Brazilian cinema is poised to break out in a major way. Film festival programmers the world over are surely scouring markets for the next big thing from the South American country, with Sundance hedging their bets on “Don’t Swallow My Heart, Alligator Girl!,” the feature-length directorial debut for filmmaker Felipe Bragança.

Continue reading Potential Goes Unfulfilled In The Ambitious ‘Don’t Swallow My Heart, Alligator Girl!’ [Sundance Review] at The Playlist.

Cartoonist Dan Clowes is responsible for some of the best graphic novels and short comics stories of the past 25 years, two of which — “Ghost World” and “Art School Confidential” —  ave been made into movies. But it’s his book “Wilson” that best represents his work as a whole. A character sketch about a chatty, reactionary misanthrope, “Wilson” is structured as a series of one-page comic strips, drawn in a variety of styles, which combine to tell a loose story.

Continue reading ‘Wilson’ Starring Woody Harrelson Is A Simplified Version Of A Much More Complicated Comic [Sundance Review] at The Playlist.

PARK CITY – Ever since Oliver arrived at the summer residence of Elio Perlman’s parents in the Italian countryside, the 17-year-old has had something of a crush on the doctorate student seven years his senior. It’s 1983 and Oliver (Armie Hammer) has traveled to Europe for a six-week retreat to work with Elio’s father (Michael Struhlbarg), an esteemed professor specializing in Greco-Roman culture. Elio (Timothée Chalamet) misinterprets Oliver’s own initial courting, but his frustrated heart finally forces him to bravely reveal his feelings.

Continue reading Armie Hammer & Timothée Chalamet Find Love In Luca Guadagnino’s Transcendent ‘Call Me By Your Name’ [Sundance Review] at The Playlist.

The Ghost in writer-director David Lowery’s “A Ghost Story” is an honest-to-goodness old-school ghost: white sheet, eye-holes, the whole bit. The first time he appears, it’s a great visual gag. An unnamed man (played by Casey Affleck) has recently died, and is laying under a sheet on a slab at the morgue, where his unnamed wife (Rooney Mara) has just identified his corpse.

Continue reading ‘A Ghost Story’ Starring Rooney Mara & Casey Affleck Weaves A Mesmerizing, Fascinating Tale [Sundance Review] at The Playlist.

PARK CITY — There are a lot of good things about Ry Russo-Young’s “Before I Fall,” which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival on Saturday. Let’s quickly review them, shall we?

As a director, Russo-Young has a distinct vision and an impressive visual aesthetic. The cinematography is gorgeous and the production design is the height of Pacific Northwest white privilege. The soundtrack is on point.

Continue reading ‘Before I Fall’ Is A Stylish ‘Groundhog Day’ With YA Movie Life Lessons [Sundance Review] at The Playlist.