What I Saw, Heard, and Felt as Sundance Bid Farewell to Park City—and Robert Redford
“What I’m saying is, if you want to go, I won’t stop you.” At the final Park City edition of Sundance last week, my 14th consecutive one, I contemplated this line from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid daily. That’s because a gorgeous, Western-style artwork painted on plywood by local artist Ryan Williams stood not far from The Library Theater, displaying the dearly departed Sundance Kid Robert Redford (who passed away last September at age 89) next to these famous words spoken by his character. The quote felt like a homegrown farewell steeped in bittersweet resignation, an ingenious marking of […]
What I Saw, Heard, and Felt as Sundance Bid Farewell to Park City—and Robert Redford Read More »
For me, the fun of Sundance—and all festivals—is seeing not the films that everyone is buzzing about pre-fest (I can wait for the streaming release), but discovering the quieter gems that US distributors would do well to take a chance on. While this year’s nonfiction crop was weaker overall than 2025’s exceptional slate—which saw such cinematic revelations as Life After, The Perfect Neighbor and Seeds all competing in the US Documentary Competition—the docs that rose to the top, most notably the handful below, have continued to stay with me long after the final credits rolled in Park City. Barbara Forever […]
Best documentary has become the toughest Oscar category to predict in recent years, especially when it comes to nominations. The documentary branch has become famously quirky in recent years, passing over such populist, acclaimed, and decorated titles as Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, American Symphony, and Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story. Past performance is no guarantee of success—I’ve even heard rumors that some voters will refuse on principle to nominate a film by a previous Oscar winner—and geography is not destiny. Even as the best international feature category has skewed more European in recent years, the documentary branch has gotten […]
Dan Welch and David Cardoza, self-described “editors-for-life” of the NYC-based Cashiers Du Cinéma zine, are taking over Brooklyn’s BAM Cinema for a 10-film series “contemplating cinema work in works of cinema,” running from February 13-19. For those unfamiliar with the pair’s publication, each edition features a variety of comics, essays, and short fiction “about the ragged glory of working at movie theaters,” all penned by current or former movie theater employees. The first issue was published in 2023, and the most recent fourth issue was released back in December to substantial buzz, complete with a shout-out in The Strategist’s “Best […]
As Sundance 2026 wraps and the curtain drops on Park City, the Sundance 2026 awards have been announced. Films fortunate enough to be so honored by Sundance juries gain valuable visibility, boosting their chances at finding greater audiences. Several of the films mentioned in my first round of coverage won awards. However, many of the premieres at Sundance you will likely hear very little about. As director Eugene Hernandez commented at the awards ceremony, out of 16,000 submissions, 150 films were selected for this year’s Sundance. How many festival attendees, no less reviewers, are able to see more than 20-30 […]
The awkwardness of puberty is exacerbated by a cruel social game in The Plague, the feature debut from writer-director Charlie Polinger. Set in 2003, Ben (Everett Blunck), a shy yet precocious kid, finds himself shipped off to a water polo camp very far from his childhood home in Boston. His young teammates can practically smell Ben’s desperation for belonging; luckily for him, there’s already someone cemented at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Eli’s (Kenny Rasmussen) reputation as a maladroit athlete and for inept conversationalist make him an easy enough target for bullies, but the kids have added an additional […]
Adapted Screenplay. It’s often an afterthought: an extra category on the Oscar ballot, an edge in your betting pool. Unlike the rest of the Academy, screenwriters get two shots at an award: one for original screenplay, one for adaptation. If you haven’t sacrificed your career to the cruel gods of screenwriting, “adapting” may seem less … impressive. Isn’t it easier to have a well-paved Autobahn to guide you, rather than hacking your way through virgin story wilderness? Can’t you just “cut-and-paste?” Do we need a whole other category for that? I’ll stop there before the WGA revokes my card. Every […]
It’s only been five days since the Oscar nominations announcement, and campaigning for Phase 2 hasn’t kicked into gear quite yet. There have been a lot of other things to focus on: the final Park City Sundance Film Festival, where many 2027 Oscar contenders may debut (six features from last year’s festival earned Oscar noms this year, including best picture nominee Train Dreams); a massive snow storm blanketing half of the country from the Midwest to the East Coast; and the ongoing horror in Minneapolis that gets unbearably worse every day. It feels a little trite, to me at least, to […]
When Padraic McKinley first received The Weight screenplay from producers Nathan and Simon Fields, he loved the atmospheric world it summoned forth. Original screenwriter Matthew Booi, along with Leo Scherman and Matthew Chapman, had created something special with this Western-adjacent Depression-era crime-thriller. But as a longtime editor across film and TV (Igby Goes Down, Dexter), as well as a producer with strong instincts about story and pacing, McKinley knew the screenplay still needed work. Ethan Hawke had a similar feeling about the original script. McKinley asked him to play lead character Samuel Murphy, an incarcerated man desperate to reunite with […]