‘In the Earth’: A Pandemic Puzzler from Ben Wheatley [Sundance Review]

A sun-flared and bong-addled tumble into a teenage Texan summer rife with bombshells and boyfriend problems, “Cusp,” from debut directors Parker Hill and Isabel Bethencourt is one of those fractal-style documentaries, in which any given sliver contains all the colors and contours of the whole. The opening is a case in point: Long-haired girls lounge on a swing in the park, scoffing, wriggling, idly shooting the shit – it could be any year from any of the last five or six decades, except for the phones they glance at every now and then.

Fran Kranz’s “Mass” is likely one of the most emotionally pulverizing films ever made about America’s gun-violence epidemic – but across its 110-minute runtime, not a single shot is fired. READ MORE: ‘Mass’: An Impressively Depressing Four-Way Powerhouse, Until the Walls Close In [Sundance] Instead, this intimate chamber piece centers on the parents of two teenagers involved in a school shooting, who come to the table six years later in hopes of finding a way forward from the unfathomable tragedy that’s ripped their lives apart.

Take the nomad out of “Nomadland,” and you’re left with “Land,” Robin Wright‘s feature-directing debut (she previously directed 10 episodes of “House of Cards“), in which she also stars, as a grieving woman who, somewhat ironically given the film bows in the era of mandatory isolation, moves way up into the mountains “to get away from people.” Problem is, take the nomadic element out of “Nomadland” (she moves only once and has done with it) and you’re also left with a less interesting, much more obvious movie, in which not only are we not introduced to a radically different way of living, we’re ultimately confirmed in our safest and most simplistic assumptions about how we live right now.

I did), you will see genius (I did), but you generally won’t see the highly anticipated mega hits found in Toronto, where “Joker” and “Hustlers” premiered. At Sundance, you’re just as likely to encounter “Call Me by Your Name,” a rapturous love story, as you are “Swiss Army Man,” a little-known flick in which Daniel Radcliffe pals around with a farting corpse.

It’s remarkably rare that anyone makes a hand-drawn animated feature for adults, let alone one as strikingly surreal and seriously minded as Dash Shaw’s “Cryptozoo.” READ MORE: 25 Most Anticipated 2021 Sundance Film Festival Premieres This Sundance premiere – honored with the fest’s Innovator Award in its NEXT section for “pure, bold works distinguished by an innovative, forward-thinking approach to storytelling” – takes place in an alt-history 1960s secretly populated by “cryptids,” including fantastic beasts like the Kraken, the Loch Ness monster, and Sasquatch.

Irene (Tessa Thompson) rarely passes for white. She fears for her safety too much to do so.

Female trauma’s been given a serious workout in cinema, liberally exercised in the fantasy genre of late. The celebrated “Promising Young Woman,” while dark satire, uses hot pink revenge fantasy to acerbically explore unresolved trauma (its we live in a society bias nicely unpacked here), and fellow Sundance film, “The Blazing World,” attempts to fall down the rabbit hole of make-believe and similar flight-or-flight responses to emotional scars, only to grotesquely exploit it with its awkward tumble.

What does dismantling the American carceral state look like? How can meaningful and radical police reform actually be enacted? After years of tireless work by activists, acting upon decades of injustice against the poor and People of Color, these issues of now part of mainstream political platforms. On a federal level, President Joe Biden’s recent executive order to phase out the use of private, for-profit prisons is a clear indication of how far things have come….and how much further they need to go.

S.O.S distress calls, fantasy escape from trauma, and forever wars that need to be fought all swirl together in “Mayday,” a dreamy and surreal new feminist fairy tale and revenge film that debuted at the Sundance Film Festival this week. The feature-length filmmaking debut of writer/director Karen Cinorre, “Mayday” centers on Ana, a young woman who is mysteriously transported to an otherworldly and dangerous island.

Curious is the current emphasis on women’s trauma in American genre film—the way it’s discussed online, marketed, singled out in the headlines—as if trauma were not already deeply embedded in the historical fabric of horror movies. Of course, in a time when more women filmmakers than ever are being given the opportunity to tell their stories, the rise of feminist horror should come as no surprise, especially given the #MeToo phenomenon and efforts to destigmatize mental illness.

For the first time in recent memory, the Sundance Film Festival recruited just three members each for its competition juries. Even in the context of a virtual festival, that might have been a mistake after one film dominated the Dramatic category winning four awards.

Reinventing a popular monster myth is central to Sean Ellis’ new horror film “Eight for Silver.” In this adaptation, the creature feature points a jagged mirror back to humanity and establishes itself on Hammer’s sturdy gothic foundations. The film’s stars, Boyd Holbrook and Kelly Reilly, recently spoke to The Playlist about the Sundance selection as well as the major projects in their future.

Sundance Film Festival, would more accurately be described as the nihilistic machinations of a tiny psychopath.He’s not a gremlin — he’s John (Charlie Shotwell), a quiet suburban boy who plays tennis video games all day and relies mostly on one long-distance friend for companionship. One day, he stumbles on an unfinished underground bunker in the woods beyond his backyard.

As a child, Mendel explored the nearby forests of Michoacán, a state in Mexico, with his older brother Vicente. The trees there are filled with massive, beautiful clusters of monarch butterflies.

13-year-old Sammy Ko (Miya Cech) is a problem child. Prone to skipping class, smoking cigarettes, and mouthing off to her teachers, she’s the opposite of the meek model student Hollywood typically imagines when writing young Asian-American characters.

Freely utilizing a non-linear structure, with mixed results, Ronny Trocker’s sophomore feature, “Human Factors,” is a compelling puzzle-box, showcasing a botched home robbery from five different points-of-view, that never fully synthesizes its twisty structure with a realized narrative. Filmed with an ironic detachment that recalls the work of Michael Haneke, “Human Factors” labyrinthian time-jumps, which freely move backward and forward at a moment’s notice to disorienting results, are more interesting to unpack after the credit roll than they are to keep track of at the moment.

So Nic Cage is a bank robber sprung, naked except for a sumo-nappy, from a lengthy stint in jail by the white-hatted, black-hearted Governor (Bill Moseley) of a fake Japanese cowboy town populated exclusively by caged Geisha prostitutes, one of the favorites of whom, Bernice (Sofia Boutella, being bafflingly good again despite the material) recently escaped, so The Governor straps Cage into a leather suit rigged with explosives on the arms, neck and testicles that are primed to explode if they detect his intention to physically harm – or get turned on by – “a helpless woman,” and sends him off into a neighboring irradiated wasteland where Time doesn’t work properly and which is populated by Mad Max-style bandits, itinerant preachers,

“Write what you know.” So said Mark Twain once upon a time, or at least that’s the popular belief. One cursory look at this body of work reveals that the guy didn’t follow his own advice, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t advice worth following.

For most teens, the scariest hurdle they’ll face is asking their crush out on a first date. But on this night, for the bashful Mike (Tyson Brown), preparing for his first outing with the headstrong Kelsey (Shelby Duclos), courting is the least of his issues.

You’ve heard this tale of superstar dreams many times before. A young talent comes to Hollywood to make it in the entertainment business.

Take the nomad out of “Nomadland,” and you’re left with “Land,” Robin Wright‘s feature-directing debut (she previously directed 10 episodes of “House of Cards“), in which she also stars, as a grieving woman who, somewhat ironically given the film bows in the era of mandatory isolation, moves way up into the mountains “to get away from people.” Problem is, take the nomadic element out of “Nomadland” (she moves only once and has done with it) and you’re also left with a less interesting, much more obvious movie, in which not only are we not introduced to a radically different way of living, we’re ultimately confirmed in our safest and most simplistic assumptions about how we live right now.