Sundance 2023: Last News

Not yet thirty years old, Mia Goth has already collaborated with several world-renowned filmmakers for her willingness to follow their most demented muses. Her girlish appearance strikes a shocking contrast with the atrocity exhibitions that she gravitates toward: eagerly taking to sexual grooming in Lars Von Trier’s “Nymphomaniac;” undergoing forcible insemination and grisly spaghettification with Claire Denis in “High Life;” becoming an insane asylum’s incestuous princess for Gore Verbinski in “A Cure for Wellness;” witnessing her own disembowelment as part of the orgiastic blood ritual Luca Guadagnino that’s the grand finale to “Suspiria;” manifesting a century of madness for Ti West’s in-progress trio of period pieces of “X,” “Pearl,” and the upcoming “Maxxxine.” And so it’s no surprise that Goth’s latest outing is another twisted affair: Brandon Cronenberg‘s “Infinity Pool,” which takes place at a Mediterranean beach resort that hides a violent and depraved sub-culture.

This is “a place of mountains and myths,” we’re told as a montage of Central Appalachian imagery fills the frame. The mists, buffalo, ferns, and flowing waters intercut with the coal-filled mountains and mining towns that grew up around them.

“Shortcomings” begins with a magic trick of a scene: we see an emotional Asian American audience applaud when the end-credits of a film (modeled clearly on “Crazy Rich Asians”) start rolling at an Asian American film festival. Outside the screening, more Asian Americans celebrate the significance of the moment — an Asian American-led romantic comedy becoming a blockbuster hit.

Ira Sachs prefers relationships of the doomed variety — tempestuous passions torn asunder, sometimes by external forces like capitalism, which complicated the search for a home through New York’s cutthroat real estate market in “Love Is Strange” and “Little Men.” His latest film — the sexy, frustrating, loose-yet-compact, altogether irresistible three-hander “Passages” — also concerns property contracts and a homeless protagonist. However, this one’s got nobody but himself to blame for that predicament, fluent as he is in the same toxic strain of amour fou that previously perfumed the air in “Keep the Lights On” and especially Sachs’ debut, “The Delta.” As in that film — also pitched at the admirably humble quotidian scale Sachs hasn’t felt the need to exceed in more than a quarter decade — “Passages” follows a bisexual chaos agent so wrapped up in his own narcissism that he can’t see where his self-exploration ends and insensitivity to those around him begins.

While it may seem niche to those outside of Texas, high school mariachi competitions are quite prolific in the Lonestar State. The teams give students a creative outlet, as well as an opportunity to pursue scholarships in college music.

We are just under two weeks away from the kickoff of the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. However, the folks at Sundance aren’t done announcing new additions to the festival lineup.