Sundance

In the Same Breath For a while, Nanfu Wang’s In the Same Breath makes for a fascinating companion piece to Ai Weiwei’s 2020 documentary CoroNation. Neither director has been shy with their criticisms of the Chinese government, and so it’s immediately fascinating to see…

All Light, Everywhere If it hadn’t already been claimed, a much more appropriate title for Theo Anthony’s All Light, Everywhere would be The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes — after all, Anthony’s documentary does posit at one point that “an act of…

Pleasure “Are you here for business or for pleasure?” “Pleasure.” Leaving her Swedish small-town life for the glitz and glamour of Los Angeles, 19-year-old Linnéa (Sofia Kappel) carries herself with a worldly confidence that belies her delicate naïveté. She has come to seek pleasure…

Life in a Day 2020 Documentaries like Life in a Day 2020 practically cling with desperation to a concept of the universal. Such works insist that there is always substantial, laudable common ground that humanity shares, casting our faults as small obstacles to overcome,…

John and the Hole Tapped by Cannes for its theoretical 2020 slate, John and the Hole carried a bit more intrigue than most films heading into Sundance ’21. This designation, regrettably, is mere red herring, as Pascual Sisto’s debut is but another in this…

The Sparks Brothers For most of their fans and listeners, a first encounter with Sparks did not result in the assumption that the duo of Ron and Russell Mael were two Californian-born musicians. In fact, at that time, Sparks’ work bore a sound that…

CODA The title of Siân Heder’s sophomore feature is twofold: an acronym for the “child of deaf adults,” and the concluding passage or movement of a music piece. Centered around seventeen-year-old Ruby Rossi (Emilia Jones), the only hearing member in her deaf family of…