My Courses

The two best films I saw at Sundance, and what will be two of the best films of 2025, couldn’t be more different, an invigorating reminder of the breadth of cinema at one of the most important film festivals in the world. The image of the train in Clint Bentley’s magical “Train Dreams” is weighted…

There’s a certain prescience to this year’s documentary selections that feel serendipitous given the unique afflictions besetting the world. Political, ecological, and societal grief are all at the forefront of attendees’ minds in Park City as the threat of California wildfires and the installation of the new administration rage on. These three documentaries orbit these…

No Sundance is complete without a trip through the Midnight programming. And very few films playing at Sundance are as creative and, ahem, as lively as Grace Glowicki’s exquisitely crafted Gothic comedy-horror “Dead Lover.” The writer/director’s second feature is a resourceful and theatrical take on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.  In fact, the film even begins with…

The NEXT category at Sundance is always the place to go if you want to see a big swing, and in this dispatch, there are three major ones. Two of the films take different routes to analyze men battling their anxiety about their impending fatherhood. One film is a modern adaptation of Dante’s Inferno. So,…

My critical efforts to never judge a film before seeing it are most challenged by remakes of movies I adore. Ang Lee’s “The Wedding Banquet” is a wonderful comedy, and Hector Babenco’s “Kiss of the Spider Woman” was a powerful filmgoing experience for me as a young man. I once discussed why a film should…