In July of 1974, Florida news reporter Christine Chubbuck went live on the air and shot herself, marking the first suicide ever recorded on television.  Christine chronicles Chubbuck’s life the weeks leading up to her tragic end. Rebecca Hall plays Christine and she is unbelievable.  Hall gets lost in the role and gives the best performance of her career.  She becomes Christine by changing her voice and giving Christine mannerisms, like walking with her head down…

Nate Parker has been one of my favorite actors for a few years now.  I first saw him in 2012’s Red Hook Summer and he immediately stood out to me.  He really impressed me later that year in Arbitrage, where he gave the best performance in that entire film and that includes a never better Richard Gere.  And then, in 2013’s Beyond the Lights, Parker, much like the movie, was excellent but overlooked.  Parker is…

Michael Jackson, in my opinion, is the greatest showman ever to grace a stage.  He could sing like no one before or after him, his dance moves were effortlessly complex, and he knew how to put on a show.  In director Spike Lee’s documentary Michael Jackson’s Journey from Motown to Off the Wall, we get to see how brilliant Jackson was and a track by track look at one of his best albums. This isn’t…

In 2013, I was exposed to one of the most messed up, traumatizing movies I have ever seen.  The Richard Bates Jr. directed Excision is a vile and horrifying movie that takes suburban America ideals and flips them on their head.  This movie shocked me at the time and still shocks me today, especially the ending, which disturbed me for long after the screening. Well Bates Jr. is back with Trash Fire, another look at…

Sleight sounded like a coming of age urban tale that I’ve seen before.  Following a young street magician Bo (Jacob Latimore) who takes care of his sister after his mother dies.  In order to make enough money for him and his sister to survive, Bo does magic in the day and sells drugs at night for Angelo (Dule Hill).  But when he gets into trouble with Angelo, his life is thrown into turmoil and he…

The scariest movie of the 2016 Sundance Film Festival is not part of the midnight category.  Goat is a chilling and horrifying look at fraternity initiation at American colleges.  It is a shocking look  at the mindset of fraternities and what the lengths they go through for “brotherhood”. After a horrifying assault, 19 year old Brad (Ben Schetzer) enrolls in the same college as his brother Brett (Nick Jonas) and pledges the same fraternity. What…

I went into Morris from America completely blind. I had a quick synopsis and a cast of relative no names, save for Craig Robinson. This was probably the best thing I could have done for this film. Morris from America is a fresh and fun coming of age film with a new twist on old tropes and a great soundtrack. Morris (Markees Christmas) is a hip-hop loving thirteen year old living in Germany with his…

If you ever wanted to see Paul Dano ride Daniel Radcliffe like a dolphin through a large body of water as Radcliffe uses his rocket-like farts to power them forward, this is the movie for you! The craziest thing about Swiss Army Man is that that part happens within the first two minutes of the film and is far from the craziest thing that happens in this movie.  This is as weird as it is original,…

Under the Shadow is the definition of a slow burn. This Persian horror flick is one of the creepier and tense horror movies I’ve seen in a long time and a perfect addition to the Sundance Midnight section. Set in war torn Tehran in the 80’s, a mother (Narges Rashidi) and her daughter must survive a mysterious evil that haunts there home. This movie is like the Persian version of The Babadook (2014).  Though it…

My first film of the 2016 Sundance Film Festival was as good of a start to the festival that I could ask for. Life, Animated is a movie that brings out every emotion a human being has, which leads to one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve had at the festival. Life, Animated is a documentary about Owen Suskind, an autistic boy who overcame his challenges by learning how to read, talk, and understand human…