ESPN’s latest documentary, The Last Dance, is a ten-part documentary series chronicling the 1997-1998 Chicago Bulls and their journey to their sixth championship.  The Bulls gave the documentary team unprecedented coverage, giving us a truly immersive experience into what one of the greatest teams the NBA has ever had went through during their final season. Growing up in a suburb of Chicago throughout the 90’s, this Bulls team was an essential part of my life…

  In my review last year of Sophia Coppola’s Priscilla, I wrote briefly about movies with similar subjects coming out within a year of each other, like Armageddon and Deep Impact, Wyatt Earp and Tombstone, Elvis and Priscilla, and the list goes on. We’ve just done that again in the forms of Reality and Winner, two films that look at NSA whistleblower Reality Winner (her actual name) who leaked government documents in 2017 showing Russia’s…

  Freaky Tales is like Quentin Tarantino made a movie about the Bay Area. This is a non-linear, interconnecting story about several lives in a revisionist version of the Bay Area 1987 that is full of life, attitude, and interesting filmmaking. Following Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, a movie that shook the cinematic landscape back in the mid-90s, there was a wave of filmmakers trying to create the next Pulp Fiction. It felt like every year…

  My viewing of Gaucho Gaucho, the latest documentary from filmmakers Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw, was an interesting one. At the Sundance Film Festival, there are films that you can see in person in a theater, but you also have the option to stream some of the films starting on a certain date during the festival. With scheduling conflicts with other movies, I was unable to see Gaucho Gaucho in a theater during the…

  Skywalkers: A Love Story is Man on Wire for a new generation. It’s a heart-racing documentary about a death-defining stunt, how the stunt people do it, and what brought them to that point. It’s a love story, crime film, and underdog sports story all rolled into one outstanding documentary. Angela Nikolau and Ivan Beerkus are a thrill-seeking couple who travel around the world to perform death-defying stunts by illegally climbing the tallest buildings in…

  Flora and Son is writer/director John Carney’s first film since 2016’s delightful Sing Street. Yet even with a seven-year hiatus, Carney has not missed a step as a writer, director, and songwriter. Flora and Son is a wonderful and whimsical tale about the mother-son relationship and how creativity can bring people together. Set in a small Irish town, Flora and Son follows Flora (Eve Hewson), a young, irresponsible woman living in an apartment complex full of unique characters. Flora’s…

  Infinity Pool was one of my most anticipated movies of the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Director Brandon Cronenberg, son of the legendary David Cronenberg, has immediately established himself as an exciting voice in horror with his first two films, 2012’s Antiviral and 2020’s Possessor, one of my favorite movies from that year’s Sundance, by making visceral, grotesque horror films that run in the same vein as his father’s iconic body horror films while also…

  If there was a way to invest in the careers of an actor, like buying stock in a company in hopes of future gains, I would take all the money I have and invest it in the career of Jonathan Majors. From the first time I saw him in 2019’s The Last Black Man in San Francisco to last year’s war-epic Devotion, Majors has been a star on the rise, consistently giving great performances…

My reviews of Watcher, 892, and Call Jane, all of which premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival.     WATCHER Watcher is a tense, well-made thriller reminiscent of Hitchcock. The film follows Julia (Maika Monroe) a woman who has just moved to Romania with her husband Francis (Karl Glusman) for his job. Busy with work all day, Julia is left alone in her large, creaky apartment in a place she knows nothing about. She does some exploring…