Sundance Film Festival

A Fake Ted Talk that Almost Makes Sense, Then Doesn't

It's hard to image something revolutionary arriving in a familiar package. The insidious things -- like fascism in the form of boys in knee socks with bowl cuts, or the Joker inside of a cake -- are the ones that pop out of predictable shapes and sizes. That's part of what ABACUS, Lars Jan's one-m ... More >>

Sundance Next Weekend Fest: Three Best Films to See

A Sundance Festival in L.A.

Stan Brakhage, Bruce Springsteen and Getting Your Film Into Festivals: Your Weekly Movie To-Do List

See also: *More L.A. Weekly Film Coverage Friday, July 19 We're loving Michael Cera right now. (Check out our review of his latest film, Crystal Fairy.) But if you want to take a short walk down memory lane, the New Beverly Cinema is screening Scott Pilgrim vs. the World at midnight, featuring Cer ... More >>

How USC Grads Freddie Wong and Ryan Coogler Became the Future of Filmmaking, Via Two Very Different Paths

Fruitvale Station was a hit at Sundance, while Video Game High School has millions of teen fans

Michael Cera Enters His Experimental Phase

Arrested Development star chats about his upcoming film Crystal Fairy and his new YouTube channel

Will Anyone Buy My Amazing Festival Movie?

As tends to be the case, several of the best films made in the last year have yet to screen outside of the festival circuit. For some this is because their scheduled release date simply hasn't arrived; others are still waiting to be picked up by a distributor in the first place. The vagaries of cin ... More >>

A Documentary About Music's Greatest Backup Singers, Bred in the Churches of South L.A.

Morgan Neville initially interviewed about 50 backup singers for his new documentary on the subject, Twenty Feet From Stardom, but the one who first convinced him he was onto something was Darlene Love. Love did backup work for the Beach Boys, Elvis and Sonny and Cher, among others, and also sang ... More >>

L.A. Film Festival 2013: The Basics

Berlin Discoveries: Greatness Emerges at the Year's First Major International Film Festival

Everything You Need to Know About What Happened at Sundance

Bold, impassioned, ecstatically beautiful, Shane Carruth's Upstream Color -- a lyric reverie on loss, love, and various invasions of the body -- was in a class by itself at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. Well, let's say it was a class shared by a more conventional but no less heady consideration o ... More >>

Sundance 2013: An 81-Year-Old, Shirtless, Japanese Artist Boxes With a Canvas

Bare-chested, in shorts and goggles, an 81-year-old Japanese man stood in front of us. It looked like we were about to watch him go swimming. But it was zero degrees outside, and we were in an art gallery during the Sundance Film Festival last Saturday. It turns out films aren't the only things to s ... More >>

Sundance 2013: America's Black Indie Film Renaissance

You could hear a pin drop during the first Sundance screening of writer-director Ryan Coogler's Fruitvale, an enormously powerful and moving debut feature based on the shooting death of 22-year-old Oscar Grant by Oakland transit police in the early hours of New Year's Day, 2009. Coogler opens the fi ... More >>

Sundance 2013: Sex with James Franco, Sultry Scarlett Johansson, Daniel Radcliffe's Jew-Fro, and a Great Film From Jordan

In his brief remarks before the first public screening of the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, Robert Redford praised the Sundance Institute's ongoing filmmaker development labs as "our core," noting that the festival itself was conceived "to create an audience for the filmmakers in our lab program."

Yung Jake, a Recent CalArts Grad, Could Be the Breakout Art Star of Sundance

Although half of Los Angeles will decamp this weekend to the snowy hillsides of Park City, Utah for the Sundance Film Festival, not everyone is going for the movies. Starry-eyed attendees relish access to the suits, the skiing and the swag, but what about the art? Shari Frilot has curated Sundance ... More >>

5 Films People Will Be Talking About at Sundance

For the next 10 days, all Hollywood eyes--and those of many a filmgoer--will turn toward the frigid wilds of Park City, Utah, reportedly experiencing its chilliest winter in a decade. Their collective hope: to discover at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival (January 17 through 26) the next Beasts of the ... More >>

20 Movies You Need to See at AFI Fest 2012

The Bay Review: Barry Levinson Mimics an Amateur YouTube Documentarian

Middle of Nowhere Director (and Former Rapper) Ava DuVernay on the Future of Black Film

Robert Redford Chats About His Sundance Cinemas 
Opening in the Old Sunset 5 Space

When the Sundance Sunset Cinema opens to the public on Friday, it will be as much a return as it is a replacement. The new theater, situated in the West Hollywood spot occupied by the Laemmle Sunset 5 for 20 years until it closed last year, aims to re-inject some life into Los Angeles' occasionally ... More >>

Compliance Director Craig Zobel on Why People Do Crazy Things Just Because They're Told To

Top 12 LGBT Movies You Need To See, as Picked by Film Fest Organizers

Outfest, L.A.'s gay and lesbian film festival, ended on Sunday, reminding us that films about the LGBT experience serve an important role in the community, from teaching teenage boys and girls that it's alright to kiss other boys and girls, respectively, to connecting social activists with images su ... More >>

Los Angeles Film Festival 2012: Summer Showcase

Lloyd Kaufman, Indie Film Legend of Toxic Avenger Fame, Wants You to Watch His Troma Movies for Free

See also: "Why Self-Publish? Artists and Writers Explain at Long Beach Comic Expo" Lloyd Kaufman wants you to watch Troma Entertainment's extensive film catalog for free. Yes, really. The independent film company he co-founded almost 40 years ago with Michael Herz has uploaded a number of its cult ... More >>

Sundance Film Festival 2012 Wrap-up

Indie filmmakers grapple with "reality"

Bingham Ray, Indie Film Distribution & Marketing Legend, Dies While Attending Sundance

Jaw-dropping news came down around noon Park City time Monday, when Sundance issued a press release confirming that Bingham Ray -- indie film legend, co-founder of seminal '90s indie distribution outlet October Films and current executive director of the San Francisco Film Society -- had died. Ray, ... More >>

Sundance Film Festival 2012: Simon Killer and Keep The Lights On

The most divisive dramatic competition entry yet to screen at Sundance, Simon Killer is the second feature directed by Antonio Campos, director of Afterschool and producer of last year's Sundance hit Martha Marcy May Marlene. Like Martha Marcy, Simon is built around an attractive, enigmatic young pe ... More >>

Sundance Film Festival 2012: An Experiment

Tomorrow I leave Los Angeles for Park City, Utah, where I'll attend and report on the Sundance Film Festival for the seventh time in as many years. As a film critic and the editor of the Weekly's Film section, attending major film festivals (I go to Sundance, Cannes and Toronto) is the most importan ... More >>

Reality Bites: The Ultimate Sellout?

Irony behind celebrating the movie as an indie classic

Dee Rees, Director of Pariah, Interviewed

Her identity struggles as a black lesbian, funneled into her first feature

Sunset 5 Theater Closes

The end of an era, and what it means for the L.A. art house landscape

Your Weekly Movie To-Do List

AFI wraps edition

Martha Marcy May Marlene Review

An Olsen sister falls in and out of a cult

Your Weekly Movie To-Do List

Vincent Gallo, twice

The Myth of the American Sleepover Review

Kevin Smith: "I Am So, Like, Sick of Movies and Shit"

On the road with the cult filmmaker turned podcaster turned DIY warrior

Your Weekly Movie To-Do List

Screenings with a shelf life to catch before it's too late

Sundance Film Festival: Duh, Hot Girls Make Difficult Films More Marketable

An alternate universe with an uncertain future

Sundance's Prodigal Children Return

Film festival programmed like re-discovery channel

AFI Fest A to Z: Hey Man, Yeah

Our critics' picks for what to see and skip at this year's festival

YOU'LL NEVER LAUNCH IN THIS TOWN AGAIN

Lovers of Hate: Thrillercore

Brian Poyser's indie genre-bender

Catfish: Love in the Time of Facebook

Stranger than fiction, Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost's film gets at the truth about connecting in the cyber age

The Killer Inside Me: In a Dark Place

Michael Winterbottom finds his depth

SXSW: Gone to the Masses

Yet fest still has fresh, experimental edge

Unlike a Box of Chocolates

Big Star + Little Movie = Five Dollars Well Spent

Sundance Highs and Lows

Moving mountains, growing wings

Sundance: A Midwinter Night's Dream

Finding gems in the snow at 2008's festival

Days for Night

Sundance ’98