With the state of Democracy a shambles and hope being sucked out of the country like helium from a balloon, I thought I’d offer a micro vision of hope, a poem about the humble beginnings of a man who would, one day, do great and terrible things, but who believed in whatever this country is.

Unlike the rest of the dispatches I’ve written out of Sundance, the selections here are not defined by their competitive category. This one is a little bit more of a hodgepodge. “Sabar Bonda (Cactus Pears)” and “DJ Ahmet,” for instance, are from the World Dramatic section, while “André Is an Idiot” premiered as part of

10 NEW TO NETFLIX “The Age of Adaline”“Apollo 13”“Dune”“Hereditary”“Inception”“Interstellar”“Lion”“Melancholia”“Schindler’s List”“Snowpiercer” 12 NEW TO BLU-RAY/DVD “The Cell” (Arrow) In the wake of the massive critical success of films like “The Silence of the Lambs” and “Se7en,” (coincidentally also in this month’s column), Tarsem’s “The Cell” was greeted with a shrug. Most critics dismissed it as style

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

This year’s World Cinema Dramatic Competition features three films all about characters on spiritual, physical, and sexual journeys toward new versions of themselves. Nadia Fall’s “Brides” follows two girls as they travel from the U.K. to Syria in order to join an extremist group they think will offer them freedom from religious persecution and a

Good morning! The Oscar nominations are officially in the books, and thanks to a very game Bowen Yang and Rachel Sennott doing the announcements, it seems the nominees even had their names pronounced correctly. As always, there were surprises both good and bad; that’s the way it goes when ten thousand people collectively vote based

We’re headed back to Park City this week to bring you reviews of what’s premiering at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Last year’s coverage saw our first takes on “I Saw the TV Glow,” “Ghostlight,” “A Real Pain,” “Love Lies Bleeding,” “Thelma,” and many more of the best films of 2024. What will those be

David Lynch saw my dreams. As a teenager growing up in suburban America in the ‘80s, “Blue Velvet” and “Twin Peaks” hit like a bolt of lightning. Not only did they capture something about the sinister, surreal underbelly of life under the picket fences, but they said something directly to anyone who thought they could

Editor’s note: To give you a chance to get to know our writers better, we’ve asked them to respond to some questions. Here’s Zachary Lee. Read his work here. 1. Where did you grow up, and what was it like? I was born in Whittier, California before moving to the suburb of Wheaton when I was

An epic saga of assimilation, architecture, and the artist’s struggle to endure, Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist” tells the story of László Tóth (Adrien Brody), a Hungarian-born Jewish architect who escapes postwar Europe by emigrating to the United States, where he labors to rebuild his life, career, and marriage to wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones). Eventually settling