Watch List Weekly Recap 1/18/22

This is the Friday recap of Ty Burr’s Watch List postings for the week. If you’d like to receive this weekly email ONLY, please go to your account page and under “Email notifications” uncheck every box except “Weekly Digest.” If you’d prefer to not receive it at all, uncheck just “Weekly Digest.”

The 2022 edition of the Sundance Film Festival began Thursday the 20th and runs through Sunday the 30th, and, as always, it’s an event that sets the table for much of the rest of the year’s movie conversation. And for the second year in a row, it has been an online-only festival, which has good points and less-good points, outlined in my first post. Out of the 82 or so feature films on tap this year, I’ve managed to see 23, slightly below my festival average, and I spent the week writing about the ones I liked best and thought you should know about. (A colleague at a major magazine was queueing up his 37th Sundance screening as of Thursday night, so either I’m slacking or he doesn’t sleep.) If you’re not interested in movies that won’t be coming to a theater or a screen near you right away, feel free to skip this week. But if you want to get a peek at where independent film is headed and who’s taking it there, read on.

Volcanos and androids and Emma Thompson, oh my.

Sundance Festival Report, Pt 1

Can you call it a film festival if you never leave home? I’m sitting here in my basement screening room and I’m also in Park City, Utah; it’s the 20th consecutive Sundance Film Festival I’ve attended, and the second I’ve been to without actually being there. Last year’s event was held entirely online; this year was intended to be a hybrid physical/digit…

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Five portraits of women under the gun.

Sundance Festival Report, Pt II

While it can be pointless to look for themes at a film festival, the tea leaves of one’s chosen screenings do fall into patterns. My Sundance 2022, then, is becoming the Sundance of the Stressed Woman, with dramas, comedies, and documentaries all centering around female protagonists struggling to survive in pressure-cooker situations. Some of those situ…

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The most charismatic star of this year’s Sundance is currently in a Russian prison.

Sundance Festival Report, Pt III

Okay, last Sundance column and then back to the regular show next week. The festival ends on Sunday, although feature-length screenings already seem to be done with. (You can continue to access short films and other material at the festival website.) The one film that is available through today is worth the $20 online ticket: Daniel Roher’s astonishing

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