Directed by Christian Tafdrup and co-written with his brother Mads, “Speak No Evil” is a film where the kindness of strangers is something that should be sidestepped, as two families (one Danish, one Dutch) learn after meeting on holiday.

Premiering as part of the festival’s “Midnight Selection” category, this is director Tagdrup’s first film (after two tries) to be

“What the caterpillar calls the end, the rest of the world calls a butterfly.”

Filmmaker Kogonada’s “After Yang” was selected as part of the Sundance Film Festival’s “Best of the Fest.” These are films that are chosen to make their Sundance premiere even as they may have already been shown at another festival. In this case, “After Yang” premiered at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival

Writer/Director Michael Polish has created an intriguing ten-episode series that’s modern Western with a philosophical edge that made its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival.

There is a lead character surrounded by death. Revenge. Pistols. Blood. The whole piece exists as a visual representation of a quote from “Once Upon a Time in America”, “People like that have something inside... something to do

“We live and die by the stories we tell each other,” is the line that begins writer/director Jonathan Nossiter’s latest piece, the exquisite “Last Words.”

Adapted from a novel by Santiago Amigorena (he also co-wrote the screenplay), Nossiter’s film follows Kal (newcomer Kalipha Touray), the last human on the face of the Earth. The year is 2085. One year earlier he was

2021 was a much stronger year for cinema than 2020, creativity and originality both made a comeback. Sure, Hollywood overwhelmed us with too many big budget money grabs and there is always some type of comic book adaptation playing somewhere, but directors of weight made a welcome return. It made my cinema-loving heart glad to see films from Jane Campion, Paul Schrader, Pedro Almodovar, Steven Soderbergh, Clint Eastwood

“tick tick… BOOM!” is the name of the musical Jonathan Larson wrote and performed about the failure of “Superbia,” his rock-opera adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984 that was to be his ticket to Broadway. Sadly, this didn’t happen. If something good came out of that piece’s failure, it would be the powerfully personal follow up that would lead to the legendary Broadway groundbreaker “Rent.”

Throughout the centuries philosophers have responded to the idea of death in many ways. Kierkegaard saw grief as a door to faith while Heidegger found it a way to give deeper meaning to one’s life. It was Camus who found the absurdity in it all.

As adults, grief exists as an emotional conglomerate and people from all walks of life deal with it in different manners.