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Saoirse Ronan’s role in “The Outrun” has earned her some of the strongest reviews of her career for her performance as a student who returns to the Scottish Isles to pursue sobriety after struggling with alcoholism. Following the film’s world premiere, Ronan stopped by the IndieWire Studio at Sundance, presented by Dropbox, to discuss her personal connection to the source material and the growth that the role required of her. Ronan, who also produced the film, explained that she encountered Amy Liptrot’s novel on which the film is based during the COVID-19 pandemic — and instantly knew that it could become a career-defining part for her....... Read Full article on HadNews

No strangers to Sundance, filmmaker/cinematographer Gregory Kershaw and filmmaker/visual artist Michael Dweck (2018’s “The Last Race,” 2020’s “The Truffle Hunters”) are back for this 40th edition with their latest unsurprisingly cinematic, nonfiction study “Gaucho Gaucho.” While the acclaimed duo’s previous docs were set at a Long Island racetrack and in the Italian countryside, respectively, “Gaucho Gaucho” is an “Argentinean Western” (according to the Sundance synopsis) that takes place in the remote plains of that faraway, South American land. And therein lies the rub. On the upside, “Gaucho Gaucho” is exquisitely crafted, with sumptuo...... Read Full article on HadNews

Even years after vaccines allowed us to largely resume our normal lives, the COVID-19 pandemic remains an omnipresent force in American culture. From disruptions in supply chains that continue to impact prices to lifestyle changes such as a spike in remote work that permanently altered our economy, the lingering effects of the pandemic are impossible to avoid. But for all of the disruption that the events of 2020 caused, pop culture is still largely proceeding as if nothing happened. Theda Hammel’s “Stress Positions” looks to change that. The Sundance hit stars John Early as a gay soon-to-be-divorcee who struggles to live up to his liber...... Read Full article on HadNews

On Friday nights, IndieWire After Dark takes a feature-length beat to honor fringe cinema in the streaming age.  First, the spoiler-free pitch for one editor’s midnight movie pick — something weird and wonderful from any age of film that deserves our memorializing.  Then, the spoiler-filled aftermath as experienced by the unwitting editor attacked by this week’s recommendation. The Pitch: Cold Sore Terrorism, Period Sex, and John Waters as Your Youth Pastor? Nice Work, Pauline! It’s my understanding that the tampons were handmade. Unfortunately, I was unable to hunt down the contact information for “Excision” writer/dire...... Read Full article on HadNews

It’s hard to say what’s more impressive: That a married filmmaking duo made a romantic drama that covers 13.7 billion years and climaxes with a buoy fucking a satellite, or that Sam and Andy Zuchero’s debut feature — a tedious movie that gradually squanders all of the goodwill earned by the creative ambition behind it — somehow manages to feel trite and predictable in spite of that premise.  As much as I respect the chutzpah required to jump directly from short films to what might be the longest-spanning love story ever told, time ironically proves to be the undoing of a movie about two star-crossed pieces of metal who can’t even feel it ...... Read Full article on HadNews

Floating 10 miles beyond the tip of Great Britain like a barren moon that’s been anchored to the rest of the world by a rusty chain running beneath the North Sea, the Orkney Islands are a place so primordial and extreme that even the scientists who live there fall back on folklore to explain it. Maybe the silent tremors that vibrate through the land are caused by the impact of ocean water crashing into underwater caves — but it seems just as plausible that they might be produced by a buried dragon the size of the entire world unfurling its massive tail. Maybe the poor souls who drown off the coast are truly lost and gone forever, but on this...... Read Full article on HadNews

My favorite thing about being Jewish — and it’s just so hard to pick between classic hits like “unleavened bread,” “having shoulder hair at 15,” and “being used by right-wing nationalists as an excuse to justify the same kind of genocide that tends to be inflicted upon us every other century or so” — is that I’ve always felt like the religion and its attendant culture places an unusual emphasis on being alive. Six thousand years of trying not to die can do that to you. We don’t believe in heaven, and we don’t believe in hell; when someone passes, we say “may their memory be a blessing,” and when we pray on Yom Kippur (one of the few days...... Read Full article on HadNews