‘5 Seasons of Revolution’ Review: A Powerful Testament to the Impossible Work of Reporting Your Own Country’s Implosion [Sundance]

The avant-garde video artist Nam June Paik gets his own adulatory portrait in Amanda Kim’s documentary “Nam June Paik: Moon is the Oldest TV.” An act of biographical recovery that also, somehow, flattens a controversial artist, Kim’s film provides just enough contextual information to maintain interest, even if it’s never as radical as its titular subject.  READ MORE: 25 Most Anticipated Films At The Sundance Film Festival Moving succinctly from birth to death, Kim provides a broad overview of Paik’s history and aesthetic interests.

In writer/director A.V. Rockwell’s feature directorial debut, “A Thousand and One,” Inez (a deeply felt Teyana Talyor) has returned to Harlem after spending a year in Rikers Prison.

This is “a place of mountains and myths,” we’re told as a montage of Central Appalachian imagery fills the frame. The mists, buffalo, ferns, and flowing waters intercut with the coal-filled mountains and mining towns that grew up around them.

Ira Sachs prefers relationships of the doomed variety — tempestuous passions torn asunder, sometimes by external forces like capitalism, which complicated the search for a home through New York’s cutthroat real estate market in “Love Is Strange” and “Little Men.” His latest film — the sexy, frustrating, loose-yet-compact, altogether irresistible three-hander “Passages” — also concerns property contracts and a homeless protagonist. However, this one’s got nobody but himself to blame for that predicament, fluent as he is in the same toxic strain of amour fou that previously perfumed the air in “Keep the Lights On” and especially Sachs’ debut, “The Delta.” As in that film — also pitched at the admirably humble quotidian scale Sachs hasn’t felt the need to exceed in more than a quarter decade — “Passages” follows a bisexual chaos agent so wrapped up in his own narcissism that he can’t see where his self-exploration ends and insensitivity to those around him begins.

Like most teenagers, Heather (non-binary actor Bobbi Salvör Menuez), a social misfit who lives in a rural town in northern Canada, has a strict midnight curfew to adhere to. But unlike other teenagers, staying out for longer has a much more dangerous effect on her.

Heading into the first weekend of the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, many filmgoers likely have their schedule tightly planned for what films they are viewing for the next week. If it isn’t there already, one film to add to your schedule is “5 Seasons of Revolution” by Lina.

From Jesus’s ripped physique to the Song of Solomon, there’s something about Christian iconography that’s just a little bit sexy. And if you haven’t noticed that yet, you certainly will after seeing “Mamacruz,” the second film from Venezuelan writer-director Patricia Ortega (“Yo, Imposible”).

Margaret Atwood said it best: “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.” This age-old discrepancy in the way the two genders experience the world is written both at the initial frame and very heart of Susanna Fogel’s mercurial “Cat Person,” a fiendishly playful relationship-gone-bad quasi-thriller with a sense of humor about its own unknowability.

Margaret Atwood said it best: “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.” This age-old discrepancy in the way the two genders experience the world is written both at the initial frame and very heart of Susanna Fogel’s mercurial “Cat Person,” a fiendishly playful relationship-gone-bad quasi-thriller with a sense of humor about its own unknowability.

While introducing “Radical,” director Christopher Zalla (“Sangre de Mi Sangre”/”Blood of My Blood”) said it was a labor of love. In addition to that, he said it’s a “movie about what happens when kids are empowered.” And while the film definitely explores this in a well-crafted display of filmmaking, it also leaves a bit of a dark shadow in the minds of those allergic to the notion that your mind is all you need to succeed.

The prospect of deep-sea mining may seem like a solution to our ever-growing fuel crisis. Polymetallic nodules that sit on the ocean floor are made up of the very type of metals that so-called ‘green’ companies need to build batteries.

In Greek mythology, it holds that for a time, gods and mortals mingled freely, creating demigods whose sole aim was to prove their worth so they might join their celestial kin. For the Greeks, the gods who ruled on mount Olympus formed the idealized version of humans—often possessing super strength to match their perfect physiques.

Not only are Gia’s children in foster care, awaiting their mother’s journey through the system to end before they can be fully reunited, Gia (Tia Nomore) is also pregnant. Nearing her due date, the 24-year-old works to fulfill the cumbersome court-mandated requirements for reunification with her kids while she scrounges for hours at her portrait studio job.

Magnolia Pictures has scored worldwide rights to “Little Richard: I Am Everything,” which held its world premiere at Sundance Film Festival on Thursday evening.Directed by Lisa Cortés, the CNN Films doc explores the black queer origins of rock ‘n’ roll through the life and career of Richard Penniman. Magnolia plans to release the film in April.

Director Doug Liman brings to mind his 1996 breakout “Swingers,” or his 2010s Tom Cruise vehicles like 2014 “The Edge Of Tomorrow.” Or maybe his upcoming “Road House” remake with Jake Gyllenhaal for Prime Video. So, consider this news from the Sundance Film Festival a serious curveball.

He went there! As Eddie Murphy was honored with the prestigious Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 80th Golden Globe Awards, he addressed Will Smith’s now-infamous Oscars slap.

CTV Edmonton reporter Jessica Robb was doing a live remote on the six o’clock news when she began jumbling her words as she spoke to anchor Nahreman Issa.

Greetings-gate continues. After Ryan Seacrest said on Tuesday that Andy Cohen never acknowledged him on New Years Eve while both were broadcasting their live shows for ABC and CNN, Cohen used his Sirius XM show Wednesday to, um, set the record straight.