AMC Networks Launches Sundance Film Festival 40th Anniversary Offering on AMC+, Teams With Ketel One for Park City Promos (EXCLUSIVE)

Kieran Culkin is opening up about what was happening with Jesse Eisenberg at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival!

The 2024 Sundance Film Festival is almost at an end, but there are still films to screen in the online portion of the festival and, almost as importantly, awards to hand out to happy independent filmmakers. The big winners at this year’s awards ceremony were Alessandra Lacorazza’s “In the Summers” which won the Grand Jury Prize U.S.

The 2024 Sundance Film Festival is almost at an end, but there are still films to screen in the online portion of the festival and, almost as importantly, awards to hand out to happy independent filmmakers. The big winners at this year’s awards ceremony were Alessandra Lacorazza’s “In the Summers” which won the Grand Jury Prize U.S.

Being (The Digital Griot) audience members were encouraged to discuss various issues with an AI bot, including patriarchy and racism. One audience member reportedly shouted, “Fuck this AI.”The film’s creator, Rashaad Newsome responded: “I’m not here to be cursed out and I’m not going to have my AI child be cursed out either.”Newsome also reportedly refused to take part in the post-screening Q&A session until action was taken against the audience member.The incident led staff to remove the audience member from the auditorium.

At the height of their failure, every day was Altamont for the Brian Jonestown Massacre, the San Francisco outfit founded in 1990 by Anton Newcombe, the Klaus Kinski of psychedelic rock. Just in time for this 20th anniversary overhaul of Ondi Timoner’s breakthrough documentary, the BJM were back in the news as recently as November 2023, when the first night of an Australian tour ended in a riot. That the riot was confined to the stage, and played out in front of a dumbfounded audience, is DIG! XX in a nutshell, a welcome return for a film that no less an authority than Dave Grohl calls, in a specially filmed new intro, “the greatest rock’n’roll documentary of all time”.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Valerie Bertinelli‘s departure from “Kids Baking Championship” is not a cut-and-dry case of Food Network firing the “One Day at a Time” alum from her role as co-host and judge of the show. Rather, it’s the aftermath of the Warner Bros. Discovery-owned channel deciding not to renew Bertinelli’s larger exclusive deal with the network when it ended in 2022, sources tell Variety. Bertinelli signed a multi-series deal with Food Network in 2018, which expired in 2021.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Warner Bros. Discovery is asking high school students across the U.S. to “Say Yes to the Prom” for the 12th year in a row with its initiative that will give 1,500 juniors and seniors from underserved communities a chance to put together a complete prom look, courtesy of Macy’s and Men’s Wearhouse.

A Different Man tackles weighty themes of disability, identity, and transformation. Directed and written by Aaron Schimberg and starring Sebastian Stan, Renate Reinsve, and Adam Pearson, what emerges is a complex portrayal of the clashes between outer perceptions and inner truths and makes valiant efforts towards inclusion to express a vital message about appearance and identity, but the execution can often feel tonally inconsistent, and overlong.Edward (Stan) is an aspiring actor with facial deformities (neurofibromatosis, to be exact), that subjects him to ridicule and isolation. Though self-conscious and lonely, Edward finds hope when he befriends Ingrid (Reinsve), his empathetic, playwright, next door neighbor. When presented with the possibility of normalcy through a risky reconstructive procedure, Edward pursues the chance to lead a life free from judgment and staring eyes. 

Laura Chinn’s feature film writing and directing debut hits close to the heart – her heart especially – in a semi-autobiographical story set in 2005 and inspired by her own growing pains at a dark time in her family’s life as her brother is dying of cancer and moved unknowingly into what turned out to be the same nursing facility, Suncoast, where Terri Schiavo was also a patient.

Reality Winner is probably better known in Europe than the U.S., thanks in part to Tina Satter’s extraordinary arthouse film Reality (2023), which dramatized the 25-year-old Texan translator’s arrest in 2017 using the verbatim transcripts of her interactions with the FBI. Winner, a funny and surprisingly powerful biopic directed and co-written by Susanna Fogel, will go quite a long way towards raising her profile back home.

Love Lies Bleeding is an intense, queer, unconventional love story between two unstable people. Directed and written by English filmmaker Rose Glass, and starring Kristen Stewart, Katy O’Brian, Ed Harris, Dave Franco, Jena Malone, and Anna Baryshinkov, the film explores the destructive nature of relationships marked by strong performances and a visually arresting narrative.

Exhibiting Forgiveness, directed and written by Titus Kaphar, is a thought-provoking film starring Andre Holland, John Earl Jelks, Andra Day, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, and Ian Foreman. Set against a backdrop of familial struggle and personal demons, Kaphar’s film navigates the complexities of forgiveness, accountability, and the resilience of the human spirit. Tarrell Rodin (Holland), a loving father and husband who resides in the suburbs with his wife Aisha (Day), a singer-songwriter, and their son Jermaine. Renowned in the American art scene for his haunting, personal work, Tarrell dedicates his days to his art studio, using painting to turn his nightmares into art. His devotion to art, coupled with the support of his family and his diligent work ethic, has helped him keep his ugly past at a distance. He aims to take care of his mother Joyce (Ellis-Taylor) and wants to get her out of the neighborhood she lives in, but she’s apprehensive as she wants to stay close to her church. Its only a temporary move nit deep down he hopes Joyce in hopes she can provide support as he struggles with old memories. 

In the realm of zombie-themed films, a genre often filled with clichés and predictable plot lines, Handling the Undead aims to stand out as something different.

Directed by Steven Soderbergh and penned by David Koepp, the haunting psychological thriller Presence follows a fractured family as a mysterious supernatural force infiltrates their new home that has taken interest in their daughter Chloe. The film is written by David Koepp and stars Lucy Liu, Chris Sullivan, Callina Liang, Eddy Maday, West Mulholland, and Julia Fox.An unsettling presence permeates the home of Chris (Sullivan) and Ruth (Liu)  before they even move in. This supernatural entity is a witness to the family’s most vulnerable moments. It has a particular focus on the couple’s young daughter Chloe (Liang), who is always at odds with her mother and Brother Tyler (Maday). However, the young girl is in mourning because of her two girls, one of them her best friend Nadia, died recently.  

Set in a post-human world, Love Me, directed and written by Sam and Amy Zuchero and starring Steven Yeun and Kristen Stewart, unfolds as an unconventional love story between two inanimate objects. These entities stumble upon each other in the digital realm and, through the remnants of human knowledge, adopt new identities in hopes of evolving their relationship.

In the space of just two movies, Jane Schoenbrun has established a completely unique aesthetic; from the opening credits alone, a riot of black light and neon pastels, it’s obvious that I Saw the TV Glow comes from the same mind that created the trippy 2021 cult hit We’re All Going to the World’s Fair. Anyone puzzled by the latter is advised to stay clear, since the follow-up is more vertiginously dizzying and twice as impressionistic, causing lots of head-scratching at its Sundance premiere. For those ready and willing to embrace its commitment to mood over logic, I Saw the TV Glow is a must-see, pairing the otherworldly ambience of Kyle Edward Ball’s Skinamarink with the morbid surrealism of Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York. (If you know, you know.)

Oakland’s freaky side emerges in Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s ambitious yet tonally uneven new anthology film Freaky Tales starring Pedro Pascal, Jay Ellis, Ben Medelsohn, Jack Champion, Ji-Young Yoo, Normani, Dominique Thorne, Too $hort’s, and Lenny G. The directors spotlight diverse local subcultures against the backdrop of Too $hort’s hit of the same name. The film intertwines four tales linked by unfolding events and a puzzling supernatural emerald glow permeating the city. Though the gritty visuals and soundtrack immerse in the look and feel of 1987 Oakland, the narrative struggles to weave these stories into a satisfying whole.

Getting impatient for Kenneth Lonergan to get his act together and make another great movie? Ghostlight should scratch that itch and more besides, being a funny, intelligent and yet at times almost unbearably sad movie that takes a searing family tragedy and spins it into a riveting redemption story that, while a little predictable in the more familiar second half, somehow never hits a false note. Although technically an ensemble piece, with a lovely cast of supporting players whose thespian antics will ring a bell with actors of all generations, it rests squarely on a powerhouse performance from Chicago stage veteran Keith Kupferer, whose career must surely about to enter a whole new phase, perhaps to the fill the void left by the late, great Brian Dennehy.

EXCLUSIVE. When the alternative book of film trivia is written, a page will be dedicated to the influence of Leonard Nimoy’s paranormal-themed late-’70s TV show In Search of… on director siblings. It was here that Albert and Allen Hughes first heard about Britain’s most notorious serial killer, Jack the Ripper, beginning an obsession with Victorian London that resulted in their 2001 horror-drama From Hell. And for David and Nathan Zellner, the cultural impact was very similar. “We loved that show,” recalls David. “As kids, there wasn’t much out there, that we were exposed to, that covered those sorts of things. They’d cover the Loch Ness monster, everything. I remember one about plants, wondering if they were able to think and what kind of music they’d like to listen to. They got really obscure with some of the subjects, but we loved that show. We loved the vibe of it. And that’s where we first learned about Bigfoot…”

William Earl Variety is returning to the Sundance Film Festival this year with its annual Interview Studio, presented by Audible, the leading creator and provider of premium audio storytelling. Throughout the festival, videos from the interview studio will be distributed across Variety.com as well as Variety and Audible’s social media channels (Instagram: @audible, @Variety; Twitter: @audible_com, @Variety; TikTok: @audible, @VarietyMagazine).