Time for a recap of the notable, and sometimes downright strange, moments from the Awards Ceremony of the 2012 Sundance Film Festival:

Most awkward cold open: After the PA announcer lavishly introduced emcee Parker Posey, festival director John Cooper steps out to announce that Posey has taken ill and wouldn't be appearing. Only after actress-director Katie Aselton (“Black Rock”) came in to pinch-hit was it clear that this wasn't a gag.

Best tribute: Festival director John Cooper reading an open letter from the friends of indie-film supporter Bingham Ray, who...

'The Other Dream Team'
U.S. Cinema Documentary
Three and one-half-stars

The fun documentary "The Other Dream Team" is much more than a simple
documentary about the Lithuanian basketball team winning a bronze
medal during the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, but a heart-felt
portrait of how winning basketball games equating winning
independence for the small country from Soviet control, not just
during the Olympics but throughout the half-century that Soviets ran
the proud country. With interviews ranging from the Lithuanian
basketball players to Lithuanian heads of states, Bill Walton...

At the Friday night screening of "The Other Dream Team" at the Tower
Theatre, the doc (in the U.S. Documentary Cinema category) received
warm applause from a packed house, including some who gave standing
ovations.

Director Marius Markevicius (familar to some for producing last
year's Grand Jury Prize dramatic winner "Like Crazy") and producer
Jon Weinbach attended the post-screening Q-and-A wearing tie-dyed
t-shirts worn by the Lithuanian basketball team during the 1992
Olympics.

The film documented the rise of Lithuani...

At the Beehive Tea Room, located at 12 West Broadway in Salt Lake
City, "attendance is up this year," said Lisa Brady, proprietor of
the unique eatery.

The cafe is equidistant from two Sundance screening venues - the
Rose Wagner Center for the Performing Arts and the Broadway Theatre
- and since officially partnering up with the Sundance Film Festival
a half-dozen years ago, has become a haven for film goers who want a
warm cup of tea in between or before or after films.

This year attendance has increased, Brady said, because of the new
NowSaltL...

A robot and a water scientist are at the center of the two movies that will share the 2012 Sundance Film Festival's Alfred P. Sloan Prize.

The American film “Robot and Frank” and the Indian/American drama “Valley of Saints” were named co-winners of the prize on Friday, and will split the $20,000 award.

The Sloan Prize is given to films that explore themes of science and technology, or depict scientists, engineers or mathematicians in engaging ways. (The prize once prompted a classic piece of advice from actress-writer Guinevere Turner at a...

“Detropia”

U.S. Documentary

*** (three stars)

Evocative images and a prevailing atmosphere of hope amid economic despair carry this documentary, which weaves through several stories of life in today's Detroit. Directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady (“Jesus Camp,” “12 th and Delaware”) interweave profiles of a union local president whose members are suffering when their employer shuts down the factory, a bar owner hoping that the GM plant across the street w...

“How to Survive a Plague”

U.S. Documentary

**** (four stars)

Powerful beyond belief, director David France's chronicle of a decade of the AIDS epidemic captures both the tragedy of looming death and the righteous anger against uncaring politicians and overcautious scientists. A wealth of archival footage, shot during street protests and organizational meetings, trace the growth of the activist group ACT UP as members railed against the Food and Drug Adminis...

“When you find out someone you know has failed, but you love them anyway, let all of us go there together.”

Spoken by director Sheldon Candis before the premiere screening of his film “LUV,” Monday at Park City’s Eccles Theatre, those words rang throughout the duration of the Sundance Film Festival.

Why? In part, because Baltimore native Candis lived the story that unfolds in his him.

Like his film’s 11-year-old character Michael Rainey, Jr., Candis himself had an uncle whom he admired, through good times and bad.

No actor in the film knows that back-story better than Charles S. Dutton. Also a Baltimore native, Dutton not only served time in prison...

Sundance Review: "The Imposter"
World Cinema Documentary Competition
Three and one-half stars

Bizarre, just bizarre. But always compelling is Bart Layton's "The Imposter," a true story about a 23-year-old Frenchman who impersonates a missing San Antonio teenager three years after the teen disappeared without a trace walking home from a neighborhood basketball game. The Frenchman manages to fool the teen's family for nearly five months, despite an accent and looking almost nothing like the missing teen. That is not the end of the story, though, as Layton crafts a thriller with twists that you don't see coming. The film's antagonistic star is the Frenchman, who is one of the m...

Thursday's Tower Theater screening of director Bart Layton's film "The Imposter" (in the World Cinema Documentary Competition) brought the director and producer Dimitri Doganis to the after-screening Q-and-A.

The truth-is-stranger-than-fiction story of a 23-year-old French man who impersonated a missing teenager in San Antonio and fooled them for nearly 5 months prompted many questions from the audience. The man who was The Imposter was interviewed at length, and an audience member asked if he was interviewed in the States. "We interviewed him in London," Layton said. "I don't think he's allowed back in the U.S."

— David Burger...

Sundance Review: "Sleepwalk With Me"
Next
Three stars

For all of the important issues raised during the Sundance Film Festival, it's good to have a laugh once in a while. And just like last year's "Cedar Rapids" provided a much-needed break to Sundance audiences, comedian MIke Birbiglia's film "Sleepwalk With Me" is this year's welcome entry. Birbiglia, who co-wrote, directed and starred in this adaptation of his one-man show, is an affable but struggling stand-up who is struggling with relationship problems and an odd bout of sleepwalking. While the film is often hilarious, what is surprising is the tension and drama that the comic brings to the story when emotionally wrest...

Bt the time the second Thursday of the Sundance Film Festival comes around, it seems that most of the film makers and stars of films have left Utah and gone back to Hollywood or New York City.

That's why it was a pleasant surprise to see co-writer, director and star Mike Birbiglia jump up to the stage after the Tower Theater screening of his "Next" film, "Sleepwalk With Me."

• Birbiglia was asked how long the shoot was. He told the crowd that it was 25 days, which elicited some gasps from the crowd. As a first-time film maker, he asked the crowd, "Is that a little or a lot?"

• He jokingly cut off an audience member who began her question with, "Now that you're a fi...

Review: "Putin's Kiss"
World Cinema Documentary Competition'
Two stars
The 82-minute film by Danish native Lise Birk Pedersen documents the change of heart of Masha Drokova, a rising star in Russia's pro-Putin youth group Nashi. Once a staunch supporter of the nationalist movement that is bolstered by Vladimir Putin and his underlings, she eventually becomes close to an opposition group and contemplates changing her political loyalties. The problem with the doc, though, is that Drokova, although the centerpiece of the film, is an unlikable character whose motivations and actions are often cryptic, and the audience is unable to develop empathy for her plight. In a...

At Thursday's Broadway Centre screening of film maker Lise Birk Pedersen's "Putin's KIss," in the World Cinema Documentary Competition, only production manager Sergey Brovkin was in attendance to answer audience questions.

• Despite the film showing brutal crackdowns on people and journalists who dared oppose Putin's rule, Brovkin told the crowd that his country was a great one, and that people should come and visit. "Journalists don't get killed every day," he insisted.

• One audience member asked if a surveillance-camera-captured beating was staged. Brovkin said it wasn't. "Do you think we'd find an actor for that?" he said of the person being beaten so severely that he w...

The 18th Annual Slamdance Film Festival just announced the feature film and short film recipients of this year’s awards in the Audience, Grand Jury, and Sponsored Award categories.

The award winners were announced at the annual Closing Night Awards Ceremony at the Treasure Mountain Inn.

The feature competition films in the Documentary and Narrative Programs are limited to first-time filmmakers working with production budgets less than $1 million.

Here are the award-winning films, with descriptions from Slamdance:

AUDIENCE AWARDS

Audience Award for Feature Documentary: GETTING UP by Caskey Ebeling

Audience Award for...

Two Oscar nominees in the same movie is usually cause for celebration, but not so much with “Albert Nobbs,” one of six movies opening in Salt Lake City this weekend.

“Albert Nobbs” stars Glenn Close in the title role: A fastidious head waiter at a 19^th-century Irish hotel who's hiding a big secret – that he's really a woman. Close and Janet McTeer, as a journeyman painter also masquerading as a man, are really good. But the movie, directed by Rodrigo Garcia, doesn't tell a story worthy of those performances.

The weeke...

The Slamdance Film Festival gave out its awards on Thursday night, celebrating rebel filmmaking.

Here's a list of the winners:

• Audience Award, feature documentary: “Getting Up,” Caskey Ebeling.
• Audience Award, feature narrative: “Bindlestiffs,” Andrew Edison.
• Grand Jury Sparky Award, feature narrative: “Welcome to Pine Hill,” Keith Miller.
• Special Jury Award for Bold Originality: “Heavy Girls,” Axel Ranisch.
• Grand Jury Sparky Award, feature documentary: “No Ashes, No Phoenix,” Jens Pfeifer.
• Grand Jury Sparky Award, short documentary: “The Professional,” Skylar Neilsen.<...

“Slavery by Another Name”

U.S. Documentary

*** ½ (three and a half stars)

Even in an age of cinema verite and advocacy documentaries, there's still a place for a well-crafted historical documentary – especially if the subject is as compelling as in director Sam Pollard's film. Based on the book of the same name by reporter Douglas A. Blackmon, the film details the conspiracy by Southern whites after the Civil War to keep African-Americans enslaved, either as convicts based on the flimsiest of charges or throu...

U.S. Documentary

*** (three stars)

The facts presented in this documentary are harsh: One in six Americans don't get enough to eat on a regular basis, and what they can afford to eat is usually junk — largely because U.S. farm policy is weighted toward grains for processed food, not fruits and vegetables. Filmmakers Kristi Jacobson and Lori Silverbush present these facts in a highly polished package, intercutting real-life stories of people struggling to find sufficient food with interviews with policy experts and celebrities who have made hunger their cause (namely Jeff Bridges and “Top Chef” judge Tom Colicchio). The urgent
message is packaged well — if a bit too ...

U.S. Documentary

*** (three stars)

“We're Not Broke” aims to say more than the simple message “Corporations are bad — BOO!, but every animated statistic and interviewed expert points in that direction. Filmmakers Karin Hayes and Victoria Bruce marshall the facts well, lucidly explaining the complex tax laws that allow multinational corporations to funnel profits out of the United States and into tax-haven nations (such as the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and Ireland) to avoid income taxes. The
film also follows a fledgling grassroots protest organization, U.S. Uncut, which spread via social media an...

“2 Days in Paris” harbored no doubts about how French Julie Delpy’s 2007 film was. Delpy is Paris born. All the action between her character Marion and American boyfriend Jack, played by Adam Goldberg, takes place in the City of Lights.

So,with the location tables turned, but with another American actor in the form of Chris Rock playing Marion’s second boyfriend, how French is Delpy’s new Sundance film “2 Days in New York?”

Based on separate interviews during the film’s Monday red carpet Delpy and co-star Alexia Landeau, who plays Marion’s sister Rose in both films, disagree on just how Gallic the new film is.

“It’s a little French, maybe 30 p...

The New York Times is offering a substantial Sundance article, with pictures, about the “Silence is Golden Party” thrown by performance artist Marina Abramovic. http://nyti.ms/A9d9WN

Everyone at the party donned white lab coats and headsets and were forbidden to talk or use cell phones. A raging snow storm outside only enhanced the effect.

Abramovic, who is the subject of “Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present,” wanted us all to live in the moment without being distracted from the projections on the gallery walls of the faces of the people who had sat opposite her during her famous installation at the MOMA in New York.

Unfortunately, many of the guests could not par...

At the question-answer session following "John Dies at the End," director Don Coscarelli introduced the film's lead, Chase Williamson. Williamson's story of instant fame wasn't quite that of Lana Turner's being discovered in a drug store—but close.

Williamson explained that he had been going to USC Theater School when he auditioned for the film and got the role— much of which he would play opposite Paul Giamatti, one of Hollywood's most respected actors.

"[Williamson's] a theater student and he finds himself doing six pages of dialog with Paul Giamatti," Coscarelli told the audience at Salt Lake City's Tower Theater. "I was terrified he would seize up and vapor lock."

“The First Time”

U.S. Dramatic

*** (three stars)

Every generation gets its “Say Anything...” – a sharp, literate teen love story – and writer-director Jonathan Kasdan makes a good case that this is the one. Dave (Dylan O'Brien) is a lovelorn guy about to tell his friend Jane (Nickelodeon star Victoria Justice) that he wants to be more than friends. But then he meets Aubrey (Britt Robertson), a girl from another school, with whom Dave shares immediate and mu...

The final weekend of the Sundance Film Festival features no shortage of star power, with Brad Paisley in West Valley City and Akon, Passion Pit and Nas in Park City.

The Jayhawks
Spotlight SHOW • In theory, the pioneering alt-country band The Jayhawks never broke up, but when founding member Mark Olson left the band in 1995, the magic that was created with fellow founding member Gary Louris disappeared. To fans’ delight, recently Olson rejoined the band, and with its classic line-up intact, the band is touring behind its great 2011 album, “Mockingbird Time.” In an interview with The Tribune, Louris said coming back to Utah during the Sundance Film Festival brings up good ...

“John Dies at the End”

U.S. comedy/horror

**** (four hideous spiders)

It's an ill-kept secret among movie lovers (as opposed to "cinephiles") that the best of Sundance comes out at the witching hour--specifically the Park City Midnight series of spooky films.

The Midnight films are seldom fraught with meaning and never important and that's the way fans love them. A case in point is Don Coscarelli's "John Dies at the End."

Coscarelli, beloved for his “Phantasm” films and, more recently, the quirky and hilarious “Bubba Ho-Tep,” has brought David Wong’s web novel to the screen it its full insanit...

A tale of Somali pirates took the top award for short films at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.

The film “Fishing Without Nets,” directed by Cutter Hodierne and written by Hodierne and John Hibey, received the Jury Prize in Short Filmmaking in a ceremony Tuesday night. The filmmakers also got a check for $5,000 from Yahoo!

The movie lets a group of Somali pirates tell their own story, discussing the motivation behind their hijackings at sea.

Other winners are:

• Jury Prize in Short Film, U.S. Fiction – “The Black Balloon,” ...

“Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present”

U.S. Documentary

*** ½ (three and a half stars)

Even the deepest art skeptic will become a believer after watching this documentary, which profiles performance artist Marina Abramovic as she mounts a retrospective show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. How do you do a retrospective of performance art? By hiring “re-performers” to get naked and enact some of her greatest hits. But the centerpiece was her new w...

PARK CITY - Parker Posey is the Queen of the Indies, the Sundance Poster Girl - whatever you want to call her.
How many Sundance Film Festivals has she been to?

"Seventy-five, I think," she said, adding that she started coming "back in the prairie days."

The actress is back this year as one of the stars of "Price Check." And she said it does feel like a homecoming. But you know what they say about not being able to go home again.

"The business has changed so dramatically," Posey said. "The culture has change so dramatically. So it's not what it used to be."

Mostly because Sundance is not the small, intimate film festival it once was.

"It's gotten a l...

"Price Check"

Premieres

*** (three stars)

The Queen of the Indies, Parker Posey, returns to Sundance in a role that seems made for her - a bit of a lunatic, a bit of a monster, a bit of a nut.

At the center of director/screenwriter Michael Walker's film is Pete (Eric Mabius), a good guy with a great wife (Annie Parisse), a 3-year-old son and a rather boring, low-paying job. Pete lacks anything approaching ambition, but he does put his family first.

Enter Susan (Posey), Pete's new boss. To call her determined doesn't even begin to describe her. This is a woman who throws herself on the floor and kicks an...

“As all of us know, there’s nothing less funny than talking about being funny,” said Jon Korn, moderator of Wednesday’s Filmmaker Lodge forum at the Sundance Film Festival.

Those opening words for the forum titles “The Wide World of Wit” never once fazed comedian Mike Birbiglia, actor Mark Duplass, screenwriter Lauren Anne Miller and filmmaker David Zellner. True to form and the livelihood that sustains them, all four proved funny enough. Not exactly rolling-in-the-aisles, but funny enough.

With both Duplass and Miller fresh from the victory laps of securing distribution deals for their respective films—”Black Rock” and “For A Good Time, Call ...”— the crowd at ...

Wednesday was “Volunteer Appreciation Day” at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, a day to honor the 1,850 unpaid folks who make the festival run.

Festival organizers marked the day with a surprise – a two-minute short film playing before movies.

The film, "No Good Deed...," shows a guy named Derek (played by actor Derek Waters) waiting for a ride outside the Egyptian, and shivering without a coat. A couple of Sundance volunteers walk by, and offer him one of the ubiquitous orange Kenneth Cole coats that volunteers wear. A moment later, some other volunteers drive up and, mistaking Derek for a f...

"Robot and Frank," the quirky man-and-machine buddy movie that first screened at the Sundance Film Festival's Salt Lake City gala on Jan. 20, has been acquired by Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions and Samuel Goldwyn Films.

The partnership bought both U.S. and North American distibution rights for the film that stars Frank Langella and Susan Sarandon, with James Marsden, Liv Tyler and voice work by Peter Saarsgard. Sony also acquired distribution rights for Latin America, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, according to a company statement released Wednesday afternoon.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the deal is valued at jus...

If you read my review of the Sundance documentary "Me @ the Zoo," you know that I thought the documentary about YouTube's first video star failed at explaining who the real Chris Crocker was or what his YouTube video blogging meant to him. Crocker is best known for his infamous video rant, "Leave Britney Alone!," in support of pop singer Britney Spears.

After Wednesday afternoon's screening of the movie, the young gay Tennessee man (pictured above, far left, with the filmmakers and editor) - who now seems much wiser and more ...

"Me @ the Zoo"

** (Two stars)

U.S. Documentary Competition

It must have been hell raising Chris Crocker, the world's first YouTube star who was known for his lively "Leave Britney Alone!" video rant that became the target of national mockery. The flamboyant gay Tennessee Internet sensation was then a teen acting out on home-grown videos that became viral long before we ever heard of "Annoying Orange" or Philip DeFranco. And so with "Me @ the Zoo," a grating examination of Crocker's Internet life as well as the cultural impact of Internet celebrity, we find that a little Crocker goes a long way. So mu...

“The Invisible War”

U.S. Documentary

***1/2 (three and a half stars)

With the controversies over U.S. use of torture and indefinite imprisonment winding down along with U.S. invovlment in Iraq and Afghanistan, Kirby Dick’s powerful and troubling “The Invisible War” probes another scandal the military appears reluctant to deal with: rape of service members by their comrades.

The statistics on the military’s rape epidemic, alone, are disturbing: One in five service members, mostly women, have been sexually assaulted, bringing the total to 500,000 in the modern military—t...

Amid Sundance's important documentary statements, cinematic art, auteurial triumphs and general star sniffing, there appears to be a whole lot of partying going on.

Whoda thought, right?

In fact, judging from the Park City Police blotter for last night, the festival is one big blow out.

-- Park Avenue: A suspect is stopped for a traffic violation and winds up being booked for DUI.

-- Transit Center: A man is arrested and busted for "intoxication and possession of marijuana and paraphernalia."

-- Sky Lodge: Classy joint no? Security found "an unconscious woman in the women's bathroom." She had no idea where she was staying. "Medical responded but did not ...

At about 1 a.m., I hopped aboard one of Sundance's constantly orbiting shuttles to get back to the parking lot where my car was waiting.

The bus was packed with bleary eyed and, in a few cases, pleasantly plastered festival goers. I was standing crammed amid a crowd of LA and New York film industry types at the front doors.

They were in awe of our bus driver who was making unscheduled stops to drop folks close to their condos and a couple of times picked up a people who staggered out of the darkness far from the shuttle stops.

When the bus was at capacity and a little more, he saw a quartet of stranded film revelers ahead.

"Do you want me to pick these guys up?...

I got stuck in the waiting list line for the midnight premiere "John Dies at the End." It promised to be a great midnight movie and I couldn't get a press ticket.

It's a pain in the butt, of course, to stand in line, twice, in the concrete bunker under the Egyptian Theater in hopes of getting in.

It wasn't too terrible. I met avid film buffs from New York, Boston and Houston, and joined in an impromtu confab on Philip K. Dick, "The Shining" and scary movies in general. (We were also outraged to learn that the Sundance overlords had inadvertently handed out 30 waitlist numbers ahead of the official time--pretty much ensuring that those of us who played b...

Millennium Entertainment has acquired U.S. distribution rights to Sundance's "Red Lights," which was written and directed by Rodrigo Cortés, with a cast that includes Cillian Murphy, Sigourney Weaver, Robert De Niro, and Elizabeth Olsen.

"Red Lights" is Cortés third film, following "The Contestant" and "Buried," which screened at Sundance in 2010. It's the story of a skeptical investigator, played by Weaver, who encounters Robert De Niro's character, a legendary blind psychic. Murphy plays Weaver's assistant, with Olsen as one of their students.

On the red carpet before Friday's premiere, Weaver said she wasn't really a believer in the paranormal. "I actually find the...

“Beasts of the Southern Wild”

U.S. Dramatic

**** (four stars)

Director Benh Zeitlin's strange and wondrous drama is part anthropological document, part existential fantasy, and all amazing. In “The Bathtub,” a remote island village in the Mississippi Delta south of New Orleans, six-year-old Hushpuppy (played with aching realism by newcomer Quvenzhané Wallis) lives a difficult existence with her tough-love father, Wink (Dwight Henry), who teaches her how to live on her own – to prepare her for the inevitabilit...

“Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry”

U.S. Documentary

*** ½ (three and a half stars)

Director-cinematographer Alison Klayman's documentary is both intense and playful, just like her subject: Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei, whose recent arrest has made him more famous than his landmark design of the Beijing Olympic stadium (“the bird's nest”). Klayman captures Ai's art, with its Warholian pop-culture touches melded to an examination of China's uneasy relationship...

Max Zähle, a graduate of Hamburg Media School, has been nominated for an Oscar for Best Live Action Short for his film, “Raju,” which will receive a free screening in Park City on Saturday sponsored by the Angelus Student Film Festival.

In 2011, Zähle won the Angelus Festival’s Patrick Peyton Excellence in Filmmaking Award for “Raju,” which festival organizers describe as an emotional short film about a German couple who adopt a young Indian boy, shot on location in Kolkata, India.

Three previous Angelus winners have earned Oscar nominations, including Luke Matheny of New York University, who won an Academy Award in 2011 for Best Live Action Short for “God of Love.” La...

Fox Searchlight announced it had purchased U.S. distribution rights to "Beasts of the Southern Wild," director Benh Zeitlin's debut film, a mystical, folkloric tale about a 6-year-old girl, Hushpuppy, who lives with her tough-love father, Wink, in a forgotten Southern bayou community.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, most of the major indie film distributors were in a bidding war for "Beasts." In a statement announcing the sale, Fox Searchlight officials called the film "visually stunning and deeply poetic," while praising the performances of newcomer Quvenzhane Wallis and Dwight Henry. The company plans to release the film later this year.

“Goats,” screening in Sundance’s Premieres category, debuted on Tuesday, Jan. 24. Before the screening, we talked with actors David Duchovny, Vera Farmiga and part-time Salt Lake City resident Ty Burrell, co-owner of Bar-X, 155 E 200 South, Salt Lake City.

The movie, directed by Christopher Neil, is the story of a teenager, Ellis (Graham Phillips), who is estranged from his father, Frank (Burrell) and New-Age mother (Vera Farmiga), but depends on the advice of the pot-growing goat-trekking sage, Goat Man (played by Duchovny). When Ellis enrolls in an East coa...

The J&G Grill at The St. Regis Deer Valley in Park City is still offering its Film Festival Wine Dinners through Monday, Jan. 30.

Chef de Cuisine Matt Harris will prepare a three-course meal for $95 per person. Wine pairings by award-winning sommelier Mark Eberwein are available for $160.

The menu features locally sourced, mountain-inspired dishes like the Sherry Orange Glazed Clark’s Valley Lamb Chops with Roasted Brussel Spouts and Pistachio Pesto and Slow Braised Cache Valley Rabbit with Crispy Spaetzle, House Made Pancetta and Balsamic Rabbit Jus.

Call 435- 940-5760 or visit

“Chasing Ice”

U.S. Documentary

*** ½ (three and a half stars)

For the cinematography alone, this documentary about the real, observable impact of global climate change would be worth a look. Director/cinematographer Jeff Orlowski captures some amazing images of glaciers in Greenland, Iceland and Alaska, where photographer James Balog has mounted an impressive project to shoot time-lapse footage of the receding glaciers. The movie, in the mold of “The Cove,”...

LUV

U.S. Dramatic Competition

*** (three stars)

It seems almost sadistic to offer anything less than four stars to Candis’ feaeture directorial debut LUV.
On the surface, and even hours after witnessing this slow-burning film that combines the ex-con’s plight with a heartbreaking coming of age story, this film has everything.

Judicious use of anamorphic lenses give us a wonderful look at the film’s inner-city, Baltimore setting. The script rarely resorts to the kind of hackneyed dialogue you’d expect from a movie revolving around the criminal life. Most of impressive of all, it boasts a top-flight cast including Danny G...