A comprehensive history of modern-day advertising, this Sundance documentary entrant is an embracing glimpse into big industry, pop culture and the creative process.
Offering another perspective on the Iraq war's impact on returning soldiers, "The Messenger" gingerly probes wounds that are still healing with admirable empathy and insight.
Writer-director Noah Buschel's third feature, "The Missing Person," is a low-key mystery that's initially engaging but ultimately lacks sufficient intrigue to sustain interest.
With a first-time feature filmmaker and a cast little-known outside Central America, Focus Features will face a considerable challenge appealing to both the art house and Spanish-speaking markets when it releases the film in March.
A heartfelt production from brothers Benjamin and Peter Bratt about the San Francisco neighborhood where they grew up, "La Mission" is an honest attempt to portray the destructiveness of violence in the Latino community.
Considering that none of Bret Easton Ellis' controversial novels has ever been turned into a particularly successful movie, it's amazing that filmmakers continue to find backers for adaptations of his work.
With so many entries at Sundance aiming for a crowd-pleasing quirkiness, it's refreshing to find a film that adheres to its own unique sensibility.
In "The September Issue," veteran documentary and TV producer and director R.J. Cutler pulls back the curtain on Vogue's production process, revealing the fascinating creative techniques and business considerations behind the magazine's creation.
"Dare," a smart and well-observed entry in the genre, is a cut above the usual hijinks. The universality of the story could lead to satisfying returns at the boxoffice and make it a staple on cable outlets.
After a run on the festival circuit, "When You're Strange" would make more sense as a DVD and VOD item for the still considerable following of the band and its iconic lead singer and sometime lyricist Jim Morrison.
Many of the documentaries in this year's Sundance Film Festival raised serious environmental concerns. So it seems fitting that the festival's closing-night movie, "Earth Days," provides a sweeping history of the environmental movement.
For anyone who enjoys watching severe depression and madness on screen, "Helen" is just what the psychiatrist ordered.
Louie Psihoyos' Audience Award winner "The Cove" is much more than a social-issue doc, combining investigative reporting, educational filmmaking and eco-thriller elements that inspired repeat standing ovations at Sundance screenings.
The original "Yes Men" performed poorly at the boxoffice, but this film has a better chance in today's climate: Audiences should be far more receptive to a work lampooning the American free-enterprise system.
Sci-fi converges with present calamities, namely the energy plight, in "Moon." Sony Pictures Classics should mine solid boxoffice from select sites, but this well-made generic science fiction will orbit most assuredly on DVD.
A memorable romantic movie requires sharp writing and strong chemistry between the stars, commodities that are always in short supply. Miraculously, one of the least heralded Sundance movies has these two crucial qualities.
The documentary form continues to evolve with screenwriter-actor Charlyne Yi's "Paper Heart," a self-regarding inquiry into the nature of love and intimacy that's semi-scripted and semi-verite.
An unsettling, "Taxi Driver"-like character study that shows the underside to hero worship and the primal world of professional football.
This is fiction, of course, yet you do worry: What if this is close to what really happened? Altered documents, misleading statements, lack of intelligence, internal in-fighting and deliberate diversions -- they all play so true to life.
Anyone who remembers the pounding music, thump of punches landing, bad dudes and bad hair of 1970s blaxploitation pictures is bound to get a kick out of "Black Dynamite."
Outfitting his river movie "Against the Current" with comedy, sadness and wit, writer-director Peter Callahan plunges into the Hudson for a downstream swim through emotional currents that run stronger and more treacherously than the river's.
Anyone who still thinks of British films as genteel will certainly have a rude awakening while watching "Bronson," which is one of the films competing in the world dramatic category at Sundance.
Unless they have lost a family member in combat, few Americans probably realize the U.S. military provides a uniformed escort to bring home the remains of all battlefield casualties. "Taking Chance" follows one officer who brings a young Marine killed in Iraq back to his family and burial ground in Wyoming.
After seeing too many edgy, impenetrable, ambitious Sundance movies aiming -- and failing -- to set the world on fire, it can be something of a relief to find a frothy, mainstream comedy that actually delivers some entertainment value.
If a movie is called "Shrink," you know the psychiatrist in question is going to be a) crazy or b) spectacularly unprofessional or c) loaded with severely damaged, drug-addled patients. Director Jonas Pate goes for d) all of the above.
