Critics who caught Woody Allen‘s “Rifkin’s Festival” during last September’s San Sebastian Film Festival weren’t too keen on it.

I had skepticism going into this all-virtual Sundance Film Festival, but count me as wholly impressed by the way they pulled it off. This should be the way every other festival does it digitally this year. The streaming was smooth, the sense of community very present and the quality of the movies was, surprisingly, decent. Especially given the fact that most of the titles that screened this year were shot in 2019.

"Framing Britney Spears" should have probably been called "Free Britney;" that’s the name of the fan-driven movement that eventually becomes the primary focus of Samantha Starks’ New York Times-produced documentary.

The Berlin International Film Festival has announced its full slate for the upcoming 2021 edition. The Berlinale delayed its usual February edition, with the pandemic forcing organizers to go digital for 2021’s edition. The 71st Berlin International Film Festival is set to take place with the “Industry Event” from March 1 to 5, which will include the European Film Market (EFM), the Berlinale Co-Production Market, the Berlinale Talents, and the World Cinema Fund in online forms.

On its surface, “Together Together” is a fairly straightforward, albeit very sweetly rendered, comedy. As I was watching this cinematic game-changer, I was admiring the way its central characters (played by Ed Helms and Patti Harrison) kept growing on me but little did I know that one of them was a transgender comedian.

A Vanity Fair cover story about the late Chadwick Boseman, titled “Inside Chadwick Boseman’s Grand Finale,” is what I believe to be the last necessary push needed for Boseman to win that posthumous Best Actor Oscar everyone seems to be talking about since last fall, for his work in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.”

Here’s a nasty little midnight noir. “Coming Home in the Dark,” directed by New Zealand filmmaker James Ashcroft, is the kind of tightly conceived, no-holds-barred debut that veers towards torture horror, only to unveil surprising substance when you least expect it.

It’s been a long and strange journey for Sarah Gavron’s “Rocks” in the U.S. The British film had premiered at TIFF in 2019 only to get released to rapturous reviews in the U.K and Europe the following year. It has finally been, for a better word, dumped on Netflix this past weekend Stateside. With barely any coverage of its release, this coming-of-age story about teenage girls and female friendship, starring a majority of non-professional actors, will now have to build word-of-mouth buzz via American Netflix viewers to get the full recognition it deserves.

In a very interesting video chat between Oliver Stone and Spike Lee, Stone mentions that a four-hour JFK assassination documentary has been invited to screen at the Cannes Film Festival in July. The film still has no distributor, I can only imagine why, but Stone seems to be indicating it has to do with some of the allegations he unearthed for the film. Both Netflix and National Geographic have declined to distribute.

Here’s another World Dramatic competition highlight from this past month’s Sundance Film Festival. A film filled with humanism, “Luzzu” is directed by Alex Camilleri, who used his years of life experience with Maltese fishermen to not just make a movie about them, but to also cast these non-professionals as his actors.

I’m just a mere messenger, but I’m here to tell you to tamper down on those expectations for 2021, like, to the lowest levels possible. I’m not kidding. Fine, a vaccine has arrived, but the distribution will span most of the year, add to the fact that there’s now a more contagious variant of COVID-19 circulating all around the world, and, yeah, welcome to the cinematic apocalypse that is 2021.

Writer-director Ninja Thyberg’s “Pleasure” was the most daring movie of Sundance 2021. An explicit portrayal of a Swedish girl’s move to California to achieve her dream of being a famous porn star.

Back in December, Variety had tacked on an apology on top of resident film critic Dennis Harvey’s “Promising Young Woman” review, written more than 11 months prior. Harvey filed the review during the Sundance Film Festival in January of 2020, but the apology didn’t appear until Mulligan complained to the N.Y. Times‘ Kyle Buchanan in December of 2020, referencing Harvey’s review.

The sales have been scarce this past Sundance. However, here’s a boost for the industry, Rebecca Hall’s directorial debut, “Passing,” has been sold to Netflix for $16 million. Obviously, it’s unclear when we might see “Passing” premiere on Netflix, but Hall’s film was very well-received and will likely get an Awards season launch later this year.