Watch List (Bi-)Weekly Recap 1/23/24
This is the Friday Tuesday recap of Ty Burr’s Watch List postings for the week. If you’d like to cut down on in-box clutter and receive this weekly email ONLY, please go to your account page and under “Email notifications” uncheck every box except “Weekly Digest.” If you’d prefer to not receive it at all, uncheck just “Weekly Digest.”
Apologies to Weekly Recap subscribers — I have not forgotten you! But I have been in Park City, UT, for the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, running around like a critic with his head cut off (sorry for the visual), seeing a lot of movies, and filing my thoughts. I’m here one more day and will post one or two more times but wanted to bring you up to speed with what I’ve seen so far. Also: Oscar nominations!
Good Movies 📽
Two Good Films: "Black At Yale" and "Street Corner Stories"
Ty Burr • Jan 15, 2024
For Martin Luther King Jr. Day, two early documentaries by Warrington Hudlin, who went on to produce films directed by his brother Reginald Hudlin (“House Party,” 1990; “Boomerang,” 1992), among other initiatives. 1974’s hour-long “Black at Yale: A Film Diary” damningly testifies to isolation and institutional racism at Hudlin’s alma mater, in case you were thinking that all that DEI business is overblown.
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Festival Reports
10 Movies I Want to See at Sundance
Ty Burr • Jan 18, 2024
The 40th iteration of the Sundance Film Festival begins today, and I am currently sitting in a rental ski condo in front of a rather feeble gas fireplace gearing up for my yearly week-long immersion in movies from around the planet, many of which will be coming to you later this year.
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Festival Reports
Sundance Report I: The Cute Edition
Ty Burr • Jan 20, 2024
“I think this is the cute Sundance,” a fellow critic said to me as we came out of a screening Friday evening, and she may have been on to something. Heartstrings have been plucked, sentiments stroked, and crowds pleased, which is all good news for a large and complicated event still staggering back in many ways from COVID.
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Festival Reports
Sundance Report II: "Love" and "Pain" and The Whole Damn Thing
Ty Burr • Jan 22, 2024
My standard Sundance operating procedure is to catch as many movies as possible in a given day, dashing from one to another and griping about the shuttle bus schedule. After Sunday morning’s screening of “A Real Pain” (⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐), though, I canceled the next few appointments and took some time to process.
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Awards 🏆
The 2024 Oscar Nominations: Bizarro Business As Usual
Ty Burr • Jan 23, 2024
I find at this stage of my life and career that it’s impossible to get het up over the supposed injustices of Academy Awards nominations. The Oscars are an in-house company poll, and the company is Hollywood.
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