All the best movies we saw at Sundance Film Festival, ranked (including Judas and the Black Messiah ) Brian Truitt, USA TODAY
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Instead of roughing it in the cold and snow of Park City, Utah, to get to various screenings at the annual Sundance Film Festival, we ventured toward the couch to watch the best of what independent cinema has to offer in 2021.
Like the other big-time fests in Toronto, New York and elsewhere did in 2020, Sundance went virtual this year because of COVID, but didn t skimp on the cinematic goodness. This year s event included the world premiere of high-profile awards-season contender Judas and the Black Messiah ; projects with stars like Tiffany Haddish, Tessa Thompson and Nicolas Cage; a ton of documentaries featuring the glam-rock duo Sparks; Hollywood legend Rita Moreno; Black Woodstock and a beloved children s show; plus a social media-driven update of Shakespeare s Romeo & Juliet.
This week at the
“First Date” lead
Manuel Crosby about the script, auditions and their dating experience. Click here to watch!
About The Film: Mike (Tyson Brown), a high school kid with a crush, finally summons the courage to ask Kelsey (Shelby Duclos) out on a date. With a date but no wheels, Mike borrows money and gets duped into buying a clunker ’65 Chrysler. Although many a first date goes awry, Mike’s swiftly descends into a surreal misadventure that finds him inexplicably targeted by a pair of cops, a criminal gang, and a vengeful cat lady – with all roads leading to a showdown.
Lotsa quirks. Never clicks.
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Manuel Crosby and Darren Knapp s comedy sets many, many obstacles between the meeting of a high-school kid and the girl he s obsessed with.
An out-all-night odyssey in which romance is interrupted by a compounding series of mishaps and crimes, Manuel Crosby and Darren Knapp s
First Date follows in the tradition of similarly named predecessors like
Date Night, Blake Edwards
Blind Date, et cetera. In this case, the misadventure is mostly had by the would-be suitor (Tyson Brown), who gets waylaid time and again before he can even meet the longtime crush (Shelby Duclos) he can t believe agreed to go out with him. This is the first feature for both leads, and the writer-directors would ve done well to concentrate more on them prioritizing chemistry over introducing an increasingly quirky populace of characters whose antics keep them apart. While the two young thesps acquit themselves nicely, much around them conspires to prevent their debut
The best thing I can say about
First Date, the wacky new crime comedy from writer/directors
Manuel Crosby and
Darren Knapp, is that it almost never takes its foot off the gas. It opens with a bang (someone gets shot in the first scene), and after a very brief sequence which establishes some of the main characters, it quickly kicks back into high gear. But that fast pace means the film never stays in one place for very long, and your mileage may vary on whether or not all of its detours and destinations are ultimately worthwhile.
The movie, which marks Crosby and Knapp’s feature directorial debut as a duo, centers on a quiet kid named Mike (