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Shot in 1978 in Salt Lake City, Utah, Chilly Scenes of Winter not only shares a birthday with Robert Redford's Sundance Film Festival, it also exemplifies the festival's independent-minded approach to storytelling, warts and all. There's something not quite "normal" in this romantic comedy about a civil servant, Charles (John Heard), who falls hard for Laura (Mary Beth Hurt), a spunky temp recently separated from her husband. The fact is, director Joan Micklin Silver's film isn't a romantic comedy at all . But by the time Laura (and the audience) finds out, it's too late to turn the ship around. The film actually kicks off in fantasy / flashback mode with Charles mourning his ruined relationship and carrying on conversations with an imaginary Laura, who's returned to her husband. A cast of quirky characters provides moral support: Sam (Peter Riegert), his perpetually unemployed best friend, Clara (Gloria Grahame), his mentally unstable...

An odd mix of speculative science-fiction, avant garde music and hypnotic time-lapse photography, The Creeping Garden (2014) is a documentary that proves to be about as shapeless as its subject: plasmodial slime molds. Neither fungus or animal, this obscure organism can reach speeds of up to 1.35mm per second, spreading out its brightly colored tendrils to reach the nutrients it needs to survive, spoor and propagate itself once again. When viewed under the microscope, director Tim Grabham and Jasper Sharps' film becomes a psychedelic landscape of shapes, colors and brilliantly organic design. But once the subject shifts to those researchers, artists and amateur mycologists who use slime molds as a pet project, the pace begins to...well... creep . Opening with a 1973 CBS news report of mysterious "blobs" discovered in Texas that dissolved after a few days, The Creeping Garden hooks you with early hints of a mysterious and complex creature existing right under our nos...

Interiors (1978), Woody Allen's first attempt at straight-drama, features a cast of characters so laughably narcissistic it would only take a gentle nudge to push the entire production into broad comedy. Modeled after the depressively beautiful films of Ingmar Bergman, Allen and cinematographer Gordon Willis recreate the European aesthetic down to the last detail in this story of a wealthy East Coast family struggling to adjust to their parents' separation and impending divorce. Sisters Joey, Flyn and Renata are the product of the financially successful but deeply dysfunctional marriage of Arthur (E.G. Marshall) and Eve (Geraldine Page), each dealing with the uncomfortable demise of the family unit in their own way. Flyn (Kristin Griffith), a TV actress, questions her ability to achieve anything else. Renata (Diane Keaton), a critically lauded poet, suffers from writer's block that seeps into her own marriage to a struggling author (Richard Jordan). While Joey (Mary...

Now in her '70s, Charlotte Rampling has matured into the sort of actress who can hold your attention just by making toast. Which is a skill put to the test in Andrew Haigh's domestic tragedy 45 Years , a film that mines the drama lurking beneath the daily routines of a marriage on the cusp of disintegration after nearly half a century of comfortable mediocrity. Kate (Rampling) and Geoff (Tom Courtenay) have long since settled into the predictable roles of a retired couple, with Kate mothering her rather irresponsible partner through the challenges of old age. But when a letter arrives informing Geoff about the discovery of the body of his old girlfriend - frozen and completely preserved in glacier after a hiking accident - their relationship begins to fray. The news hits Geoff harder than it probably should have, considering the time involved, which arouses Kate's feminine suspicions. Some mild snooping reveals that Geoff's old flame (ironically named Katya) playe...

Judging films on the basis of box office returns seems patently unfair. But judging them based on audience disinterest probably has some merit. And, surprisingly, Passengers generated little more than a collective "meh" when it was released last year. Surprising not only because it starred two of the most bankable and beloved actors of the decade, but also sported a catchy concept based on a lauded script set in a genre that's riding an all-time high. En route to a new world aboard the colony Starship Avalon, Jim (Chris Pratt) is rudely awoken out of hypersleep with roughly 89 years left to go before he and his 5000 fellow passengers reach their destination. With no way to reactivate his hibernation pod or contact the crew, Jim is suffering from a case of fatal loneliness - his only source of comfort, a chatty cybernetic bartender (Michael Sheen) - until he realizes he has the technological know-how to wake up someone else to share in his misery. Of course, this...

Part of the post-war push to create more authentic motion pictures far from the typical Hollywood soundstage, 1947's Kiss of Death uses a bevy of impressive NYC interiors and exteriors to tell screenwriter Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer's tragic tale of Nick Bianco (Victor Mature), a hard-luck gangster who names names to keep his family from falling apart. But the film's most memorable figure is the larger-than-life Tommy Udo (Richard Widmark), an ambitious punk on the way up whose villainous giggle will be left ringing in your ears. Directed in unassuming style by Henry Hathaway (not unlike the approach Hitchcock would take in The Wrong Man ), Kiss of Death 's reputation as a film has been overshadowed by Widmark's Oscar nominated performance...and deservedly so. A pair of suspenseful opening and closing scenes bookend what is otherwise a fairly plodding piece of work shot in a deliberate documentary style that's more dated that most newsreels of the day. ...

The 1950's were the heyday of cinematic science fiction. While visitors from another planet invaded in The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Blob, and The Thing , a constant onslaught of irradiated monsters like The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms lumbered onto movie screens on a weekly basis. But the genre was healthy enough to support hundreds of more obscure efforts that still require some skill to track down. 1956's World Without End , a time-traveling apocalyptic spacer with enough similarities to H.G. Wells' The Time Machine to warrant a lawsuit, is just such a minor entry, bringing along a tribe of one-eyed mutants and sexy future chicks just for fun! After completing a survey mission to Mars, four astronauts are accelerated through time and space, only to land on a future Earth where the surface is ruled over by savage "beast men" while the civilized society remains below ground, their courage and vitality slowly draining away. The female of the species,...

In 1959, the movies still served as a sort of "staycation," allowing audiences to see the world without leaving their local theater. While studios often glommed this travelogue approach onto existing creative properties (e.g. King Solomon's Mines or Ian Fleming's Bond adaptations), they weren't above milking locations a little closer to home for some dramatic appeal. Case in point, director Don Siegel’s Edge of Eternity , which stages a rather lackluster noir / mystery in one of the most spectacular settings in North America: the Grand Canyon. Les Martin (Cornel Wilde) is the Deputy Sheriff of a faded Arizona mining town suddenly facing a string of murders. His instincts lead him to the Kendon family, whose patriarch owns the local gold mine, which went belly-up after WW2. After a string of dead ends and more bodies, daughter Janice Kendon (Victoria Shaw) proves to be a wealth of information - and romantic possibilities. Together they begin to link the k...