Synopsis: Someone is attacking big corporate CEOs and forcing them to consume harmful products they manufacture. An elite private intelligence firm is called into action and contracts ex-FBI agent Sarah Moss to infiltrate a mysterious anarchist collective, The East, suspected to be responsible. Skilled, focused, and bent on success, Sarah goes undercover and dedicates herself to taking down the organization. She soon finds, however, that the closer she gets to the action, the more she sympathizes with the group’s charismatic leaders. [Synopsis courtesy of Sundance]
Cults, rituals and underground movements were explored in Zal Batmanglij's unjustly overlooked "Sound Of My Voice," and this year he returns to the Sundance Film Festival with collaborator Brit Marling for "The East," another picture exploring those similar themes. And follow...
Read More »You would think that with the Oscar nominations coming on Thursday we might get a bit of a breather, but alas, just seven days later the Sundance Film Festival will kick off, introducing a whole batch of new movies that will hope to be part of the discussion in 2013. And one of the films we're l...
Read More »So, the Sundance Film Festival dropped their Premieres line up and it's a heckuva slate coming in January. And of course, new images for all the movies coming fast and strong, so let's get with it....
Read More »Much of the cast of Steven Spielberg's new epic "War Horse" will be unrecognizable to mainstream American audiences (save for Emily Watson and David Thewlis) -- and that is by design. The director didn't want the distraction of recognizable people in his lead parts, so he instead p...
Read More »Just a year ago, Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij were scrambling to finish their debut collaboration, “Sound of My Voice,” to have it ready in time for the Sundance Film Festival. Speaking last week to Marling from the Shreveport, LA set of their follow-up, “The East,” the mu...
Read More »Among the 115 features that screened in Park City this year, Indiewire reviewed 30 titles, including films from every section of the festival. Links to all of them can be found here in alphabetical order.
Read More »Suspenseful, ludicrous, fascinating, and utterly unsubtle, Zal Batmanglij's "The East" plays like an unholy mash-up of "Martha Marcy May Marlene" and "Alias." The film builds on the themes of cult and identity that Batmanglij and his star Brit Marling explored artfully in their breakout debut "The S...
Read More »Critics are divided on director Zal Batmanglij ("The Sound of My Voice") and co-writer-star Brit Marling's newest collaboration, "The East." While some find the film a relevant, absorbing eco-terrorist thriller, others deem it overlong and "deeply silly." Review highlights below.
Read More »The first images in "The East" – the new thriller from Zal Batmanglij and Brit Marling, the team who made last year's underrated cult thriller "Sound Of My Voice" – are grainy footage of intruders breaking into someone's home juxtaposed with images of seagulls covered in oil. We are told through voi...
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