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AHFW’s Top 20 Films of 2020: #6 ‘The Father’

Jeff Mitchell

6. “The Father” – Anthony (Anthony Hopkins) and his daughter Anne (Olivia Colman) live together in a spacious, comfortable London flat, but she breaks some life-changing news to her dad.  She’s moving to Paris, and – because of Anthony’s dementia – he has to pick up his life and relocate to a nursing home.  Plenty of movies capture this unenviable topic, but director/co-writer Florian Zeller looks at the crisis from Anthony’s perspective, his world, which clouds our judgment about on-screen realities.  These two masterclass actors traverse through Zeller’s disconcerting puzzle…

AHFW’s Top 20 Films of 2020: #7 ‘Apples’

Jeff Mitchell

7. “Apples” – Director/writer Christos Nikou began scribing his “Apples” script – about a worldwide pandemic – in 2012.  Little did he know that COVID-19 would shake up the planet, but thankfully his plague dramedy carries a lighter touch.  For unknown reasons, random adults suddenly develop amnesia, including our lead (Aris Servetalis) – otherwise known as # 14842 –  and a team of doctors and counselors help him form a new identity and start over.  Nikou’s first feature film pits an average guy against uncomfortable, awkward surroundings, and through comic…

AHFW’s Top 5 Sundance 2021 Films

Jeff Mitchell

Even though the Sundance Film Festival is a big deal and only a 90-minute flight away from Phoenix, I sadly never attended.  After growing up in Upstate NY, shoveling our 60-yard driveway hundreds of times and trudging through blizzards, ice storms, and 3-foot snowdrifts as a paperboy for five years, I tend to shy away from snowy, cold weather whenever possible.  (Living in and embracing one of the hottest cities in the country is reasonably reliable proof, don’t you think?) This year, however, I enrolled in Sundance 2021, and through…