From the cast, you’d think it was an Oscar contender. There’s Melissa Leo, who took home an Academy Award last year for portraying the brash, hair...

Higher Ground seems like a film of the moment. I came away feeling like I'd seen a solid film by a self-assured director, one who didn't have an axe to grind dealing with a subject that could have been spun that way.

"Christianity per se is not the film's subject, just the setting. Doubts and questions come to people within any faith or culture. And it's the questions that are essential no matter which religion or culture we come from."

Images -- political and otherwise -- often have only the most tenuous relationship with reality. As it happened, that idea was a significant factor in several of the films I saw at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival on Sunday.

On Thursday, the opening day of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, my actual Sundance day began and ended with the opening night screening of Susan Rost...