This year's Sundance Film Festival, which closed last Sunday in Park City, Utah, was the subject of a scathing report by Variety chief critic Todd McCarthy, who has been covering the event for 20 years.

"The heart of the festival, the dramatic competition, very seldom made anyone's pulse race," he wrote, "as the majority of the 16 entries were either drearily reminiscent of previous films in their earnest presentation of 'significant' subject matter or, in a few cases, so amateurish as to hardly rate a place in a competitive festival."

McCarthy said that only one entry, Wristcutters: A Love Story, could hold its own internationally at a festival such as Cannes, Venice or Toronto, and that with few exceptions, most of the competition films were "visually clueless".

He went on to call Sundance "the most user- unfriendly festival of any significance", criticising its press screening facilities, inaccessible venues and late starting times, gridlock and parking problems, and booked-out restaurants. He concluded that, "after several years of fully acknowledged overcrowding" at the festival, "the situation passed the breaking point this time".