Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets

In the shadows of the bright lights of Las Vegas, it's last call for a beloved dive bar known as the Roaring 20s. Its regulars, a cross section of American life, form a community - tight-knit yet forged in happenstance, teetering between dignity and debauchery, reckoning with the past as they face an uncertain future. That’s the premise, at least; the reality is as unreal as the world they're escaping from. Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets is a mosaic of disparate lives adrift in a failed society - disillusioned and reeling, singing while their ship goes down. Filmmaking duo Bill and Turner Ross return with an elegiac portrait of a tiny world fading away but still warm and beating with the comfort of community. Their beguiling approach to nonfiction storytelling makes for a foggy memory of experience lost in empty shot glasses and puffs of smoke. (Sundance Film Festival)