A new year means a new Sundance Film Festival, and a fresh crop of promising original features that could go on to become awards season darlings in a few months. It might be hard to top last year’s festival where Dìdi, A Different Man, and I Saw the TV Glow all made strong showings. But with films like Atropia, Bubble & Squeak, and Didn’t Die on the roster, this year’s Sundance might just do the trick.
Naturally, The Verge is going to be taking in as much of Sundance as we can and posting bite-sized reviews of everything we see. We’ll also be posting longer reviews and sharing trailers, and you can follow along here to keep up with all of the news out of the festival.
- It’s a rough time to be an independent film.
Between its dearth of new features and a couple of movies actually being pulled down, this year’s Sundance seemed a little feeble this past weekend, and Yahoo reports that those feelings are shared by producers who came away from the festival feeling that “independent film does not currently have a viable business model.“
- Train Dreams.
An understated portrait of a life, oscillating between heartbreaking tragedy and hopeful beauty. The movie follows Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton) from his quiet vantage point in Idaho at the turn of the century. An orphan who eventually finds a successful career in logging, his largely lonely life is upended when he meets a woman (Felicity Jones) and, with her, finds a real reason to live. And yet Grainier finds that death seems to follow him wherever he goes. Eventually he loses everything — and spends the rest of his days trying to find that reason for being again. (Train Dreams was acquired by Netflix, and so hopefully will be streaming in the near future.)
Image: Sundance Institute - Plainclothes.
Though Lucas (Tom Blyth) is good at his job as a plainclothes police officer tasked with arresting men for public indecency, he lives in fear of his own queerness being exposed. Work is the only place he ever “meets” guys like Andrew (Russell Tovey) who make him wonder what his life might be like gay people weren’t forced to hide their identities. The more Lucas thinks about his future, the darker his anxieties become. A grim snapshot of the past, Plainclothes powerfully explores how normalized bigotry and state surveillance go hand-in-hand.
Sundance Institute - Sundance is almost over.
The festival comes to a close today, and while there hasn’t been a particular standout film, there is plenty to keep an eye out for once they hit theaters and streaming services. You can keep up with everything we’ve watched so far right here, including the likes of Artropia, Zodiac Killer Project, and Bunnylovr. And expect more updates throughout the day.
- Twinless (has been pulled from Sundance online.)
Twinless, writer / director / star James Sweeney’s dark comedy about two men (Sweeney, Dylan O’Brien) who bond after the death of their twins, was screening at in-person and online as part this year’s Sundance Film Festival. But Variety reports that the film has been yanked from the festival’s digital portal because people couldn’t stop recording clips and posting them to social media.
Sundance Institute - Obex.
With cicadas swarming Baltimore in the summer of 1987, ASCII artist Connor (Albert Birney) is even more inclined to stay home playing games on his Macintosh. At first, Obex doesn’t seem like much compared to any of the other floppy disk games he has ordered through the mail. But when his dog Sandy vanishes one day, the game’s fantasy world of monsters and magic starts to consume his mind. The film’s experimental, lo-fi depiction of pre-internet screen addiction is imaginative and artful. The story’s a bit thin, but its visuals are strong.
Sundance Institute - Bunnylovr.
Aimless twentysomething Becca (Katarina Zhu) doesn’t know what she wants out of life, but everyone wants a piece of her. Her sickly gambling addict father William (Perry Wang), her best friend (Rachel Sennott), and men like John (Austin Amelio) she does camshows for all see her time and attention as things they should be able to demand without question. It’s hard for her to say no, but when she unexpectedly receives a pet rabbit, the responsibility pushes her to start pushing back. Writer / director / star Zhu delivers a tremendous, but quiet performance that mirrors the film’s nuanced ideas about intimacy.
Sundance Institute - Zodiac Killer Project.
This incredibly meta story isn’t strictly about the Zodiac Killer, but rather a failed attempt to make a documentary. After director Charlie Shackleton lost the rights to adapt the book The Zodiac Killer Cover-Up, he decided to make a movie that shows what the film would have been like. It plays out like an extended director’s commentary for a movie that doesn’t actually exist. The result is a surprisingly compelling story on its own, but also one that serves as a clever deconstruction of true crime, and a very open look at the editorial decisions that shape the genre.
Image: Sundance Institute - Atropia.
In the fictional country of Atropia (which is actually a training facility in California styled to resemble an Iraqi village), few people take their jobs as seriously as struggling actress Fayruz (Alia Shawkat). She knows there’s something twisted about roleplaying as a chemical weapons expert for the benefit of soldiers visiting Atropia before they’re deployed to fight in the real, ongoing Iraq War. But it’s a paying gig where she happens to be falling in love with a fellow pretend insurgent (Callum Turner). Though Atropia gets unwieldy between its romantic and satirical modes, it nails the Bush era’s “patriotic” madness.
Image: Sundance Institute - Luz.
This film is gorgeous, taking place across a warm and cozy Paris, ultra modern Chongqing, and a virtual reality metaverse where players hunt down a mysterious, mystical deer. Unfortunately its parallel stories of estranged families aren’t particularly compelling on their own, nor do they intersect in a satisfying way. It attempts to throw in some tension through other means – like a surprisingly simple million-dollar art heist, and the search for the virtual deer – but ultimately Luz is too meandering to remain captivating for long.
Image: Sundance Institute - Bubble & Squeak.
Set in an unnamed, fictional European country that, due to a long war where residents only had cabbage to eat, has outlawed the vegetable and imposed severe punishments for smugglers. When a honeymooning American couple (Himesh Patel and Sarah Goldberg) gets caught with cabbages in their pants, they end up racing for their lives. The movie is, obviously, ridiculous – and there are some fun comedic performances from Steven Yeun, Dave Franco, and Matt Berry – but it awkwardly tries to mash its humor with a more sincere tale of a couple facing their differences that never really comes together.
Image: Sundance Institute - By Design.
It turns out Juliette Lewis makes a very good chair. In this surreal film her character Camille feels overlooked and ignored, until one day she finds the most beautiful designer chair, and the two somehow switch places. While Camille’s inanimate body becomes a strange source of fascination for her friends, she truly feels seen with her soul inside of the chair, which has become an obsession for pianist Olivier (Mamoudou Athie). The movie can drag in moments, particularly because of its lengthy narration, but its strange vision is weirdly charming and eventually pushes towards a surprisingly intense climax.
Image: Sundance Institute - Didn’t Die.
A zombie apocalypse isn’t enough to stop Vinita’s (Kiran Deol) podcast ambitions. She hosts the titular show despite the world coming to an end, and a planned live performance for episode 100 becomes a useful way to connect with survivors, who are largely isolated in this dystopic world. Didn’t Die starts out as mostly a comedy, with the scary bits serving as background, but when Vinita’s ex and a surprise baby get involved, it becomes a touching –and tragic – story of family and loss, one that ends on a heartwarming and hopeful note.
Image: Sundance Institute - The Legend of Ochi.
A gorgeous adventure in the mold of E.T., the movie has a lot of promise but is missing the spark to truly stand out. It takes place in an isolated mountain community, where ape-like creatures called ochi are hunted by farmers trying to keep their livestock safe. But when a young girl (Helena Zengel) finds an injured baby ochi, she sets off on a quest to return it to its family. The creature design is incredible, and there’s a lot of mystery to the post-apocalyptic seeming world. Ultimately, though, Ochi is a charming-yet-fairly-standard family-friendly adventure. (It hits theaters on April 25th.)
