Sundance 2020

[Chris Knipp]

The GUARDIAN'S Best List has two titles we missed. They are:



THE GO GO'S (Alison Ellwood) is a Showtime tribute to the New Wave girl band that had some Eighties Billbord hits and remains a karaoke favorite. They wrote their own songs. It's "a kick" in this film to see "the original incarnation" performing "scrappy sets" exhibiting "a much rougher, angrier sound" in late-Seventies venues and see how "the definitive lineup gradually came together," says David Rooney in his HOLLYWOOD REPORTER review, and David Fear (ROLLING STONE) says this film gives the group "a proper music doc (finally)."

THE NOWHERE INN is a sort-of mockumentary, but one that "turns in on itself" (Eric Kohn, INDIEWIRE) and is based on reality and "isn't quite what it wants to be" (COLLIDER). The focus is on a fictionalized version of cult sensation Annie Clark, known as "St. Vincent." Trouble is she's an uninteresting nerd. Maybe a fact - the contrast between loved stage image and backstage dull reality - doesn't dramatize so well. Clark collaborates here with "Portlandia" comedian and guitarist Carrie Brownstein, as Amy Nicholson explains in VARIETY. Not for everyone, a "what'sit", but (says Kohn) "a shapeshifting psychological thriller worthy of vintage De Palma" and an interesting followup for followers of THIS IS SPINAL TAP. INDIEWIRE calls it "a mesmerizing seriocomic descent into the madness of modern fame."