Sundance 2020

[Chris Knipp]

Winning comedy and a surreal anthology of shorts.



SAVE YOURSELVES! (Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson) is a survivalist rom-com about a goofy Brooklyn couple who go north to escape their internet addiction and miss the beginnings of an alien invasion. It's a comedy that's "hilarious from start to apocalypse" according to VARIETY'S Amy Nicholson. Mike D'Angelo in a supbsribers-only review singles it out for a 64 rating (high for him) and compares it to his favorite part of SHAUN OF THE DEAD. The low-fi aliens are praised by both writers. D'Angelo dscribes them as "a uniquely memorable, often hilarious threat," due to their "innocuously floofy body and deadly frog-like tongue (or proboscis?)," which can penetrate cars, or walls and kill with one stroke.

OMNIBOAT: A FAST BOAT FANTASIA (various) a collection of short films with a nautical focus, is praised by D'Angelo, who gives is a 54, and repoorts this anthology comedy on themes revolving around a boat by multiple hands, including Terrence Nance of AN OVERSIMPLIFICATION OF HER BEAUTY and RANDOM ACTS OF FLYNESS, a collection that he says is wildly uneven but when it's working achieves "sublime absurdity." Anthony Kaufman of SCREEN DAILY says this experimental short film series "repeatedly drifts off course," but several of the pieces "have some good laughs" or "inspired trips of surrealism."

[Chris Knipp]

An appealing Asian American story, a horror film, and a comedy.



MINARI (Lee Isaac Chung) is the "most loved" film of Sundance, says Benjamin Lee of GUARDIAN (not 5 stars but 4/5). It quietly tells director Chung's semi-autobiographical story of Korean-born parents and American-born children making a go of a farm in 1980's rural Arkansas. It comes with great credential - including Brad Pitt's production company Plan B and A24's canny distribution choice. And says Lee, it's "built up considerable steam," and now "been unofficially – and deservedly" dubbed the year's "first truly great movie" and one "we'll be talking about for quite some time." As the film begins the couple leaves California and acquires a large chunk of isolated land in the midwest to cultivate native Korean plants to sell to fellow immigrants. The trajectory is low-keyed, a matter of minutiae, details like the young kids flying paper airplanes saying "Don't fight" when their parents are arguing. This is Chung's fifth film, but it's been a rocky 13-year road to this success VARIETY'S Peter Debruge notes the movie's "deeply personal and lovingly poetic rendering" and the more important because Asian American experience is "vastly underrepresented in Hollywood." The film features BURNING star Steven Yuen, previously known from multiple TV series but also in OKJA and SORRY TO BOTHER YOU among other features. Todd McCarthy of HOLLYWOOD REPORTER, who outlines the plot dynamics, says this is a "modest pic but very human and accessible."

RELIC (Natalie Erika James) is an "unsettling debut" by a Japanese Austrialian fllmmaker, a "slow-burn haunted house movie" tht turns into a "disturbingly effective allegory for the ravages of dementia" -a disease that this time spreads through the entire family. The "compelling performances" headline Emily Mortimer and Bella Heathcote, recounts HOLLYWOOD REPORTER'S David Rooney.

PALM SPRINGS (Max Barbakow) is the comedy that won this year's dubious big bid war, with $17.5 million and 69 cents paid for the vehicle for SNL alum Andy Samberg that AV CLUB's A.A.Dowd thinks this actually may be a winner this time, unlike other previous Sundance bid war winners, because it's really enjoyable and funny. In this story Samberg is trapped along with a woman (and J.K. Simmons) in a GROUNDHOG DAY-style (but more ironic and self conscious) time warp at a Palm Springs California wedding. Dowd says this is a "sweet, madly inventive, totally mainstream romantic comedy, buoyed by inspired jolts of comic violence." But he gives it only a B+, not an A-. Peter Debruge in VARIETY sums up the movie as an "ironic, irreverent and at times insane rom-com" from the "Lonely Island gang" that "does something new with a genre audiences have experienced a million times before."

[Chris Knipp]

An eye-opening doc about social media and a Mirandy July movie.


STILL FROM THE SOCIAL DILEMMA

THE SOCIAL DILEMMA (Jeff Orlowski) asks about the ethics of social media - and ultimately, as a result, whether we should wind up uninstalling it all. Orlowski is the proven documentarian of CHASING ICE (Filmleaf 2012 and CHASING CORAL. This features former Silicon Valely stars who started social media and then who turned around to question the whole thing and have gotten out of it. The main speaker is an Orlowski colleague at Stanford, Tristan Harris, former design ethicist at Google, now head of the Center for Humane Technology. HOLLYWOOD REPORTER'S Leslie Felperin says this "manages to unpack this perplexing issue with precision" yet avoiding "any moral panic-mongering, condescension or dumbing down the complexity of the science stuff." David Erlich of INDIEWIRE calls this documentary "horrifyingly good." CHASING ICE was horrifyingly good - so I'm ready to believe this new one also goes deep and is essential.

KAJILLIONAIRE (Miranda July). The festival blurb reads: "Low-stakes grifters, Old Dolio and her parents invite a chipper young woman into their insular clan, only to have their entire world turned upside down. Cast: Evan Rachel Wood, Gina Rodriguez, Richard Jenkins, Debra Winger." This has a Metascore and it's 80% based on 11 reviews. Bilge Ebiri, now of THE VERGE, says this may be July's "bet film yet" (his headline). KAJILLIONAIRE is the mistress of the twee's first in nearly a decade, following the 2011 THE FUTURE (Filmleaf SFIFF 2011) about an alike-looking, terminally tentative couple. This one by the maker of the popular debut YOU AND I AND EVERYONE WE KNOW might just be her best yet: so says Bilge Ebiri of VULTURE. The subject is an Los Angeles family of con artists and is well-crafted, patience-testing, and more abstract than previously, highlighting the absurdity of our world that we barely notice, to quote some of the 11 Metacritic reviews that add up to an 80% score. The plot focus is on the long-coming meltdown of the family's overly-isolated home-schooled daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) called Old Dolio. She's bound to break out. But someone the family meets on a plane trip is also important. Peter Debruge of VARIETY says it's all "less about the con than it is the connection." Debruge is a declared Miranda July fan, and admires the "insights" the new film provides "into what it means to be human."

[Chris Knipp]

A quiet study of poor people.


SHANE PAUL MCGHIE AND RICHARD JENKINS IN THE LAST SHIFT

THE LAST SHIFT (Andrew Cohn) - the director has made related documentaries - was originally an Alexander Payne project, and he did executive produce. Richard Jenkins plays a retiring career fast food worker in the "shit hole" town of Albion, Mich. who's changed, maybe, by training his young black successor (Shane Paul McGhie), a once-promising African American writer on probation for defacing a public monument, whose girlfriend's law school has been derailed too. David Rooney of HOLLYWOOD REPORTER calls this "a funny-sad chamber piece" and it evidently has subtle shifts and subverts expectations in interesting ways, though it just may be too drab and downbeat for many. Amy Nicholson of VARIETY alludes to a "gut punch" and says it's "wonderfully sad."

[Chris Knipp]

Sudan and Saudia in two Sundance films.


STILL FROM SAUDI RUNAWAY

HIS HOUSE (Remi Weekes) is a debut feature that's an unusual mix of social commentary and horror as it depicts a Sudanese family seeking asylum in England whose life is torture both in their house and out of it, according to Benjamin Lee of GUARDIAN (he gives it four stars). The escape by sea is covered, one that's touched by tragedy. Once in England, rules of the couple's asylum means they can't vacate the rundown house in a village they're given, no matter what, says Tim Grierson in SCREEN DAILY, even when the house starts spooking them, and we get " Terror laced with social commentary." "Weekes surprises us with his ingenuity and the depth of his themes," says Grierson.

SAUDI RUNAWAY (Susanne Regina Meures) is a documentary about the escape of a young Saudi woman from an arranged marriage compiled from cell phone footage shot by Muna. The film was made in collaboration between the two women at a distance via phone and encryption. Superficially Saudi Arabia has been relaxing its restrictions, but the country remains deeply conservative and repressive of women. This records the run-up to Muna's escape, Adrian Horton of GUARDIAN explains in a Sundance report. Sheri Linden of HOLLYWOOD REPORTER adds that though this is a well-off family, the father beats his young son. Muna goes through with the wedding since the honeymoon in Abu Dhabi will be her chance to escape. It's risky and dangerous - but the film reports that a thousand women escape from Saudi weddings every year.

[Chris Knipp]

Titles there was a buzz about. Add these to your Sundance Best List.


NEVER RARELY SOMETIMES ALWAYS

NEVER RARELY SOMETIMES ALWAYS (Eliza Hittman) from the maker of BEACH RATS has a Metascore of 92%! The premise: A pair of teenage girls in rural Pennsylvania travel to New York City to seek out medical help after an unintended pregnancy. Andrew Barker (VARIETY) calls it "a quietly devastating gem" and a "significant step forward from BEACH RATS and its predecessor IT FELT LIKE LOVE. VULTURE writer Alison Willmore points to this as a "spiritual cousin" of the celebrated Romanian abortion film [I]4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days[/I] (NYFF 2007) and says this account may be bleaker than it needs to be, but not as bleak as Ceacescu's Romania. (Many analyses can be found on Metacritic.) In his Best Of Sundance 2020 roundup A.A. Dowd of AVCLUB thinks this may win the fiction feature prize.

BLOODY NOSE, EMPTY POCKETS (Bill and Turner Ross) is "Think LEAVING LOS VEGAS meets 'Cheers,' says Leslie Felperin on HOLLYWOOD REPORTER. It "brings a profound eye to a day in a dive bar," explains Jordan Raup in THE FILM STAGE. Like their admired previous film WESTERN (ND/NF 2015), this blurs the boundaries between documentary and fiction, but it premiered in the U.S. Documentary Competition section at Sundance. Already much reviewed, it has a current Metascore of 83%.

SCARE ME (Josh Ruben). The director stars with Aya Cash as two writers telling each other stories during a rural blackout. Until, says John DeFore in HOLLYWOOD REPORTER, Ruben decides something besides the antagonism of the two interlocutors should happen.

BLACK BEAR (Lawrence Michael Levine) is "twisty meta-exploration of the creative process and its toll on relationships," says David Rooney of HOLLYWOOD REPORTER. An artistic couple retired to the country (a "lakeside home in the Adirondacks") is hosting a writer-director attempting to write, but neurotic sparks of conflict are flyingbetween the three people get in the way of progress. It's all self-conscious, self-reflective, and hermetic. In "Part Two: The Bear by the Boat House," everything shifts, Rooney reveals, to unfold a "wrap day from hell on the shoot of a film within the film" and the cast triangle is reconfigured (how cannot be revealed). Brian Tallerico of ROGEREBERT.COM suggests this be paired with the Elizabeth Moss vehicle SHIRLEY for two neurotic portraits, BLACK BEAR too being an "actors showcase."

[A.A. Dowd of AVCLUB'S Sundance best list starts out with THE ASSISTANT ( Kitty Green), the portrait of a young woman assistant of a powerful, abusive executive and THE CLIMB (Michael Angelo Covino), the study of the friendship of two cyclists over many years (with an 82% Metascore). But as Dowd acknowledges both these films, though shown at this year's Sundance Festival, really debuted at Telluride (and Cannes) last year, so we can't include them here. We can watch for them, however.]

[Chris Knipp]

Best documentary?


RENE GARZA INBOY'S STATE

BOYS STATE (Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine) gets a total rave from Jason Gormer of SLASHFILM: "Smart, entertaining, darkly comic and profoundly unsettling, BOYS STATE is simply brilliant, the best film of Sundance, and already in contention to be one of the best films of the year," he says. Focused on the "Boys State" summer program tun by the American Legion in various states across the country as dispatched in this case to Austin, Texas to run in mock elections, the documentary focuses on four keenly political youths, whom Gormer describes. John DeFore of HOLLYWOOD REPORTER, who attended Texas Boy's state himself as a youth and was disenchanted by it, approaches this film with skepticism. He opines that the American Legion ought to reimagine its program, "and add an apostrophe after 'boys' while they're at it." He argues that these four boys can't stand for the thousand at the gathering. In their need "to squeeze this strange experience into a familiar doc template," DeFore says, the filmmmakers have done some serious distorting. Andrew Kaufman's SCREENDAILY review more moderately suggests that this film uses "a combination of luck and proficient editing" as well as a judicious choice of personalities, but still shows today's party divisiveness and dirty tricks. SCREENDAILY also finds much to admire in the film's " unassuming hero, Steven Garza," the son of Mexican immigrants, and his chief rival for the Boys State governership, Rene Otero, "a supremely charismatic African American former Chicagoan" who like Garza seems out of place but rises "through the ranks" through his remarkable oratorical skills. If this sounds stimulating, Apple and A24 may have done right to pick the film up. This team's THE OVERNIGHTERS (2014) is one of the most memorable documentaries I've seen in recent years, so this film comes with strong credentials. Possibly a dissent? Mike D'Angelo indicates on his website that he walked out.