Sundance Film Festival 2021

I didn’t want my first Sundance to be virtual but here we are. It oddly felt okay? I didn’t like how bland it all felt. I miss when things felt like events. I feel like I can’t replicate that feeling without being wealthy and building a home theater with theater seats or just tricking myself. Nothing compares to that for me. Even that bad movie theater experiences I look on with fondness now.

It was an enjoyable experience and I’m very glad I did it. I plan on going out to Utah one day and seeing it in person. Getting vaccinated this week has helped me think about what’s to come.

I thought it would be fun to revisit everything I saw over the course of 6 days. Here’s every movie I saw ranked by how much I liked it.

Land

Robin Wright makes her directorial debut with her starring as a woman grieving and she buys so much LAND in Wyoming and lives in the wilderness to escape her sad life. She is incredibly rich and not prepared to live out there and meets a local hunter played by Demian Bichir who helps her. Wright is a good actor and an okay director. The script isn’t that interesting and despite being filmed in a beautiful mountainous setting it still doesn’t look very good most of the time. Bichir is fantastic though and could sell anything. It will be out in theaters and VOD soon and I imagine it will be mostly forgotten by the end of the year but I hope some people love it. It’s not bad. It’s just there. Like Land? Eh, I’ll move on.

Human Factors

There is an edge to this movie I really like. But it never uses it to do much except make you think something big may happen. It wants to be a high class family drama about the dynamics in a family but it never takes off. There are scenes that leave you wondering what is going on in a good way but nothing ever comes from it. I’ve seen better versions of this but it’s a nice effort. The POV shot of a rat named Zorro though is a chef’s kiss.

Cryptozoo

Dash Shaw, the writer, director and animator of this wild movie definitely has a vision and imagination. It is a beautiful weird movie that feels like he mashed up Jurassic Park and X-Men add some nudity and gore. All cartoon of course. It didn’t work somehow! A vigilante saving cryptids from being collected and held against their will. Great ideas and images that just got bogged down by a boring predictable plot that seemed to only service cool drawings. I totally get that, but it just didn’t do it for me. Michael Cera’s voice cameo at the beginning is great though.

Passing

The great actress Rebecca Hall made her writer/director debut with a subtle black and white adaptation about black women who pass as white in the early 20th century. Ruth Negga is the standout, but Tessa Thompson and Andre Holland are also great. One day Alexander Skarsgard won’t play a terrible man. I thought it was fine but mostly misses the mark for me. Netflix has bought it for 15 million.

Knocking

A paranoia simple thriller that makes you wonder what is really happening the entire time. A wonderful central performance from Cecilia Milocco. I found it eerie but ultimately not surpassing good and not dipping below average.

Censor

I loved the idea of a 1980’s MPAA style censor seeing a movie that is way too close to her childhood trauma to be a coincidence and how that impacts her. Where it takes that idea wasn’t as fun or intriguing as my mind had made it. Maybe it says more about me but this left me wanting in the way movies shouldn’t. But it gets points for how into this I was for most of the runtime.

The Pink Cloud

The best movie about quarantine that was made before the pandemic that also just didn’t connect with me until the final 30 minutes. A titular pink cloud that kills anyone in its path in 10 seconds covers the world. Tubes are attached to homes, and things get claustrophobic. One of those that felt like it dragged in the middle and only recovered because it ramped up the drama. I liked it but in the middle of the pack it stays.

CODA

The crowd favorite at Sundance for a reason. Fun and sweet story about the hearing & singing daughter in a deaf family that is overwhelmed by school and responsibilities. I loved the performance of her father in it. He should be considered for awards. It was too broad for me and more like a good YA adaptation. But that’s not a bad thing, just not fully my thing. And two scenes near the end almost got me to tear up. Enjoyable movie! Apple bought it for 25 million so you’ll be hearing about it.

Eight for Silver

A bloody and goo central creature feature with Boyd Holbrook as essentially Van Helsing in the 1800s trying to stop a gypsy curse from killing everyone on stolen land with the silver Judas was paid to betray Jesus. The idea is incredible but the execution is subpar. I liked it and was pretty into it, especially when the monster autopsy happens, but overall the CGI in other scenes and the stiff script don’t make this as fun or as emotional as it should be. I would still recommend it though.

The World to Come

Another 1800s drama but in this one the monster is the patriarchy and hard living. Two women form a bond that can never be broken even with their husbands around. It is a sweet and poetic adaptation that never fully came together for me because of the odd score. I liked it and hope it does well.

Rebel Hearts

A by the numbers documentary about the nuns who led an educational revolution in LA and eventually started their own organization after the church kept them down too long. These docs usually have more sadness to them and this one, while still having plenty to be mad at, has a light touch and a deep humanity that I would recommend to anyone.

We’re All Going to the World’s Fair

Told through POV shots of phones or computers mostly, this film shows a young girl doing an internet role playing challenge and how it kind of overtakes her life. The perspective shift towards the end doesn’t do much for me but the lead girl Anna Cobb is great, and if you’ve ever spent nights just scouring the internet out of anxiety or loneliness you’ll find something to latch onto here.

Try Harder!

My favorite documentary I saw was about high achievers at Lowell High school, the #1 rated high school in San Francisco, and their quest to go to Stanford, Harvard, Columbia, UCLA, or Berkeley. It is part American middle and upper class nightmare, part fun to root for nice kids movie. I enjoyed it and it makes you want to look them all up to see how they are doing.

Coming Home in the Dark

One of the most effective movies in the fest was this deeply upsetting New Zealand chickens coming home to roost movie about a family taken hostage by two men who have some kind of secret. Funny Games meets that book that Amy Adams reads in the titular Nocturnal Animals by the way of dark secrets. It is shocking, well written, and if I would’ve seen it in a theater I imagine there would’ve been gasps at times. Road Trip Torture.

Fire in the Mountains

A beautiful setting like the Himalayans does a lot of work here, but it was still an engaging drama about a woman trying to keep her family in tact despite constant obstacles. I wasn’t sure this movie was doing much until I saw the last ten minutes which totally sold it for me.

The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be Quiet

A simple black and white story at first that becomes something more as vignette after vignette show a world similar to our own but in a dryly humorous way. A man has to change his life when he can’t leave his dog at home, and things change even more from there. Slice of life by way odd indie script writing.

Mass

I have to start by saying how ugly this movie is to look at for me. Worse than a lot of student films I’ve seen. Poorly directed, and at times overwritten. BUT, Jason Isaacs, Martha Plimpton, and Ann Dowd are so damn good at acting and getting across what the best version of this story could do that I was transfixed by their exploration of grief and complicated notions on love. The plot will make a lot of people immediately tune out but I think it’s worth a shot if you like movies in one place and good actors getting to give monologues at each other like a play. Two couples, one whose son was a victim of the other’s in a school shooting. It’s dark, but never crosses the line. Just reaches catharsis the way good plays do. I don’t know if it is a good one but the emotional anticipation the actors maintain was enough for me to like it.

Mayday

The comparisons here have been mostly fantasy based and I get it. A woman goes deep into her psyche to figure out if she wants to keep on living in a world where men are only out to hurt her. Maybe NOT ALL MEN by the end ;) but you get it. It is a gorgeously shot film with a solid lead performance by Grace Van Patten, our new Shailene Woodley, and a standout as usual from Mia Goth. The ending didn’t stick the landing but I was fully on board with this strange fantasy world about young women on an island drawing men to kill them. It rules at times and that’s enough.

Prisoners of the Ghostland

Not going to be for everyone, but if you love Nicolas Cage and wild shit this could be for you. He robs a bank, gumballs fly, he wears a sumo outfit, he wears a jumpsuit that will blow his nuts off if he gets turned on, and goes to the titular Ghostland to rescue a creepy guy’s “granddaughter” who can’t speak in the world of ghosts. It’s weird for the sake of weirdness and almost feels like the best community theater production you’ll ever see. I enjoyed it a lot and although it’s not great, I was never bored. Cage yells “TESTICLE'“ and there’s sword fighting to Time in a Bottle, what more do you want?

On the Count of Three

Jerrod Carmichael’s debut as a director is fun, well written, and perfectly acted by Christopher Abbott. Carmichael is pretty good in the lead, and Tiffany Haddish puts in a good few minutes. Not all the casting worked for me, but the strength of a friendship and the worst of small town middle america bringing you down certainly did. It doesn’t have easy answers or let you off the hook. It’s both got crowd pleasing elements but aggressive shifts that could make some feel odd. But I think it all mostly works. Two best friends decide to kill each other at the end of the day. It’s a great idea, and it’s a good movie.

John and the Hole

A masterfully shot deadpan movie in the vein of Yorgos Lanthimos by a first time director and the writer of Birdman is about a teen boy and a hole. I won’t say anything else and I hope you all get a chance to go into this one blind. It was a fascinating watch and I really loved it. Until the final 2 days of the fest it was my favorite but it got beaten by

Judas and the Black Messiah

Daniel Kaluuya and LaKeith Stanfield are as good as you expect them to be. Maybe even better than that. The charisma of the actors and the confidence of the direction by Shaka King really worked on me. The script still hits classic biopic moments, and it never goes as hard as I think it should, but it is fantastic nonetheless. Better than you think, and made me angrier than most movies do. Kaluuya better get his second nomination.

Violation

Madeleine Sims-Fewer is the name of the writer/director/actress who made a mesmerizing revenge movie from a different perspective. It isn’t what those movies usually are. The disjointed structure keeps you on your toes and there is enough tough hang type scenes that I imagine it won’t be for a lot of people. But, if you give it a chance and are in the right headspace I think you’ll be rewarded. It has Lars von Trier elements, but made by women and survivors of assault so it doesn’t feel as gross. The beautiful look, control of tone and storytelling, and the powerful acting made this one of the best things I’ve seen in the last two years, much less Sundance. I’ll be following Madeleine Sims-Fewer for the rest of her life.