Festival Dispatch #7: I Wanna Sundance With Somebody 🎥
Come feel the heat of Sundance with us
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It’s Sunday! Don’t panic. These next two issues are long overdue (Cate hides in shame), but we wanted to make sure that we didn’t miss the chance to tell you about the best (and worst) that came out of the festival this year.
We’re gonna level with you: nearly all these movies aren’t available yet for you to watch. And we’re not saying that to flex! It’s more to make clear that what we’re offering up here are films to take note of for the rest of the year — good or bad, frankly.
Sundance (remote) had some hits and misses, as it always does, so we’ve catalogued some of the most notable in either direction. Read on, enjoy, and look out for Cate’s picks later tonight!
What Zosha Watched
The Moogai
directed by: Jon Bell | written by: Jon Bell
It should be a happy time: Sarah (Shari Sebbens) and her husband have brought home a healthy second child, and everything seems to be shaping up nicely. That is, until Sarah starts seeing a malevolent spirit that she believes is trying to take her baby. When no one believes her, Sarah has to turn to reunite with her birth mother, and reconnect to her Indigenous roots.
The Moogai has all the creepy, reality-questioning set-up for a great horror movie. Unfortunately, it never quite makes it there, with the story rarely really reaching to make anything interesting out of its tangled web of terror. Instead, as it weaves together what should be a layup it trips over itself, letting people seem willfully obtuse or just straight up flat. By the time we finally see the creature, you almost have to laugh — not just because the makeup is lackluster, but because it’s clear that the whole time the scariest thing this movie had going for it was straining purely for prestige instead of point.
The Greatest Night In Pop
directed by: Bao Nguyen
There comes a time in almost every documentary where you think I wish we had gone a little bit deeper there, I’d love to see where that thought was going. Netflix’s The Greatest Night in Pop is full of these moments, and yet totally transcends them; this is a movie built entirely off of stray moments, and it’s all the better for it.
Helmed by Lionel Richie and recalling the night he (and several others) pulled together the recording of “We Are The World,” Greatest Night is celebrity at its most knowing. This group of people came together knowing it was all about them — their name, their star power, their artistry, and their time. Both the song and the documentary aren’t super concerned with probing the actual impact of the charity single, here or elsewhere. And that’s totally fine; this is a project about reflecting on a time when the impossible happened, and the true impossibility was getting that many celebrities in a single room. The story of how it came to be is delightful, full of small treasured memories, big collaboration, and Bob Dylan looking the most uncomfortable a person has ever looked. It is a doc whose foundation is the side-memory pocket of a larger documentary, and it’s damn fun to watch those play out.
Kneecap
directed by: Rich Peppiatt | written by: Rich Peppiatt
Here’s the thing about Kneecap, or a few things anyway: This movie is very funny. It follows an Irish teacher struggling to connect to the students in his Gaelic class about why the language matters, only to find two young delinquents who speak Irish fluently — and, it turns out, write pretty good Irish raps. He decides to produce their sound to get the word out and the trio quickly find success, along with a target on their backs. And here’s the other thing about this, is that the movie is a funny enough good time that I didn’t even realize this is the real rap group playing versions of themselves. Who knew! I thought they just found people who were also really good at rapping. Oh, also Michael Fassbender is in it. Here’s the final thing I’ll say: It rules!
Love Me
directed by: Sam and Andy Zuchero | written by: Sam and Andy Zuchero
The world is over and all that is left is a buoy — Me (Kristen Stewart), as they come to call themselves. They light up when they catch the eye of Iam (Steven Yuen), a roving satellite set to seek out life, and together the two AIs create a life together. Only, their vision for life is based on the scraps that are left from the internet: an Influencer couple.
Love Me is incredibly astute as it turns over these various hot button topics, looping them together and spiraling as it goes. Me and Iam try to define love, happiness, life, and living with each other, all while still trying to put a fine point on it themselves. There were times early on when I thought the movie’s concept would bore me, and a few more times where it completely bucked what I expected to happen. Ultimately it’s a beautiful little meditation on how we define ourselves in a world where so much is algorithmically displayed and not seen.
Thelma
directed by: Josh Margolin | written by: Josh Margolin
Anybody can get scammed (just ask a financial writer). Not everybody can empower themselves to go out in the world and try to get their money back with their own two hands — then again, Thelma (June Squibb) isn’t just anybody. She’s a 93-year-old grandma, on a quest to prove herself and take back what’s hers.
Thelma benefits in a lot of ways from the cast — Squibb is equal parts brassy and witty, a dash of sweetness covering up for all the punch she packs into the smallest motion. But she’s joined by the likes of Richard Roundtree (gently graceful), Parker Posey (so good at her job), Clark Gregg (always the perfect level of try-hard dad), and Fred Hechinger (who echoes Squibb’s performance beautifully), and armed with a script that makes them all pop in their own ways.
One can point to the way it artfully threads the heady issues in with the laughs, but I’m most impressed by the way it balances Thelma’s journey as totally her own. We see she loves Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt. But this is her journey, her struggles, and her triumphs. We could all stand to be a little more like Thelma.
Assorted Internet Detritus
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Zosha + Cate <3
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