Sundance prep involves packing warm coats, snow ready boots, a number of thermals and a lot more Theraflu. It also requires several weeks’ of intense physical training. This includes wind sprints to better catch fast moving shuttles, long sessions with a stairmaster for screenings at the fourth floor Library theatre, extreme-cold endurance testing for long waits to enter Eccles. It was easy to open your laptop this year as the suitcases were gathering dust in the corner. Now close it. Do this multiple times per day. Hold the remote button down, then release it. Do six sets of reps standing quickly off the couch and then sitting down again. You can do six sets of lunges to help you close the door quickly when your family or roommates start speaking loudly during a quiet segment in a documentary about genocide.
You could decorate your living room with fake Park City shuttle stops, cardboard cut-outs of fellow fest-going comrades and a mock set-up of the Yarrow Hotel bar, and it still wouldn’t feel like the film festival that many longtime attendees know and love. After trying out a virtual version last year of the annual festival, the fest is now a master at this Sundance event-at-home thing. Thanks to the cancelling of in-person screenings in the Utah resort town courtesy of the Omnicron surge, the usual post-premiere discussions and the sense of community so vital to film festivals — and this one in particular — may have been shunted to text pokes and DM nudges. However, the sense of discovery? That was VeryMany present and accounted.
Meet the Cybersundance 2.0. Same as the Sundance. You could still check out the scrappy character-study dramas.A love songWhich gives the amazing Dale Dickey and Wes Studi the showcase they so richly deserve) and quirky comedies that might sell for a song (like Cooper Raiff’s Cha Cha Real Smooth, which Apple bought for $15 millionPeople were reminded that each generation is entitled to the Garden State it deserves). Edgy, provocative conversation starters like Lena Dunham’s sex-positive Sharp StickThese are the same, more book club-friendly versions. Leo Grande, I wish you all the best.People were hot and bothered. But not always in that order. This was a good year for doctors. You could choose to read the original nonfiction story or the one about the radical feminist activists that ran an underground abortion network.Janes) or an extra-crispy celebrity dramatization (Call Jane). If viewers had the right timing, they could skip straight to a Rebecca Hall thriller.Resurrection(Jesus is the one to whom you should humbly pray. Save Your SoulAnd Master).
And, just like the previous in-person editions of Sundance, there were a handful of films we saw that thrilled us, moved us, shook us, inspired joy and anger and sorrow, and gave us hope for a medium that’s suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune over the past few years. There has been a temptation to make. “Movies: Well, We Had a Good Run!”The official tagline for 2022 cinema. Virtual or not, the festival demonstrated that there’s still a boundless sense of urgency, vibrancy and creativity left in the art form, as well as a strong reminder that not all movies wear superhero capes. Here’s a list of the 10 best movies at Sundance 20,22. These range from a revenge tale for the patriarchy to a movie about love and volcanologists.
Blood
Carla Juri is a widow who’s trying to reorganize her life while on a business trip through Japan. Takashi Ueno, a musician who she met years ago, acts as her unofficial tour guide. A bond begins to develop between the two, though she’s unsure whether she’s ready to let go of the past. The Ozu vibes are strong in this one, but Bradley Rust Gray is a Sundance veteran — along with his longtime collaborator and life partner Soo Yong Kim, the writer-producer-director helped bring In between Days (2006), For Ellen(2012) Lovesong (2016) to the festival — and his look at love and grief feels like a throwback in the best possible way. It’s exactly the sort of unassuming, quietly observant film that you would have caught at the fest 10 or 20 years ago. In a time when human connection is scarce, this sweet slice of life almost doubles as a cure.
Love and Fire
There are many couples who share an interest. And then there’s Katia and Maurice Krafft, two French scientists who met, fell in head over heels for each other and traveled the world together, all of it spurred on by their mutual obsession: volcanoes. Filmmaker Sara Dosa gives you the Greatest Lava-Fueled Love Story Ever Told, utilizing the Kraftts’ own films of active eruptions and spewing magma geysers to complement their passion — for both their work and each other. It’s ethereal, elliptical in its construction and eerily beautiful; not even Miranda July’s oft-kilter narration can break the spell. Even if you already know the ending, the movie is an amazing testament to one white hot. An amour fou
God’s Country
Julian Higgins’ neo-Western pits a college professor (Thandiwe Newton) living in the harsh, snowy Montana countryside against two hunters who feel its ok to continually trespass on her private property. Things quickly escalate from passive-aggressive politeness, to thinly disguised threats to an inevitable boiling point. But what initially appears like a pulpy woman in-peril thriller soon shows that it has more things in mind. It’s not a coincidence that our hero is a Black female; it’s not a coincidence that the villains are entitled white males who feel like they can take whatever they want; and it’s not a coincidence that all of them are living in a national culture built on theft, prejudice, sexism and violence. It’s not perfect — the symbolism cup overfloweth here, and don’t get us started on the main character’s backstory — but Newton’s performance and a palpable fuck-you-patriarchy righteousness pack a serious punch. If you prefer your fade outs to be full of revenge and well-earned rage, it also features a great ending shot.
Janes
You’d see it on fliers and bulletin boards all around Chicago circa 1969: “Pregnant? Need help? Call Jane.” If you dialed the number, you’d could leave your information on a message machine. You will be contacted and, if necessary, assisted with terminating your pregnancy. Documentarians Tia Lessin and Emma Pildes delve into a relatively unknown corner of the era’s radical political activism, which involved an underground network of women who risked life, limb, family and their freedom to help their fellow females have a say over their own bodies. Featuring interviews with former Janes — and the “doctor” who performed many of the procedures — it’s a history lesson that somehow avoids falling into a talking-heads-old-clips-rinse-repeat rut. These women were outlaws. They were also heroes, and it’s high time more people recognized them as such. JanesIt is a good place to start.
Living
Let us now celebrate Bill Nighy The Love, Actually star gives a beautifully calibrated, tamped-down performance in this remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Ikuru set in 1950’s London, and adds his own touches to the Takashi Shimura role of a civil servant who finds out he’s terminally ill. His work alone would be enough to single out director Oliver Hermanus’ pitch-perfect period piece. Everything, from the opening credits which resemble the opening of a vintage film from that era to the impeccable script, is flawless. The Remains of the Day‘s Kazuo Ishiguro to impeccable supporting turns from Tom Burke and Aimee Lou Wood make this feel like one of the rare occasions where everything aligns just right. A beautiful, yet heartbreaking piece. This would be a great list. LivingIt would be unsurpassed.
My Old School
Given the surfeit of documentaries touching on important social issues at Sundance this year — a partial list would include the right to a safe and legal abortion, the legacy of slavery, and the rehabilitation of jihadists — it’s tempting to dismiss Jono McCleod’s portrait of a hoax as a trifle. But this creative and brilliant look back at a mysterious student at a Scottish secondary school, who, despite his braniac misfit status, wins the affections of his peers, weaves its true-crime storyline so that it sticks with you as much. “serious” nonfiction entries. When it main subject refused to appear on camera, McCleod got Alan Cumming to lip-sync to an audio interview; animation and new testimonials from the gent’s peers (it helps that the director himself was part of that very class) fill in the rest of the story. We won’t reveal what the mystery at the center of this WTF tale is. It is low-key brilliant, we will tell you.
The Princess
Ed Perkins uses only archive footage, a format that was very popular with Sundance’s docs this year. He revisits Princess Diana’s reign through the lens of news reports and press conferences. There may also be some peripheral footage. It’s a compelling glance into the life of the most famous women in the world, but it’s also a look back in anger at how she was treated — by the media, by the monarchy, by her envious and aloof husband, by the predatory packs of paparazzi that acted as her judge, jury and, yes, executioner. This is a major addition to ongoing reassessment on the way celebrities viewed Diana and other women before condemning and consuming them.
Riotsville, USA
The U.S. military constructed a model town at Fort Belvoir in 1967 to train officers and the National Guard in dealing with urban rioters. As uprisings in American cities increased in frequency, the mock-chaos scenarios were used in. “Riotsville”It would teach troops how they could control crowds. It was so popular that a second fake Georgian city was built. These places are enough to make a documentary. But Sierra Pettingill (filmmaker)The Reagan Show) uses the footage of the exercises as a jumping off point to examine how the media covered these uprisings, the report on the phenomenon issued by the Johnson administration, and the way the ’68 political conventions provided a real-life chance to test the military’s theories on actual citizens. Plus ça change.
Speak No Evil
While on vacation in Italy, two families get together. One invites the second to spend a long weekend at his or her house in the countryside. They accept, and everything seems perfectly idyllic until the vibe begins to feel a little…off. As the hosts push beyond certain boundaries, it becomes more strange and uncomfortable. “socially acceptable” behavior. Things take a dark turn once again. The clear standout of this year’s Midnight section, Danish director Christian Tafdrup’s horror movie is one sadistic, slow-burn nightmare of Euro–middle-class mores curdling around the edges, especially once the penny drops; the comparisons to the works of Michael Haneke flew fast and furious during the festival, though even he might find the final 20 minutes a little too unnerving. Sundance will be billing you for the following year of PTSD therapy.
We must talk about cosby
W. Kamau Bell’s four-part docuseries on the good, the bad, the ugly and the Very ugly regarding Bill Cosby’s six decades in the spotlight digs deep into how the groundbreaking comedian constructed his persona of the lovable, family-friendly philanthropist — and then used that same persona to hide the fact that was serially drugging women and allegedly raping them throughout the bulk of his career. It’s not interested in dropping bombshells or staging “gotcha” moments so much as sifting through the rubble of this once-beloved figure’s reign as “America’s dad”Asking why we didn’t believe he could do such amazing things for so many years. Bell gives survivors a platform to talk about their trauma while Bell attempts to understand how the person who inspired him to become a stand-up comedian turned out to be a monster. It was a difficult watch but it was a very rewarding one.