This Had Oscar Buzz - BONUS – Sundance, I Say

Episode Date: January 30, 2022

We’re bringing you a special bonus episode to recap our time with year’s edition of the Sundance Film Festival! We discuss some of the biggest prize winners from the US Dramatic Competition winner Nanny and the US Dramatic Audience Award winner Cha Cha Real Smooth, and other award recipients like Descendant, Dos Estaciones, and Fire of Love. We also discuss the … Continue reading "BONUS – Sundance, I Say"

Uh-oh, wrong house. No, the right house. I didn't get that! We want to talk to Marilyn Heck. This is Robert Redford. Welcome to the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. Hello and welcome to the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast, the only podcast with an opening keynote speech from Robert Redford. Every week on this head Oscar buzz, we'll be talking about a different movie that once upon a time had lofty Academy Award aspirations, but for some reason or another, it all went wrong.

The Oscar hopes died, and we're here to perform the movie. autopsy, except this bonus episode will be recapping this year's Sundance Film Festival. I'm your host, Chris Fyle, and I'm here, as always, with everyone's festival favorite, Joe Reed. Yeah, I'm the festival favorite in that I have been placed against the other festival winners, and I am the ultimate winner of all. That's such an odd... You immediately text me, and you were like, had they done this before, and I was like,

no, it's stupid. it's it's they added a new award this year at sundance where you can be like the grand all the audience all the audience word winners right you're a you're a dramatic audience award winner you're a documentary audience award winner you're a international audience award winner and then all of those winners are placed against each other and there's like one grand champion decided and it's like is this purely necessary i'm not entirely sure that it is but good for nivalny for being the ultimate winner of winners. I guess that's sort of... The breakout... One of the breakout docs of the festival. Yeah, and the latest edition, like, it

was added mid-festival. Yeah, because it was secret, because it deals with Russia, so they wanted to keep the lid on it until, like, the day before it premieres. That was what I found so interesting and so kind of odd, was we got this word that there was going to be a secret

new movie added to the festival, and of course you'd speculate you know what is this a big deal is this going to be like something kind of spectacular and to find out that it was a documentary about Russia

I was like cool but also that's a lot of hype for a doc about Russia and I think as you said then it lends this air of sort of hush hush secrecy are we trying to like sneak this documentary out without a whole lot of fanfare

because there's international sort of Putin implications to it? Yeah. This was Putin's opponent, I believe, and he was poisoned.

And it's him investigating his own poisoning. I immediately, when I saw a TBA, bought a ticket for it, and because it happened towards the end of the festival or the end of my festival

watching, because I had to go back to work, um, uh, my brain was mashed potatoes, and I just, couldn't do it. So even though I paid for a ticket for it,

didn't see the movie, unfortunately. But we have something good to look forward to. I guess it's through CNN, so they could possibly do a theatrical run, but it could also just be... It'll probably be like a CNN special at some point. I'm pretty sure there have been, you know, CNN docs that have had theatrical runs, like...

But it does feel like, just from what the filmmakers are saying, it feels like they feel an urgency to sort of get this movie out there for the public. And so that's what makes me feel like it's just going to air on CNN just for the urgency of it and for the immediacy of it. I haven't seen anything with a date, though. No, no. Right. Correct. But again, because they were able to spring that on Sundance so quickly, I also feel like it could just get sprung very quickly. You know what I mean? Wouldn't surprise me if they were on like a Monday be like, tune in on Friday kind of a thing. Do you know what I mean?

So we'll see. That's Navalny, not miscongeniality, but festival favorite. Let's hear it Festival Favorite. Demented. Absolutely demented. My only feeling about this new festival favorite thing, obviously

there's usually sponsors attached to these prizes. There was also some weird stuff going down with the prizes and the names of the prizes where it's like, clearly they wanted to award X movie, but didn't know, what to award it for.

The Mercedes-Benz C. Montgomery Burns Award for Excellence. Mercedes-Benz says you have to give out three prizes with their names attached, et cetera. But instead of giving it to, like, best cinematography, they awarded things like

Best Documentary Craft to a documentary. Right. What does that mean? It feels a lot like sort of National Board of Review or Independent Spirit Award. whether it's like the Freedom of Expression Award.

And it's like, that just kind of means that like you made a movie about an important subject kind of. Right. Like it just feels very kind of like squishy and, you know, imprecise. But more power to, listen, I'm also of the mind that that kind of stuff seems weird and sounds weird. But also, if you're a film festival and you like a movie and you have no other place to honor it, but you feel like it's good enough to be honored, make up something. Honestly, we're talking about movies that definitely need the platform. The one-no-one documentary craft is for the territory, which is coming at,

Nat Geo picked it up, so that will definitely be there. But, like, we're talking mostly about movies that definitely need the platform. Like, there's some movies that got, like, that either came to the festival with distribution already, or some of them got really good deals that we'll talk about. but like by and large anything you know is great for some of these well and also when we talk about like what needs a platform it is sort of relative whereas like even the most sort of well-placed movies from this festival whether you're going to end up on hulu or you're going to end up on Netflix or you're going to end up on apple we are still in an environment where like everything that is that you feel like needs to be given a sort of brighter spotlight on it probably does because we're just not in a place where we know how to correctly, I mean, gatekeep is a negative word these days, but just like there is a crisis out there of so many movies on streaming platforms without an ability to

properly sort of give the audience a sense of like what is something they should be seeking out and something that, you know, maybe less so. And the lack of that keeping function can be seen as a positive because it just means that there is nothing being deprioritized. But it then leaves the audience with just kind of a sea of undifferentiated content that they then have to sort of like choose from. And I feel like in this way, if the more, you know, qualitative spotlight we can put on things that we think are good.

and by we, I mean, critics, and people who program festivals and people who hand out awards to festivals, and even just people who see stuff early and want to get word of mouth out. Like, all of that stuff is to a greater good, whether it's, you know, something that got picked up by Searchlight or something that hasn't gotten picked up at all yet. Right. Do you know what I mean? Listeners, Joe and I once again did a decent job of not talking about the movies. we've seen together too much so that we can preserve the conversation for you guys. But generally, I don't really know how your festival experience was. Joe, did you enjoy your time with Sundance?

So this was the first year I've ever done Sundance as a press representative. Last year, I basically bought public tickets to about eight or nine movies, I feel like. You had press access, so you saw a ton more than I did. You've still seen a ton more than I did this year, but I feel like at least we had the same access to it, both being accredited us this year. And we did see overlapping stuff, but there was also stuff that you saw that I didn't see. A couple things, yeah. I think it was like two movies that I saw that you didn't see and like 12 movies that you saw that I didn't see.

I still didn't see as much as I did last year, but for whatever reason, and maybe it's because at that point in the pandemic, we were just hungry for anything. I ended up being more exhausted this year, and I don't. quite no why. I was really happy with my Sundance experience, I will say. Shout out to the folks who put on the festival. I thought their app

while initially confusing to find, because it is not named Sundance in any way. It's just called, like, online festival screener app or whatever. Right. It's probably used by multiple festivals. So trying to find it, once I found it,

it was really a really smoothly handled and well on app, everything. Once you sort of are able to add your movies on the Sundance website, then it's all just sort of like right there for you. And when they're available to screen, you can just sort of screen them. I watched them all on my, you know, Roku TV and everything was lovely. And I generally liked almost everything that I saw. Like this, again, people tend to kind of brush off positive Sundance reviews in the last five to ten years as this sort of, you know, festival fever. And, you know, for all of these years where people were maybe more effusive about Sundance movies in the moment. And then when they would get released months later, people would be like this, like me and Earl and the Dying Girl kind of a thing. But in general, I'm not really, I don't really want to subscribe to that. I really, you know, my. There was less. of those type of movies.

Like, I mean, we can get into the ones that we think we might see some reaction like that. But, like, I think a lot of things. My experience was, like, yes, generally positive. I saw probably less duds than I saw last year, like, outright bad movies. But, like, I do feel like a lot of what I saw, most of what I saw hovered to that mid-range of, like, yeah, it was fine. Or, like, yeah. Or even more interesting, actually, there were a lot of movies that, like, maybe didn't work all the way or maybe had some, like, sticking points, but were taking risks that were interesting and interesting to, like, watch and unexpected. That was what, like, my big takeaway of the festival was.

Even if I didn't like some movies, I could appreciate the risks that they were taking, which I don't think is rare for Sundance, or is common for Sundance. And I guess maybe my kind of lack of Sundance experience comes into play here and maybe my expectations are a little skewed. But that's mostly what I was looking for. I don't think I had a ton of movies where I'm just like, this is going to be a big deal this year. I don't think there were very many movies like that. I think there may be a couple and we'll talk about them. But I'm more interested in, do I see promise in a filmmaker? Do I see, are there elements of a movie?

performances in a movie that I find interesting, are there movies that I am kind of, while I don't think they're going to be like a huge deal, there are a bunch of movies that I saw that are like, I'm excited for when my friends and my sort of fellow, you know, cinefiles is a dumb word, but you know what I mean? People who actually watch movies and don't just like watch two movies a year and then pretend that they know shit. I'm excited for people to see some of these movies so I can talk to them about it. And I don't think I saw a lot of perfection, but I was happy with almost everything that I saw.

And even the stuff that I wasn't, I was just like, there's an element there that I like. There's something that's intriguing. I didn't feel like I was like grinding my gears trying to get through a whole lot of things. It also helped that like almost everything was a hundred minutes or less this year, which I thought was really good.

There were a lot of movies where the, titles were seemingly longer than the running time. There was a lot of like long title short movie kind of thing, which I found kind of interesting. But I was happier with the overall output than I was even when I was sort of like going through the program where I was going through the program and I was just like, it's a lot of question marks in this for me. There weren't any, there weren't a whole lot of that kind of we still haven't returned to blockbuster Sundance status, right? Where you go to Sundance and just like call me by your name. at Sundance and everybody is like

edge of their seat super freaking excited I don't think there was anything that had that kind of anticipation this year and maybe with the recalibrated expectations like that I was happy and the shifting landscape of like film going streaming

and the industry at large too it's like what does especially from Sundance like the scale of movie that would create like Blockbuster Sundance it's hard to place those movies movies right now, which is why the festival is still kind of important because it can give a lot of these smaller scale or mid-range movies, you know, the attention that they

deserve in a, you know, in a system that doesn't really foster them right now. Well, and what I liked was, I liked that the sort of more anticipated movies were the ones where it was coming from a filmmaker with like, who had a really, really small, previous movie that you may have seen and showed promise to you and you were excited. Like, I think the most sort of anticipated filmmakers at this Sundance were like Koganada or Cooper Rafe or Riley Stearns. And it's just like they aren't big, huge names in the indie scene yet. I think the fact that they all had well-received movies at this year's Sundance sort of help

propel them forward. But I think it's still within a pretty. modest level of notoriety, even among indie films. And it helped, to me, helped it feel more like maybe what we want Sundance to be, rather than something bigger, maybe bigger than what the platform works. Right, where it feels a little bit more about either getting a filmmaker to another level or about

discovery for filmmakers. And I definitely feel like there's a handful of filmmakers that I'm leaving this festival incredibly excited about whatever the next thing is that they'll do. So let's start then because I feel like one of those one of those filmmakers for you is almost certainly the director of Nanny, which won the... Yes, Nikki Atu Jusu, who won the U.S. Dramatic Grand Prize at Friday Night's Awards and had a really lovely reaction to it, too. Like, I loved, it was, was it Mariel Heller presenting that?

one or maybe no um uh god who was the i can't remember mariel heller presented i believe directing in screenwriting um but anyway uh yes uh her response to winning was so uh effusive and emotional and beautiful but this was one of my two favorite movies in the u.s dramatic competition and the other one being cha-cha real smooth which i think had zero um uh or like a basically 100% chance of winning the audience award for U.S. Traumatic competition. So, like, I was rooting for Nanny to win this, A, because I like it the most, but, like, it's, it's like, this movie winning that prize is probably going to help it get distribution. It doesn't have that yet, or at least that's been announced as of recording. It follows a Senegalese woman who is a nanny to an affluent white couple.

And she is trying to bring her son over to her as well while she's also taking care of this other couple's child. And meanwhile, there's, like, African lore elements that come into it. And there's folklore elements that kind of play into pieces of the movie being kind of like a horror movie. There was a ton of movies that used horror elements, if not outright horror movies, at this Sundance. And, like, this was definitely the best of them. I think it was also the most well-crafted movie I saw in the dramatic competition. It's the lead actress Anna Diop is incredible in it. I figured it would probably get a prize, but I'm glad that it won the big prize.

Yeah, I had missed it in the initial run of things, but after the awards were announced on Friday night, Sundance made a bunch of the award winners available for purchase, and so I quickly snatched up a pass to screen Nanny and also Fire of Love, which we'll talk about soon. So I'm looking forward to seeing it at some point this weekend, given these raves. The thing about Nanny is I don't think it's a movie that benefits from when you're watching six other movies in that day, like I did. So it was also a movie that... like stuck in my mind and grew with me like as I was thinking about it and it's like when you see this many movies only a small handful of them are going to be the ones that you're really still

processing right days after you watch them and this is one of them and this is one of the ones that stuck with me a lot of its imagery stuck with me and I think nikiatu Jusu is the real fucking deal I can't wait to see what she does next I hope it's not depressingly a marvel movie because, like, that's one thing about, like, getting these directors a platform and director discovery is, like, sometimes the way that the industry is working right now. It feels like things like Sundance are just, like, farms for anonymous Marvel movies. Um, but this is not that. She's very clearly distinct filmmaker, yeah, with a lot of, like, strong visual ideas, a lot

of strong narrative ideas. Um, that's very exciting. That did feel like a through line of anxiety and a lot of, the reviews and reactions I was seeing from people who's just like, love this movie, hope they don't make a Marvel movie in the next five years. And it's just like, part of me feels like that kind of stuff is a little overblown. But also, I, I too would like to see independent filmmakers continue to make, I mean, further independent films, I guess, is the only other option.

And I feel like that, there's an economic nature to that where I've seen some filmmakers on Twitter just being like, yeah, cool, we'd like to. keep making, you know, good and interesting movies, too, but we'd also like to be able to afford to keep continuing to be filmmakers. And it's just like, it is kind of annoying that that's the, that there is so little middle ground there between your option of continuing to sort of scrape by and beg for funding for your next project, or take the payday of making Ant Man 3 or something like that. And, well, and it's, it's also that, like, this seems like so much an uncompromised vision and you want her to be able to keep making movies that are that.

It's also hard because, like, I don't want to fully unpack these movies that people may not be able to see for months. Some of them will be able to see, like, next month. But, like, I don't, for our listeners, want to, like, spoil stuff. But, like, Nanny's also one of those movies that, like, I don't, like festivals sometimes suck and this is why I was glad that it won this big prize because like your initial response to something may not work I specifically felt there may not be the end response you know I initially had a response to the ending of this movie in that there are two really contrasting emotional beats that at first I didn't know how I felt about the kind of like almost whiplash of those of these two things happening that i ultimately think the whole final stretch of that movie is doing something that like makes that work and is very intentional i'm very excited to see it i will say so and again that goes to show that even among you know even for somebody who is attending the festival attending in quotation marks um the awards still help to clarify

things that you may have missed but still need to see. And I'm very grateful that my own, you know, scheduling, not snafus, but just sort of, just like there are decisions you make in trying to program a schedule for yourself. And I'm glad I'm going to be able to make up for that. What else should we talk about in terms of the big award winners? Let's talk about the audience award for US Dramatic, which was the least surprise. award win. Cha-cha real smooth.

But that's not being shady. Like, when you see this movie, it makes complete sense. Yeah. I was surprised that you liked this movie. You saw this movie before I did. I loved this movie. And I say that as someone who really did not

like Shithouse, his last movie. Right. Which is also a movie where, you know, he's this young guy. I believe he's 24 now, Cooper Rief. He definitely is younger than he looks. I saw some people in this. their reactions to this movie being like,

are we really supposed to buy that this guy's 22? And it's just like, he's not actually that much older than 22. Like, he really is quite young. Cooper Rafe is who we're talking about, directed Shithouse, which was at, was it at a previous Sundance? And, like, I saw it. It was the first South by that was canceled and it won the big. Because it made it on to streaming at some point, at some point in 2020, and I watched it.

And I quite liked it. Like, I was, that's why this movie. was sort of very high up on my list of movies that I really needed to see at this year's Sundance because I was really, really into this sort of chalky sort of like one, you know, one night getting to know somebody kind of a movie that, uh, that shit house was. And I was really very charmed by it. And I was very similarly charmed by a cha-cha real smooth, which has a little bit more of a sort of

dramatic form to it. It's not quite so loosey-goosey. He plays Cooper Rafe writes and directs and stars. He plays a sort of young guy out of

college, aimless, stop me if you've heard this one before, who finds work as a party starter, kind of,

at like bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs around town and not really something he wants to do, but he, I think it's one of those things where it's just like, you're just very charming. And it's sort of one of these, like, sort of odd talents of his that he can, he's also, like, he relates pretty well to younger people.

He has a significantly younger sibling, and they have a really interesting and kind of cute relationship. And through this, he meets the mother of one of his brothers. classmates, and she's played by Dakota Johnson, who is also one of the most sort of innately magnetic and charming people working in film today. And their relationship takes some odd twists and turns. She's older than him in a way that, again, if you look at the two of them, I think you look at the two of them, you're just like, yeah, they're both young and charming and pretty.

But then in the movie, it's just like, oh, right, there's a good, like, if not like this massive age gap between them. and I don't want to get into age gap discourse because it's been the plague of film discourse for the last six months. But experientially, she's a young mother, she had been married and divorced, and now she's engaged to a new guy. So, like, there are gulfs of experience between them. And the movie kind of explores that in its way. And it will remind you of a lot of movies that don't do what Chachaw Real Smooth does very well. It reminds you of a lot of movies that are phony where this one is not.

It doesn't reinvent the wheel. I just think it's doing what it's doing very well and very affectingly. It's also trucking in a genre that I am sort of weak in the knees for, too. So, like, I will admit that. I will admit my own sort of affinity for this kind of thing. But also, I think if you watch the two of these movies, the thing that I most walked away from is just, like, Cooper, Rafe really. loves his mom and really loves his siblings, whoever

they may be. It's just like you watch these two movies and it's just like it's it is a movie that takes seriously the bonds of family and home and and I think a lot of movies like this sort of throw the

baby out with the bathwater and sort of focus on nothing but the romantic relationship that sort of springs up in this and his movies don't. And I like it. I like where it ends up. I was talking to Matt Jacobs about this sort of on text yesterday and talking about how the movie plays with, I think, the audience's sympathies and ends up going to places where you're maybe rooting for something else, but you also sort of support where it goes

without getting into spoilers and stuff like that. There's a character or two that you think that the movie is going to handle in one way, that it handles in another, and it's a better movie for doing that. 100%. 100% so. So, yeah, kind of a perfect audience award winner in that way, where it's just like, you're sort of weaponizing charm, but in a way that I find very good, very good and responsible. So, yeah, I like the only non, like, heavy or dark movie in the U.S. Dramatic Competition,

so it was, like, basically always going to win the audience award. Yeah, there was some, there was some having these two. Although, I will say, I saw a duel, and you did not, the Riley Stern's movie. It was going to be a hard pass from me on that movie. It's one of two movies I didn't see in dramatic competition. Dual, I didn't see because I didn't like his last movie. And Alice, I didn't see because it comes out in a month. You're talking about Art of Self-Defense, his previous movie.

Yes. I did not see that. So I did not know whether I would like this or not. The premise of it feels very kind of dark and sort of like sci-fi dystopia where Karen Gillen plays this young woman who gets a terminal diagnosis and is offered the opportunity to have a essentially a double, a clone of her made to kind of continue on after she's gone. as a comfort to her family, to her boyfriend, so that they won't have to cope with the loss of her. And then, sometime thereafter, discovers that she's, in fact, not dying. And so the rules in the world of this sort of sci-fi futuristic world are that they cannot

just continue with two of the same person. And so they must have a duel to essentially get rid of one of them. and which all sounds very, again, sort of like dark and dramatic and potentially violent. And there are aspects of it, of that to it, but it's also really darkly funny. And I think Karen Gillen does a great job playing these characters. I think one of the things the movie does that's really interesting is it makes a lot of its human characters almost robotic in their affect, in their human effect. And then mostly just because they are sort of odd or. or kind of living these sort of unexciting lives.

So they sort of behave very kind of strangely. And that then works into this thing where it's just like you're not quite sure which of the two Karen Gillens is better equipped to sort of like live a more fulfilling life in the end. But it's also just like it reminded me very, very much of a Yorgos Lanthamos movie. or there were, you know, sort of shades of Alps in there and shades of the lobster in there. And I find it really, really watchable and very almost like fun at times. And again, I'm not sure how much I love the filmmaker. Riley Stearns was one of those people who was out on Twitter all week, sort of like snapping back at critics who didn't love the movie. Which is funny because I pretty much saw a more positive than not reaction to it.

it. And also, it's just annoying when filmmakers are out there policing the reaction to their own movie on Twitter. It just makes you look so lame. Please, to God, don't do it. This was also after this movie was one of the first movies to get a distribution deal at the festival. So it's like, what do you want? Do you need every single person to love your movie? Like, do you really need IndyWire to love your movie that much? It's getting released. It makes you seem so lame. It makes you got a multi-million dollar deal. Yeah, yeah. And some of these other movies can't say that yet.

So I was glad I saw the movie before I saw that stuff because it might have poisoned the well for me a little bit with him, but I did like the movie. So, you know, for whatever that's worth, even though he was being super annoying about it on Twitter. Okay. Yeah. Moving down the rest of these award winners. Yes.

We both saw Palm Trees and Power Lines. You'd maybe hinted that you really didn't like it. I thought it was good. I have some quibbles with it. This is one of the ones that I respect the final risk that this movie takes, basically, without spoiling it. In that, like, I don't think many movies like this are willing to make the choice that this movie makes and, like, is trying to maybe get on the audience's side in a way that this movie isn't. and I think that at least this movie thinks that that's the honest thing to do. So this movie is about sexual grooming.

There is a young actress who plays a teenage girl. The actress is Lily McInerney making her debut. She's playing opposite Jonathan Tucker, an older man, who is ingratiating himself to her, but you can tell from the title, like, we're sold on how basically empty her teenage life is, and, like, there's something about him that is appealing to her, and he's manipulating that, of course. Gretchen Mal also plays her mother. One of the things about this movie is, like,

it is the type of very, like, seemingly low-budget movie that is naturalistic and unfolds in, like, you know, normal human conversation. These aren't teenagers who are, like, super witty. They just, you know, yell at their mom when they're you know trying to be on their phone whatever but at the same time I think from the very beginning of the movie you know where it's going to go and to me that was a problem like there's no real element of surprise here and it's a harrowing movie and it gets

probably it gets pretty dark but none of that was unexpected is my holdout of the movie. Yeah. Jamie Dack wrote and directed this movie based on her own short film from a few years ago. Won the directing prize? It feels, yes, won the directing prize, which I would have gone another way. Definitely feels like this is a movie that has seen the works of Eliza Hittman. I have not been as effusive about films like Never Rarely Sometimes Always, and

that's the previous one. beach rats thank you um as other people were i feel like there is a way in which these movies can be so decidedly low-key and you know this sort of washed-out color palette and everything is kind of gray and nobody who's really all that expressive and the kind of uh suffocating hopelessness of it feels very much intentional and all of that can start to seem to me

a little bit performative and a little bit overly determined and I Naturalism drag Yeah a little bit I get what you're saying

about that with this movie And I watch a movie like this and it was very hard to not keep thinking of a movie like Red Rocket because that was, you know, similar plot threads in both of them in terms of grooming and in terms of, you know, the Jonathan Tucker character being, you know, sort of trying to pull this girl into some really, really bad shit. And I thought a movie like Red Rocket, to me, is more daring and more insidious, even though Jonathan Tucker's character is on its, on the surface, much more threatening and scary and bad.

I think Jonathan Tucker's quite good in the movie, by the way. The performances in this movie, I think, are pretty strong. I walked away from this movie being like, it's certainly getting some prize, but I figured it would be for the two lead actors. The other thing about Red Rocket is Red Rocket also has an allegorical level to it that this isn't even attempting. It's just trying straight naturalism. But I think even beyond the allegory of it, I think it's a more daring movie to try and seduce you in the audience along with the characters, right? Whereas a movie like Palm Trees and Power Lions, it's very easy to just look at this and be like, that guy's bad news.

He's looking at her in the diner, he's sort of leering at her, this guy's bad news. Whereas Red Rocket makes you find this guy charming, makes you find this guy against your better nature, knowing that he's full of shit, knowing that he's, you know, a fuck up. And then there are moments in that movie where you're just like, fuck, like, I'm enjoying myself watching this guy. And that to me is a more, makes the audience do more work, I think, by the end of that movie to sort of sort through your thoughts and feelings on that movie. Whereas I think Palm Trees and Power Lines gives it to you straight, gives it to you very

matter of factly, and allows the audience to feel very, very secure in no way. that like, I know what's right and wrong. I know what's going on here. I know this guy's bad news and how. And the movie is going to make you sort of churn your stomach watching what happens to this girl. It's a hard movie to watch, I thought. And I will absolutely... Sometimes it's very hard to watch.

I will own up to the fact that that's a big... Like, sometimes I just don't want to be sort of inundated with a movie like that. And you walk away and you feel shitty. And then it's just like, okay. and what was you know what was the the artistry in that and I mean I guess I see the artistry in it but I also think you know this movie doesn't fully work or doesn't work at the level that it could because like characterization isn't that like because it's rooted in this like it's trying to push for this naturalism that's unadorned and un you know unremarkable like a true everyday person's lives but like it also suffers on a specificity level like Gretchen mall plays the girl's mother and like there's nothing there's just not much to that relationship so it's like the movie doesn't have it lacks a certain dramatic pull because I sorry to repeat myself but just lacks specificity yeah um sort of bouncing away from the award winners for a second because I I'm sorry to repeat myself but just lacks specificity yeah um sort of bouncing away from the award winners for a second because I'm sort of curious, we were talking earlier about filmmakers who we had some anticipation for because they, you know, we had liked previous things of theirs.

And one of those people is Phyllis Nage, who wrote the screenplay for Carol, among other accomplishments in her career. And so she was coming in with, I believe, directorial debut, yes, with Call Jane. I think for a feature, she did Mrs. Harris for HBO. For television, yes, which initially was supposed to be a theatrical, but then got moved to HBO. Yeah, and who knows what Life Call Jane is going to have, because it, as of now, does not have distribution. Right. So you saw this movie, I didn't. And I, and most people I saw in their reactions, this was not most people's favorite movie coming. This felt like one of the more.

And I was probably less positive than everyone else. that I saw. I kept later in the festival seeing people being like, well, I caught up to call Jane, and I actually kind of liked it. And I think that's because the very first reaction was negative, and I still think I was more negative than that. There's also a documentary The Jains that will be on HBO. That one I saw.

That I liked a lot. Yeah. Yeah, that's a solid documentary. It doesn't reinvent the wheel, but like very watchable. It'll be on HBO this year. the Jains is one of those documentaries that benefits a lot from having a lot of really likable and engaging interviews you know what I mean like they just right those women are all so fucking rad yeah yes it reminded me of Crip Camp in that way uh-huh uh-huh that's a good

comparison because like the subjects that they're interviewing are like very open and like talk very like you know and they're like people you enjoy spending time with yes but um the janes was a network of women before Roe v. Wade, largely white women, who basically worked somewhat in tandem

with the mob to get women access to abortion without, you know, to the point of not making judgment that like, well, we can't, you know, say that this woman needs it more than this woman. Yeah. That type of thing.

Yeah. Call Jane is, is, I would say, almost entirely fictionalized and, like, not to be, you know, to have the lazy argument that, like, well, why did you fictionalize it? But, like, in the fictionalization of this story is where all of the movies, like, narrative problems lie. There is a sequence early on in the movie that it's, like, a 10-minute scene or something where the lead character, played by Elizabeth Banks has her abortion

and it takes you through the sequence and that sequence is good and like there's just such swings in quality in this movie there's a few scenes that I found

kind of embarrassing Sigourney Weaver plays like the local network the local Jane network leader you know who's organizing it and she's very charming

and it's wonderful to see Sigourney Weaver get like a juicy role like this. But it's... The movie's very didactic, even though it thinks it's not. There's like a whole thread of like Kate Mara

as a neighbor. It's the type of movie that like one person will be like, wait, do you vote Democrat? I thought you were a Republican. And it's... Oh, that's just sounds crudgy.

It's a crunchy movie. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. To me. Yeah. Well, all right, let's then switch to something that I know we both liked. And a movie that surprised me with how much I liked it because I was very much looking forward to seeing it. But I also had in the back on my mind that it was just like, I could just be in this for the star of this movie and this could very easily let me down.

And that is good luck to you, Leo Grande, the Sophie Hyde movie starring Emma Thompson as a, uh, a woman whose husband is dead and her children are sort of moved away and she has decided that she's going to hire a male escort for an evening and sort of things go from there. It is, as I said to you after I watched it, the most filmed during COVID movie I've ever seen in my whole life. And it is not particularly well shot. It is like wildly overlit and sometimes just like you want to watch it with sunglasses and it's kind of ugly to look at. But, um,

but, um, it's among my favorites that I saw. Same. It's sold to search light. They're going to put it on Hulu. Um, and apparently they're going to try an awards run for, uh, Emma Thompson. They should.

They absolutely should. She's phenomenal in the, she's great. I'm, I'm a little skeptical on if, if it could work or not, but it'll depend on what the rest of the field is. I think my, again, a thing that I texted you. This was one of the movies that, like, you and Katie and I are on our text story that I actually talked about a little bit. My thing was, I walked away is just like, well, if you can put a campaign for Glenn Close and the wife. Like, this is so much better. This is a better movie. This is so much better. But we also, I think all of us, and then everybody I also talked to who had seen

this movie came out being like, Emma Thompson is phenomenal and we know her and we expect that of But Daryl McCormick, who plays the titular Leo Grande in the movie, the escort, is so goddamn magnetic. And it's not just because he's one of the five most attractive people I've seen in a very long time, but he is. But it's also, he goes toe to toe with Emma Thompson for this entire movie and does not come out looking worse for wear for it. He really, his charisma fills up his half of the screen with her. and that is a difficult task to pull off, and he's so good. Yeah, yeah. It's a wonderful, like, duet of a movie,

but it's also a movie that I think is more and has more on its mind than people expect it to be. And that's part of the reason why I think it was one of the festival breakouts, too. It's a movie that very much deals with sex shame and in very different ways for very different generations of people, very different experience. And I don't think – it's a surprising movie, and it deepens as it goes, and this is one of the ones that I, like, want to protect for people. And, like, skip ahead two minutes, listeners, if you don't want to hear any spoilers and you haven't been spoiled on this movie.

But I do want to talk about this a little bit. I realize, like, it's unavoidable that they talk about the full frontal scenes at the end of the movie. But I really wish people hadn't. Because it's incredibly effective that you don't actually see any explicit sex until you get to the end of this relationship arc in the movie. And it's so cathartic. And it's like... For as much as we sort of, neither one of us I don't think, were overly impressed by the visual sort of dynamics at play, there is like, that's definitely, I think, a victory on behalf of the filmmaker there in the structure of the movie. movie. I think it's a very well-structured movie. Yes, yes. Yeah, highly recommended. Do we know

when this is coming out? I don't think the Searchlight Hulu deal set a date, but if they're doing an awards run, you have to imagine they'll probably do fall festivals for it, but we'll see. That'd be smart. It'd be smart. I really, really have, I'm hoping for good things for this because I think this is a movie that deserves it. Another one just sort of... I was going to say, let's loop back to the prize winners we've seen? Because I feel like the remaining ones we can kind of talk through quickly or just like give a nod to some

of them maybe. Yeah, sure. Because I do want to talk about emergency, which will be on Amazon in May. This was the first movie I watched in the festival, so it feels like it was, you know, months ago that I saw it. I was

really, I was charmed by this movie and I really respected this movie, even though I think the both of us found things to nitpick about it. I don't know if I would have given it a prize. I would have given the two lead actor. I was hoping they would win the acting

prize. RJ Seiler and Donald Elise Watkins. And also I would shout out Sebastian Chaconne, who plays the third of their little trio of friends who I thought is not as important to the main thrust of the story, but I think is really, really

good in his supporting role as well. I would say. But yeah, R.J. Seiler, I was knocked out by. I had seen him in The Harder They Fall earlier this year, and that is a cast that, like, keeps on giving because also Daniel Deadweiler is in that cast, and she was so goddamn good on Station 11. So, like, that, the more I think that cast kind of keeps producing into the world, like, the better. But, yeah, I thought the acting in emergency, particularly among the leads, was very good. This is a movie that presents as a kind of college madcap wants to be.

This is the thing that you and I had talked about a little bit was, and what I love about the concept of the movie is, this is a movie that wants to be a college sort of stoner comedy that cannot be because it's two leads. are two young black men who at every turn are on one level or another very aware of the fact that there are ways in which what they are doing and what they are presented with is going to have the pitfall of a cop down the road who is going to encounter them and literally threaten their life. And so on a really like meta-textual level that becomes as close to text as I think you can get, which is this is what if Superbad, but if Superbad had two black leads, these two guys would have their lives in danger by just sort of running through the events of the movie because of

who they are. And that sounds like an intellectual exercise. And I think one of the victories of emergency, and especially of the performances, the lead performances in emergency, is they bring you in and sort of pull you away from the intellectual exercise of it. Right. I would have preferred it won the ensemble prize over 892, which did the movie where John Boyega plays a veteran who holds up a bank. All of the actors in that movie are very good, but that movie felt very like David Ayer to me. When like it in terms of...

That's kind of why I didn't see it. I was like, of the things I was prioritizing, that was kind of the vibe. that I was getting from the premise of it and... I mean, like, movies like this used to play Sundance in, like, the 90s that were just more, like, kind of thrillers, you know, straightforward thrillers. But, like, in terms of, like, having something deeper to say about, because it is a true story about, you know, the way veterans are treated when they return, especially by the system that said that they would take care of them. Yeah. It really isn't interested in talking about that. Yeah.

I also saw this movie, Blood, that won Uncompromising Artistic Vision from Freedom of Expression Award, yeah. A Word Salad Award. I saw people giving really harsh reviews of this movie. I feel like it's the type of thing that if it was not in at Sundance and people just saw it on their own, it might be, you know, more. What was it about? Well received. It's a grieving woman.

moves to Japan and it's it is kind of a wavelength movie it reminded me of I don't want to say Stephen Cohn

because that's not it but like it's operating kind of at that level but like more in the soundscape of it and the just kind of like ocean beneath the ice of this movie

because it is somewhat remote but like good for them for winning a prize. I see why it did, and, you know, it probably would have been, uh, fared better. You literally just got, before we got on Mike, finished Fire of Love, which was the first breakout and the first sale of the festival, and it won the editing documentary prize. Tell me about this movie, because this, I did not get to see. Uh, yeah, so this was one of the sort of early, uh, festival favorites that I missed early and then, thank God, I was able to,

purchase a screening of it today. I really, really enjoyed it. It is about a pair of married volcanologists, French, I believe, volcanologists in the 1960s and 70s and into the 80s, who, you know, have this, like, wealth of footage of them exploring volcanoes. There is a ton of really mesmerizing, like, there's a reason why people sort of stare at lava flows for, you know, hours on end. Because you could, because it's just like, it's mesmerizing footage, but also they make for an incredibly sort of captivating pair. I said there's a lot of, there is a not inconsiderable amount of the Life Aquatic with Steve Zisou of this movie, and not just because they both have the same orange little hats, sort of little Jacques Cousteau hats and blue

jackets. And Katie and I were talking about this and we're just like, is this a Jacques Cousteau thing. Was this like a style of like French, you know, scientists who had TV shows back in the day or whatever? Because they were also sort of, you would see them show up on like TV shows. And the husband, there's also an not inconsiderable amount of man on wire to this, where it's, you know, approaching danger sort of heedlessly and being very, very close to volcanoes and talking about things like wanting to ride a canoe down a river of lava and things like that. And, But even in the filmmaking, it felt very, and again, I am a big dumb-dum, so I don't know what the chicken or the egg thing here is. And it's very possible that Wes Anderson was borrowing from a Jacques Cousteau film style that also these people were borrowing from because there were things like, you know how in Wes Anderson movies you'll see like a character sort of turn to face the camera from a very far distance or and then it'll like, and the camera will either zoom to. them or zoom away from them and sometimes both there's like that kind of effect and again i know west anderson does homage and borrows from things all the time so i'm not suggesting that the time space continuum broke so that in the 1960s and 70s these people making their own little you know homemade volcanologist videos were borrowing from decades in the future west Anderson what

i'm saying is it's just interesting the way these styles sort of like melt you cannot watch this movie and not think about the Life Aquatic is what I'm saying. But anyway, it's visually very compelling. It was purchased by Nat Geo, which has been on quite a good streak in terms of the Oscar documentary category. They have two films on the shortlist this year with the rescue and the first wave. I would not be at all surprised if both of them got nominated. They had the cave a couple years ago. They won with Free Solo in 2018. They're Would not surprise me at all if Fire of Love ends up being a documentary nominee next year at the Oscars. They also are doing a theatrical run for it, too.

I think it's going to be one of the big contenders for Doc next year. So really glad I saw it. It's also just very, it's very captivating, and it's a 90-minute documentary, and when it shows up, because it's Nat Geo, that means it'll show up on Disney Plus at some point in this coming year and watch it when you can. If you can see it in a theater, though, and you are comfortable seeing things in a theater when it is in theaters, highly recommended. I could very much see myself buying a ticket to see this on a big screen because of the visuals. And, like, if, you know, catch me standing inches away from a movie screen, just sort of like watching lava flow around and fugue out.

Yeah, I really liked it. I really did. Should I watch it? Stoned? Couldn't hurt. Couldn't hurt. Best documentary that I saw at the festival was Descendant, which just got picked up by Netflix and it's in partnership with the Obama's production company Higher Ground. It follows the lineage of the last slave ship to America and this town outside of Mobile called Africa Town.

and in really, like, it was also the best documentary I saw because, like, a lot of the documentaries that I saw at this festival, and the same was true last year, are very, like, standard, straightforward documentary approach. And, like, this movie is shot beautifully well on top of having, like, really, um, uh, profound narrative threads to, you know, lasting impacts within this community in terms. of the structures of power and especially the structures of power for white people, white wealthy people. Definitely, I would not be surprised if that ends up being a documentary nominee a year from now too.

Well, Netflix also, speaking of companies that have been doing well in that category recently, Netflix definitely, has become a strong player in the documentary category at the Oscars. Well, as has higher ground as a production company because they were attached to, I believe, both Crip Camp and American Factory. Yes.

Yep. Yep. Totally. I also saw this doc aftershock about the just egregious insane differences or like the statistical differences in black pre or post birth deaths for women in the country. Definitely deserves conversation because there's so much talk about. all the movies that dealt with abortion, but, like, I hope that this gets as much conversation in this festival for movies about women's reproductive agency, but it also probably had the most potent, like, testimonial and talking head interviews of anything that I saw. And then the last

award winner that I want to talk about was also one of my favorites of the festival, won the acting prize for Teresa Sanchez and World Dramatic Competition. Dosesastasiones, is a is so good, and I saw no people talking about it. It's one of these, like, kind of methodically-paced, somewhat remote. It follows this woman who, Teresa Sanchez, plays that she has a tequila factory in her community, and is kind of slowly and then rapidly being pushed out in terms of the resources that she needs. to continue her business and like the

both her place in the community and like her place as an employer and it was just another one of those movies where I'm just like I'm so excited to see what this filmmaker makes next the director of the movie is Juan Pablo Gonzalez it's I mean like I don't want to compare it to like but like in terms of like pacing it's very deliberate and like when you there's these like sequences where you're going through the factory and it's almost like watching the production in the factory is mirroring the mounting tension of her business being faded in this way that's

like not fully abstract but like just really powerful filmmaking. I loved this movie. Fantastic. Well, that goes on my list of things I should see as well. Excellent. Yeah. Hopefully someone picks it up. It's a very good movie.

Yeah. The rest of the movies will be out of the award-winner conversations. Let's talk about After Yang. Yes, this was the movie that I think everybody kind of agreed was one of the best of the festival. It screened out of competition. It's going to be released by 824 in March. And we had talked about this. Best of the festival for me.

Yeah, we had talked briefly on our mailbag episode when we were talking about our Colin Farrell bet about this movie. And you had mentioned that it had screened it can. And because it didn't really make much of an impact when it did, I kind of jumped to the conclusion that it was not really anything to write home about because if it was, then people would have been talking about it. And I didn't really hear anybody talk about it. And this was a very different situation at Sundance, I think,

everybody was talking about. I would go so far as to say it was the only universally loved movie that I saw discussed. That was that was not that was it was not like everybody saw it and everybody loved it like it was widely seen and widely appreciated. It's apparently a different cut than was in can. Interesting. Well, but again, I haven't heard people who saw it in can be like well yeah, now it's a lot better. Like I just haven't heard I don't get at us if you saw it in can because I haven't heard a peep from anybody who did. So futuristic movie from director Koganada who

directed Columbus a few years ago with Joncho and Hayley Lou Richardson, a movie that a lot of people seem to really love at a deep level, and I didn't feel like I was connecting to it in a way that a lot of other people did, and I kind of felt bad about that because I didn't not like it, but it's, it missed me a little bit. And this one didn't miss me. This one I got. It is a vibesy movie, like you wouldn't believe. Futuristic sci-fi. Again, this had a little bit of Lanthamos to it, but like a lot more

heart. Not to slight Yorgas Lanthos. Yeah, it's a very emotional movie. But it's, but in its premise, this sort of kind of downbeat emo future premise where you're selling it so well like you liked it or not, like you didn't like it. I do not take emo future as a, as a pejorative by any means. But, like, I think that's, I think if you're trying to encapsulate the movie, I'm going to stand by that. Colin Farrell and Jody Turner Smith play a married couple who haven't adopted Chinese daughter. And because it is the future, they were able to acquire, purchase a sibling, a Android, essentially sibling for the- intelligent.

Yes, who is Chinese and is sort of programmed with the sort of experiential history of a Chinese sibling. And so to make their daughter feel more connected to her heritage and feel like she's sort of like not alone in this family. The brother, the robot brother, I'm just going to say robot because it's easier to say it. like, but whatever, um, malfunctions and they are faced with the prospect of having to get rid of it, which is obviously incredibly traumatic for them because he's been part of their family and he's been, you know, their daughter's, you know, beloved sibling for this whole time. And so Colin Farrell is going around trying to find a way to salvage Yang, the, the, the brother. And along the way, there's just a lot of meditation on things like history and experience.

And Colin Farrell is a tea brewer, manufacturer. He monologues about tea, and it's amazing. There's a phenomenal scene with Colin Farrell and Yang, and I wrote down the actor's name who plays Yang because I thought he was so, so, so good. Justin H. Min, just fantastic as Yang. And they have a scene where they talk about the experience of tea, how to taste it, what you can taste in it, the sort of the properties of it, what it calls to mind, and what you can and cannot, like the limits of an artificial intelligence to be able to appreciate tea beyond the fact of its facts. and origins, right? Sounds very brainy, sounds very heady,

but it is played in a really, really wonderful way, and there's so many scenes like that, so many sort of moments like that in the movie. Haley-Lew Richardson is also in this movie, playing somebody who has a connection to Yang and Sarita Chodary is in this movie, dancing in a track suit. The opening credit sequence,

if I see a better like three minutes of cinema in my life in the rest of this year I will be shocked it is so good I just want to live in it I'm very much looking forward to seeing this movie again I wanted to there was part of me yes yeah absolutely there was part of me after I saw the movie that I almost wanted to immediately watch it again I watched it also because of the vagaries of my schedule I had to watch it in the morning I don't have access to blackout curtains and so it is a very it's a movie that sort of dabbles in these dark palettes so I was dealing with significant glare I have like literally I hung blankets over my curtain rods in a lot of ways trying to combat this and it didn't quite do it for me

so like I almost wanted to immediately watch it then again later that day at night but I had to there were other things I needed to watch So I couldn't. So I'm looking forward to seeing this movie again in a sort of properly lit environment. It's a movie whose themes made me like unexpectedly emotional. Like I didn't expect this movie to impact me in the way that it did. It made me like question like, what's it going to be like to see?

And like I realize now as this comes out of my mouth, it's creepy. But if you see the movie, like you'll understand. Like, what's it going to be like to look at the Instagram of someone who's been dead for 50 years. Yeah. Like, it's very much about the documenting of our digital lives. Right. And the limits of that.

Yeah. Yeah. Wonderful movie. Best movie I saw in the best will undoubtedly be in, like, my 10 best list this year. Yeah. Did you watch Honk for Jesus Save Your Soul? I did. I'm really curious to hear what you thought about it because this was a movie.

Another movie that grew in my estimation. I liked, I feel like I liked the component parts of this movie more than I liked this movie. I think I would have liked the comedy to have been funnier and I would have liked the drama to have been a little bit more affecting. But I'm open to hearing more positive assessments of it because- The comedy worked more for me than it seems to have worked for a lot of people. I find it interesting that in all of these like horror or horror adjacent or glancing to, towards horror movies that have played this festival. It's been so easy for people to talk about how a movie uses horror elements.

Whereas, like, I don't think that this is a mockumentary movie, but it uses mockumentary elements. Because it's set in a black megachurch with a disgraced pastor and his wife, the first lady. And it's almost like jarring. And, like, intentionally so, I think this is a movie that, like, its biggest risk is losing the audience because it goes in and out of the actual documentary footage and this couple living their lives. And it's incredibly different. And it's a movie all about front-facing appearances, especially within church communities.

And Regina Hall gets this huge monologue towards the end of it. while she's in Mime face and it becomes this very absurd thing that's all about crumbling the faker facades that are being put up. Yeah. And

I think it's really strong. I would not categorize it as a mockumentary, but that it uses mockumentary elements. Yeah. to do something that's, I think, interesting. And, like, the more that I wrapped my head around what this movie was doing after I watched it, I respected it even more.

But I was never one of those people, like, at the first that was like, this wasn't as much. Like, I saw a lot of people being like, I expected this to be funnier. But I think maybe the festival did not a great job at selling this movie for what it is. Well, I think this is a tough movie to sell along those lines because I think the tones do wander, I think purposefully so in a lot of ways. I do feel like the ways in which it moves in and

out of its own mockumentary conceit feel, I think it's a weakness of the movie. I feel like it doesn't ever feel like it makes it makes the statement that it wants to make by doing

that. I don't feel like I feel like it's not as impactful for moving in and out of that structure as it could be. I also, in concept, the idea that this, that Regina Hall plays the first lady of a southern megachurch whose husband has been beset by scandal and rumors of infidelity and all this sort of stuff, and she's being filmed by a documentary film crew. And yet somehow this is not about Giselle Bryant from the Real Housewives.

Potomac is wild. And had whole Real Housewives conversations about this movie. Because Regina Hall is not doing Giselle from the Real Housewives of Potomac. I don't think that's what this movie is trying to do. And yet, biographically,

it fits her so well that it is shocking to me, that it is seemingly just a coincidence. Because it is a wild coincidence. So I will just say that. Regina Hall is quite good. I feel like the movies reach sometimes exceeds its grasp when it does things like the monologue when she's in the mime face.

Like I just, you can see it's going for something huge and it's coming up, I think, just a little bit short. No fault of Regina Hall, so I think it's quite good. I kind of felt bad that both of her performances in movies, that Sundance that I saw this year, both of them had that same sense of reach exceeding its grasp and sort of failing her. in a little bit of ways. I also thought... You're also speaking of Master. Right. I do want to just like... I want to throw it out just real quickly. Sterling K. Brown, I think, is phenomenal in Hawk for Jesus. And...

Oh, yes. Absolutely. And it's really, like, especially in the dramatic stuff. Also, like, comes through with some of the comedy, but, like, really, uh, is very arresting as we're sort of learning more and more about him, uh, as the pastor. We're avoiding spoilers. Let's, let's talk about, uh, master while we're on the subject. Because that was the other Regina Hall movie. This was the other,

horror movie set on a northeastern, very prestigious college campus where she plays the newly installed master, I guess, is the

position at the school. Movie deals very intensely with one of the subjects that I thought that was kind of existed a lot in one of the more you know, Sundance will have these common themes. One of them was abortion this year.

Another one was the black experience on college campuses this year. And so it deals very much with race. The main character is a young freshman, a black woman who is also dealing with incredible, horrifying racism around her, but also then it is depicted through this ghost of a Salem Witch Trials

era spirit who is coming for her essentially. So it's horror

and it's also social commentary and it almost gets there to me and then

it really kind of spectacularly falls apart in the end in a twist that I'm

not going to reveal but this twist man I think it I respect

this movie for trying to do this twist with a straight face it really does too

it will be received in that way in any form. And I almost feel like it, the whole thing would have felt like a more complete experience if it had been a worse movie, and if it had really just gone all in on the absurdity of its final twist and really, like, gone completely off of the rails, then I feel like at least people would have been so pissed at it. But maybe had, you know, a less than obvious thing to, like, say about its twist. What I kind of respected in the end of

this movie is like it ultimately dispenses almost entirely with the horror elements at the end of the movie in a way that it's just like it's just using those horror elements and maybe ultimately at the end of the day isn't exactly

a horror movie and like... In that way reveals how... Yeah. It's final scene and its final shots I really really respected quite a bit and liked. But I think by that point, it really had lost me as a complete entity. It ultimately

to me is a movie that just I respect its swings, but I don't think it works. I don't think it comes together. It doesn't. Another movie you saw that I did not see was living. Yes. Bill Nye as a girl, Bill Nye is here.

And I am living. Yeah. Thank you, Sugarcane. Yes. Forever and always. He plays a bureaucrat, this very sort of like a buttoned-up bureaucrat in England in

oh God, what is even the time period? What is time? Our brains are mashed potatoes after watching too many movies back to that. Seriously. Well, the big thing about this movie is that it is a remake more or less of an Akira Kurosawa movie,

Ikuru, adapted by the novelist and screenwriter Kazwe Ishiguro, who did the remains of the day, and never let me go. Never let me go previously covered by us in this. But the Kurosawa movie was

itself inspired by a Tolstoy novella. So there's just like layers on layers on layers. And so anyway, Bill Nye plays a bureaucrat who gets informed that he has a terminal diagnosis. And his son and his daughter-in-law

kind of hate him and are kind of shitty to him. So he ultimately never tells them that he's dying and instead just kind of quietly goes about the town being very sort of like, you know, sort of observing the life around him. He has a moment of connection with a younger woman and you think that's going to go to a certain place and it doesn't really, it's very much more quiet and stoic than that. It is a phenomenal performance by Bill Nye, but I think when we're talking about,

I was tempted to talk about this in the same vein as the Emma Thompson performance in that I could see them building a campaign. This movie got picked up by Sony Pictures Classics, and in a very kind of like it's a very SPC movie, and you could see them trying to build a campaign for Bill Nye out of it, and he's certainly worthy of it, but it is so restrained. His performance is so intentionally stoic and restrained and locked up. And so much of the impact of the movie is about looking at him from afar, looking at him from the outside.

And I would be really, really surprised if that ended up working as an awards push just because it's so remote. and the movie's already going to be dealing with the challenge of being so small that I don't see the hook beyond just Bill Nye is rad and he's so good in this. But I was very glad I saw it. It was, again, one of the first things that I saw in the festival. And because it's so low-key, it was hard for me to, it doesn't jump out in my mind by the end of the festival because I've seen so many other things. but you're the least effusive person I've heard talk about it.

I'm glad people are effusive. It deserves people to be effusive about it. It's, I have nothing bad to say about it. Like there's no, don't, do not take, you know, whatever muted responses is as me having any way a problem with it. It's just very low key. And I have heard from people who had seen the Kurosawa movie to just be like, it's not a patch on the Kurosawa movie. And, like, oh, that's good. No shade.

Like, falling short of the level of Akira Kurosawa is, you know, no shame to be had that I would say. But anyway, yeah. Less reserved, restrained, and mild is resurrection with Rebecca Hall. This was the... Friend, I'm just going to ask you bluntly. What is this movie about? Do you know what the point of this movie is? I don't think I've talked to a single person who has seen it that could tell you.

you what the the narrative purpose of that movie is that being said i had a great time i will tell you what resurrection's about it's about how shit's breaking out in albany like it's it's some some weird shits going on in albany new york my friends um wild to me that the most midnight madnessy movie of the festival didn't play in the midnight program i've been saying it's my new favorite f cinema score movie. I mean, I would have absolutely lived to see this movie literally at midnight with a big crowd. I feel like it's so, it has that. It's wild. It has a feel of old Cronenberg to it, right? Uh-huh. Like, very intentionally. Old Cronenberg mixed with like whatever drugs inland empire is on.

At least on a performance level, because Rebecca Hall is. Oh, my. Rebecca Hall rules. Fettered. She is out of control so good in this movie. It's one of those movies where the main character is the most unreliable of unreliable narrators and you can never trust her perceptions of what's going on and yet what's happening around her is the most insanity delivered in the most matter-of-fact terms. So it's really hard for the audience to discount anything because it is there's it's not like we're seeing her in like weird like weird visuals and like trippy headspace and whatnot it's just very straightforward Tim Roth shows up and says your baby is in my stomach and and it goes on from there like I don't I don't even consider that a spoiler because that is sort of the setup of the movie and then it's yeah that's early on I mean Tim Roth is on one in this movie, and I am here for it. He's so creepy.

For as much as Rebecca Hall is giving the standout performance in that movie, I think Tim Roth was wilding out in this. This movie just like, it is on one in a way that I don't think we've had a movie that's on one during the pandemic. And like, that's why I think so many people are reacting so strongly to it. But at the same time, they're like, I can. can't tell you what is happening or what this movie is about. This is one of those movies where I was saying,

I can't wait for my friends to see this movie and to talk about this movie afterwards. It doesn't have the you're going to run around your living room screaming aspect that like malignant has, but it's not far off in a lot of ways in terms of its boldness and its audacity. Yeah. IFC and Shutter bought it. So I presume that means IFC is doing theatrical and it will eventually be on Shudder. I think that's a good fit. I think that's a good fit for it.

If it had been bought by another distributor, I don't think I would be wrong about that F-cinema score thing. It is that type of wild movie. Yeah. And that is not, y'all know that if I say a movie's an F-cinema score movie, you know that's not a dig against the movie. It is not. It is very much not.

Yeah. Less wild than I expected was you won't be alone. Yeah. Which I know has its fans and knows have people who hated it more than I do. I'm a little bit more middle of the road. It is a movie that has grown on me. Could not tell you who this movie is for. But it's set in like rural Macedonia.

I couldn't tell you the era. I think it's like 18th century. I think it's like 18th century. Yeah, like 300 years ago. Yeah. A witch who can like take form in other. people's bodies or like when she kills them she can like use their bodies um goes through several different different people including numie repas who's on the poster but really isn't in the movie

that much that guys um and alice angler also the jane camp yes alice angler it's in the movie more um and it's it's mostly this kind of very liberally uh ripping off terence malick style as many people have noted, uh, very dreamy, dreamy voiceover narration. Yeah. Yeah. All, it's pretty much just narration for the most part, um, kind of reflecting on the passage of time and life and death and the vagaries of existing as a, as a mortal kind of a thing. It's not as specific in the like, for lack of a better word, sorry to not sound smart. Uh, weirdness that like a Robert Eggers does. Like, That feels less precise or intentional as kind of whatever its narrative targets are. And I think that's one of my holdouts for this movie, that it's just like it feels kind of, you know, like it doesn't have a goal.

But at the same time, it's not a vibes movie. Oh, I would. It's trying to have a wide reach, but I don't think it knows all of the things it wants to grow. grab, right? I took it as a Vibsy movie. I think I liked it a bit more than you did. For a movie that features so many scenes of a witch trying to eat a baby, it's really quite lovely, actually.

And it took me a while to figure out what was going on because there's a witch, and the It's promised a child. And so at some point, then there's two witches, and one is sort of, shows up often to kind of taunt the other witch. And, but I did feel like it was effectively delicate in that way. And effectively, I don't always have. patience for movies like this that are very kind of meditative. I think you're right to bring up Malik but I ended up liking this better than a lot of Malik movies that I've seen and I don't know whether

it was because it was from such a decidedly sort of female perspective. There's a moment where the which inhabits the body of a man but it is mostly in the persona of women and sort of older women and younger women and sort of what there's a lot of

dealing with things like women as property of their husband and what these kind of marriage rituals boil down to when you are giving of yourself to this man to be sort of his property for the rest of your life and the ways in which the traditions of the women in these villages sort of served to perpetuate this. And there's a lot of, you know, probably feminist theory. I think you could probably see sort of like painted onto this movie that is more effective in some places than others. But in general, I was happy to sort of ride the wave of this movie.

And I think it'll probably be an eye of the beholder kind of a movie. I think you're right necessarily in like, who's going to see this movie. but, like, I think you can say that probably about a lot of independent movies. And sometimes you're just sort of like, you're taking the creative leap of the filmmaker. And I think this is one of those movies that I think it's worth taking that creative leap. It's going to strike, it kind of strikes me now as the type of movie that, because it's opening from Focus in April, that's going to have probably a hard time when it opens. But towards the end of the year, people being like, you know, it was a really good movie.

Yeah, I could see that. Blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Um, it, it, it, it has kind of that level of, it's not imposing, but it's also, like, strained. Yeah. When I finished the movie, I was like, well, I'll probably never watch that again. And now, now I want to be able to revisit it with a little bit more space. Yeah.

For it, because it has actually, like, it's stuck with me. It's stuck with me in the way that's some of the other things I didn't watch that. Uh, you saw a love song with Dale Dickey, and I did. even though I am quite a fan of Dale Dickey as a character actress extraordinaire. She gets to be the lead in this movie, which is always very exciting when a character actress gets to be a lead in a movie. How did you like it? What's it about? I mean, if you're a Dale Dickey fan, you're going to be even more of a Dale Dickey fan. West Dutie is also in it, and you would be even more of a West Dutie fan if you are already.

We're called Deep Dickey's, the Dale Dickey fans. This movie premiered on the first day of the festival And I feel like because it played Sundance Maybe got a slightly unfair response to what the movie is And what it's doing It is a slightly quirky movie It's 80 minutes long It feels like this beautiful little romance novella

Where Dale Dickey is playing A grieving widow who has, who basically goes on like a camping tour. She has a little mobile home where she goes to a campsite and invites a high school bow out to meet her, played by West Studi, and the site itself has the significance to both of them. And it's just kind of like, it's a small movie about getting back on the horse and seeing if you are able to love again, and they are both absolutely wonderful, and I think if it had maybe

played somewhere else, people wouldn't be so dismissive of it as, like, Tweed, or, you know, I mean, I'm not saying it was one of the best things that I saw, but, like, in terms of just, like, the human dynamic of it and the human emotion in it and Dale Dickie's performance, it's lovely. Uh, less than lovely, I would say, and I think you agree with me on this, is, uh, one One of the more talked about movies at the festival, which was Lena Dunham's sharp stick, the grand return of Lena Dunham to provoking us. I don't know.

Us is a culture, I guess. Written and directed by Lena Dunham, it is about a young woman named Sarah Jo, who's played by Christine Froseth. and she is sort of unspecifically I don't they never really address necessarily if she's

neuro atypical or just kind of there's been some controversy about it but the producers came out and said that she is not intended to be neurodivurgeon which I yeah like I think the movie you know you can watch the movie and that's supported

there is a considerable effort, I would say, to have the movie kind of moves heaven and earth to take a character who is explicitly said to be 26 years old, but she had a hysterectomy at age 17, so like developmentally she's arrested on a sexual level, and so when she embarks on a sexual relationship, with John Bernthal's character, who is the husband of the family, who she's essentially a nanny for, there is, to me, this movie kind of moves heaven and earth to have its cake and eat

it too, in that it presents a sexual relationship that feels transgressive and wrong and bad, and you feel gross for watching it play out, and yet it's then also at the same time being like, she's 26, everything is fine, we can do this, like, look at us. And it's, it's in that very typically Lena Dunham way of setting up something that is going to, that sort of walks up to the line of being actually daring, but then sort of writes itself its own get out of jail free card, and that it's just going to make you have really annoying sort of arguments about it. And I really, really thought this movie was really unpleasant to watch. I'm not as negative on you. I'm pretty mixed on this movie because I do think that there's

things that are working in its favor, including some of the performances. Notedly, Scott Speedman, who is on one even more than Rebecca Hall is in Resurrection. He's playing a porn star. He's wonderful. He's wonderful and has no right to be. considering what he's playing. He's playing basically a porn star who is covered in tattoos and it's all POV porn. So it's like the camera is always facing him.

It's very only fans. Yeah. It's very like aggressive and like rough sex, but he's saying very like caring, kind, tender thing. He's halfway between a porn star and a TikTok star, right? Because it's a lot of just sort of like people follow his life. This movie's relationship to technology is like somewhat hedging. its bets on like how technology

might develop. But I do think that it's not a movie that fully works. It's incredibly lopsided in terms of like, what is the structure of this movie? And like some of the character relationships

aren't fully developed. I think this whole thread. What is Taylor Page doing in this movie? What she is out to see, she has literally just this movie has no narrative support for her in this movie whatsoever.

I know. And I love Taylor Page. I do too. But like what is she to do in this movie? But that's true for almost every character, including the one Lena Dunham herself plays. Yeah. And that's some of my problems. That being said, like, I do think there's a level of this movie that is, even though Lena Dunham has said other, you know, reference points for the type of movie she was trying to make.

I think it somewhat gestures at John Waters in a way that I don't see anyone else doing that, like, I want to see people doing. I got a little bit more maybe Todd Salons out of it, and I don't necessarily say that complementarily, but I could see where other people would find that complimentary. It's too sweet to be Todd Salons, though. I don't find it sweet. I think it's not genuinely sweet, and ultimately sweet, and ultimately it's trying to. it's trying to be a tender movie and that is never anything that's true about Todd Salons

I would I think this movie does ultimately have a lot of affection for all of its characters but I think a lot of the vagueness and its imprecision is part of the reason why it's pissing people off and that's part of the reason

why you know people are like is this character supposed to be neurodivergent or not and you know I think if I thought that Lena Dunham's character, that Lena Dunham had affection for her characters, I would have a very different view of, I think I would be a lot more indulgent of Lena Dunham than I am. I think if I can find that kindness and generosity in somebody,

I will allow you a lot of leeway, and I don't feel that in almost any of her stuff. maybe certain parts of girls but even in that even there there was I don't know I think that's a big part of my reticence

with Lena Dunham but I think we are It hasn't been picked up yet so who knows if people will be able to keep talking about this movie I'm sure it will show up somewhere because it's generated enough conversation that like

it's probably safe to say people will at least watch it even if they hate watch it so someone would probably pick it up for that reason. Yeah. Already picked up coming to,

from Searchlight and Hulu in March. Yes. Which like, I'd already booked it and I was like, I wouldn't have booked this movie if I'd known

because they announced it like after people were buying tickets. I booked it anyway because everybody was talking about it and I didn't want to not know what people were talking about. And I was glad that I did. We're talking about Fresh from Midnight,

the debut of From the Midnight section, the debut of Mimi Cave. This is a movie that I could see being discoursed to death, and I really hope it's not, because I genuinely feel like Fresh was one of the more fun movies I watched at the festival, which is perverse to think of. I don't think it's good. I don't think it's bad. Like, I had a good time,

but I rolled my eyes a lot. I don't necessarily think you're wrong. I don't think it's a bad movie. I think there are things that it gets away with. On the road to its final 15 minutes, which was the most, I wish I could have seen this in a movie theater with a lot of people, 15 minutes of any movie that I saw at the festival. I really feel like I ended up forgiving a lot of maybe my nitpicks with what had come before because I was so into the release of, and sort of the really sort of like crowd-pleasing. final 15 of that movie where yeah oh boy it is a very fun but like i also a fun sequence of the movie and i am like 100% with you there but i do also think it's where a lot of the it could

have really stuck the landing for me but like i felt like a lot of its problems became more pronounced in that like it has to underline every single one of the things that it's doing in a way that i'm I'm like, you've got to trust the audience more than this. There was one moment in particular. It makes cool stuff. Yeah. Less cool. It states in words.

It's, it's, it's theses in a couple places. I know exactly what line you're talking about. I do too. It's annoying. It's annoying because otherwise, everything that's happening in that moment is fantastic. It is the Chad Michaels responding to Roxy Andrews. We get it, girl. You're not wrong.

You're not wrong. And yet, um, Sebastian Stan's a lot of fun Sebastian Stan's great in this movie Like absolutely There's a way to play that kind of character That's sort of like Fuckboy who is a lot less

Is not the harmless kind of fuckboy That you maybe hope he is And He rides that line really well in this movie I also really liked Daisy Edgar Jones As the lead in the movie As someone who has not watched normal people, this was my introduction to her. Yeah, same.

Same here. And I was happy with it. I think you're right. I think you're right about the way that it underlines its themes in a way that is unnecessary. Again, I just... It's a better movie if it doesn't do that. I think you're right. I think you're right.

Well, and I also think, like, because we're dancing around what the subject matter of this movie is. Oh, right. Yeah, we should say. Because they're going to have to say in the trailer. Well, but, like, it's part of the first. fun of the movie How do you sell the movie otherwise?

My issue with, huh? How do you sell the movie while keeping that a secret? I would say it's like a satire, a horror satire on like Tinder. But how would you do a trailer for this movie without revealing that?

How would you actually do a trailer for this movie without revealing that? I would say if there's going to be a trailer for this movie, the like, it's going to tell you like what, genre of horror or what like genre of gore you're going to be dealing with but it's not going to give you the full um picture of what's going on because i think one of the other weaknesses of the

movie and like maybe you could also somebody would probably sell this as a strength but to me it felt like it wasn't as original as it wants to be is that like what's actually going on feels parsed, like, 25% from one horror movie, 25% from perhaps a horror TV show, 25% from something, and then 25% from something else. It feels, like, pieced together, like, kind of robbing other movies. All right. The one shot I definitely think will be in the movie is that meatball. Yes.

Oh, God. because that like gives that gestures towards what the movie is but like the dialogue in that scene doesn't really say what the full picture of the movie is yeah it's a good point and it's going to be on hulu so maybe there won't really be any more than a 30 second trailer for this movie yeah that's a good point all right we're going to argue about this next one i think we are yeah i think we are tell the listeners uh first movie i watched in the festival was jesse isenberg when you finish saving the world based, I guess, loosely on his audiobook, starring Julianne Moore and one of the It Kids, who I always think is just a bad actor, and I know we disagree there. We deeply disagree on this, yeah. Finn Wolfhard.

I think he's great in this. I think he's great in almost everything that I've seen, but I think he's great in this. I think he's fantastic in this. I think that there are active weaknesses in this. script and him being cast in that role only highlighted them. I feel like even if you don't like him though, I would feel like

that would play into a strength of this because he's the most unlikable teen. Yeah. I guess maybe I'd take that back though because I think part of the reason why I like this movie is because the movie ends up being more generous towards him

than you would expect it to be because it does lay out how insufferable he is And this movie does not have an incredibly generous outlook on TikTok teens, which I can subscribe to that. And Julianne Moore's character cannot stand TikTok teens in a way that I can relate to. I love a movie about a mom who really can't stand her kid and then sort of comes to a journey of sort of opening herself up to. maybe flaws in her own character that, you know, opening herself up to her kid could end up remedying.

She plays a woman who manages a shelter. I feel like she's in a very sort of like a leadership position at the shelter, helping battered women and women who have nowhere else to turn and can stay the there. And she thinks of herself as a very progressive and selfless and aware and actively sort of contributing to the good of the world and is really, really annoyed that her son is not interested in this kind of thing and just wants to play his dumb little songs on TikTok for his disturbingly large and lucrative following where he's like, he's always talking about how much money he's making off

of this platform. Yeah, but he's like, I made $20. He's not making that much money. I don't know. If the movie talks about him, like, getting X number of subscriptions and all the sort of stuff, and, like, he's definitely way more popular than you in the audience feel like he deserves to be.

And I think you feel her character's frustration at that. And other, like, Alicia Boe plays classmate of his who has a huge crush on, who is very much in, like, more plugged into social activism and comes by that very honestly, and he decides he wants to get into social activism as a way to get closer to her in a way that feels at the same time

insidious and also like stupidly innocent in a way where he's just so kind of hapless that it's hard to see it as threatening, but also it's just like, you're such a dumb ass. and so this girl also finds him kind of repulsive along the along those lines and I think there's a lot of squid in the whale to this with a lot of people sort of were drawing those comparisons because it's Jesse Eisenberg and so I think you can the kind of causticness at the movies core yes yes I it worked for me I don't know I don't know what else to say it really worked for me I can see it working for somebody

For me, like, a lot of it felt a little empty. I kept thinking about, like, this feels like something Nicole Hollif Center could do. But, like, once that thought entered my mind, it kind of revealed a lot of the movies, what I saw as, like, deficiencies. It didn't, these don't really feel like real people. I think it's most successful as a movie about people who, in one way, are trying to do the right thing. but when they can't keep themselves out of it, they make situations worse. But I don't really think it's about that beyond gesturing toward it.

But I think it's also about people who like Julianne Moore feels like she can make everything better by sticking her nose into everything and by sort of imposing her will upon other people. And Finn Wolfhard, as her son, thinks he can make everything better if he can just monetize, you know, monetize it and sort of make something go viral, make something popular, popularity equals the good in this. And you can see both of those approaches are in their own ways sort of flawed and diametrically opposed to one another. and they really seem mother and son to just like fundamentally hate each other and I think

almost surprisingly by the end you see that oh all along this was a movie about them sort of finding a way to meet in the middle and it's because they're dealing with their own shit so separate from each other and I think the movie kind of cleverly threads in

these things of these moments where they each kind of quietly and maybe from a sideways angle kind of expressed their regret that they used to be closer and that to me again really worked for me yeah

well A24 is releasing this but it doesn't have a date yet so that'll be out soon and listeners can decide how they feel out of themselves. Another movie that we disagree on in that you loathed it and I thought it was mostly okay

is am I okay which was Tignitaro and Stephanie Allen Stephanie Allen, thank you, directed this movie about Dakota Johnson plays a young woman who kind of comes into her own realization that she's gay, she has a very

Francis and Sophie kind of a relationship with her best friend, Francis being Francis. You know, I call upon the greatness of Francis Holland, which does this movie no favors by comparison, I will say. But that was the relationship that it felt the most like to me, this sort of codependent best friendship between the two of them. I think meant to think that Dakota Johnson's character is, if not explicitly in love with Jane, Jane played by Sonoya Mizuno, like dependent on her in a way that is not. super healthy. It meanders, and it kind of sort of dances around having a point.

I don't know if it ever ends up super having a point, which I think is a big weakness of it, but I mostly just found it to be watchable in its averageness. You found it to be reprehensible. I wouldn't say reprehensible. Like, this movie's not, like, doing damage to the world. I just think it's horrendous. It, okay, you know that it brings me no joy to, uh, shit on anything that is trying to be friendship cinema. I do know how much friendship cinema needs to me.

Yeah. But, like, I do think, without being, like, an outright jerk, I think this is maybe three movies competing as one. Sure. Because, like, I would love to see a movie about a woman who comes out in her. mid-late 20s. I would love to see a movie about codependent friend. I would love to see a movie about friend who is like the center of my life is moving halfway across the globe. What do I do?

But like, none of those ever become what the movie is about. And in the end, like the way you were describing how it's like, you know, how it resolves. like it just kind of becomes a movie about nothing and none of these relationships are satisfying nothing anyone goes through is satisfying but all that being said everyone in this movie is an alien this is not a movie set on the planet earth it's set on the planet Los Angeles it is um it's not funny like a lot of the jokes are bad and there's also just some absurdity, like, Sunoya Mizuno takes Dakota Johnson to a lesbian bar for her first time. And, like, one person tries to talk to Dakota Johnson. And, of course, the scene is more about how, like, she's just uncomfortable talking to people. But, like, I have a hard time believing that if Dakota Johnson shows up to a lesbian bar, that pandemonia wouldn't ensue. That's fair. And she's... It's... It's so... Like, yeah, bent on making Dakota Johnson this, like, sad sack, which, like, I do think that there could be an interesting movie about, like, a character like this who it's less about her coming out and more about her comfort, be it, her comfort or discomfort, rather, being in the presence of other people. Because there's a certain level of that that, like, I strongly relate to. There's, it's a movie about, the social awkwardness of it. Yeah, coming into your. yourself. You're sort of, you know, the person that you are. Like, I would find that highly

relatable. I do also want to give us both a chance. Because obviously, Dakota Johnson's one of the most naturally, likeable and compelling performers we have going on now. And it was, to me, the movie could only sink so far when she was on screen. Because she's... Right. A movie with her in it is never less than watchable. But let's the both of us get a chance to show our love for Molly Gordon, who plays their sort of third friend who is supposedly who's playing this sort of she works with Jane

she's supposed to be kind of this like annoying disaster of a girl and she plays that I think really really well and it just made me realize because she was also recently in Shiva Baby, one of my favorite movies of last year playing a very different character and playing a very different character than both of those

when she was in Book Smart a couple years ago I would die for her. I think she's so good I can't wait to see what she's in next. I'm officially on the Molly Gordon train. Absolutely. Yeah, very much into her. So, yeah.

Is there anything else you want to talk about? I feel like we got a lot in there. What else? We're here for two hours, guys. So we are the exhaustive sundance recap. I think that's mostly everything. The one movie that we both saw that we didn't really say much about, but I don't know if there's a ton to say about,

is Watcher, Micah Munro and the horror film Watcher, which I thought was okay, and I thought definitely comes to some moments by the end of it, but it is a lot of, it takes a lot of sort of quietness to get there. Not a lot of movie for 90 minutes. Yeah, I think that's right.

I think that's fair. The guy who... It's well made, but like there's not a lot going on in that. I am a person who responds very strongly to person in the distance seems to be looking at you. Like, that hits me on a real elemental level, so I am maybe an easier sell for this movie than most other things. No, I like that, too.

It's just, you know. Yeah. This movie felt very familiar. You saw, I did want to quickly, I know we're going on two hours here, you saw Piggy, which I didn't see, but I kind of wanted to. Thoughts and feelings on that. that's similar to fresh, I feel like, pulls in a lot of, I feel like, oh, this is a piece from this movie, a piece from that movie, a piece from this movie, but all of the movies were better movies. Piggy is the type of horror that I ultimately like kind of miss in that, like, it almost feels like it could be like the French New Extremity, movies like high tension.

But it doesn't quite get there. The performance at the center is fantastic. She plays a sort of bullied teenage girl who her bullies end up getting abducted. Yes? Yes. That's the premise? There's a good sequence in the movie early on during the abduction, and then it kind of becomes, I don't want to say cat and mouse throughout, but like she has a, connection basically to that

captor because her bullies are you know being abducted by this guy and like he also seems to have some type of like sexual energy

towards her as well the actress is Laura Galan by the way and she's fantastic best thing about the movie but this also felt like it was kind of stretching itself out over its, you know, 90 minutes. The ending is when it really becomes, like,

what you signed up for when you sign up for this movie. Yeah. But, yeah, like, it reminded me of a lot of people have drawn the comparison to Catherine Brayla's amissure. I also thought a lot about Stranger by the Lake. Interesting. Yeah, I mean, this seems like the type of thing that Shudder might pick up and, you know.

Yeah. the director to Carlotta Parada, I would be interested in seeing what she does next to. But yeah, I think in general, I was very, very happy with my Sundance experience, and hopefully we've given you all listeners an interesting sort of primer on these movies that will be coming out in some form or another, hopefully over the course of the year, and probably mostly to one streaming service or another, is our current marketplace. But, yeah, take of this what you will.

All righty, I think that is our bonus episode. If you want more this had Oscar Buzz, you can check out the Tumblr at this hadoscurbus.com. You should also follow us on Twitter at had underscore Oscar underscore Buzz. Joe, where can the listeners find you? Twitter and Letterboxed, both Joe Reed, read spelled R-E-I-D. I am also on Twitter and Letterbox at

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