This Had Oscar Buzz - BONUS – Sundancing at Lughnasa

Episode Date: February 5, 2021

We’re bringing you a special BONUS episode to talk about all the goings on at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival! Chris and Joe both just participated in the virtual festival and have some exciting films to talk about. First, we discuss the few films eligible in this current Oscar season, including the one with (we … Continue reading "BONUS – Sundancing at Lughnasa"

Uh-oh, wrong house. No, the right house. No, I didn't get that! We want to talk to Marilyn Hacks. And you jump first. No, I said. What's the matter with you? I can't swim.

Hello and welcome to the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast, the only podcast that has always dreamed about attending the Sundance Film Festival, but not like this. Not like this. Every week on This Had 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, but not this time.

This time we are here with a bonus episode about the 2021 Sundance Film Festival and how it might pertain to future Academy Awards lineups and discussions and considerations and such. I am your host, Joe Reed. I am here, as always, with the digital swag bag. We all covet Chris File. Hello, Chris.

First of all, I've always hated the term swag bag. Of course, it's a disgusting term. Why do you think I used it? It sounds profane. It does. It absolutely does. And yet it's like full of like incredibly expensive sponsored items. I was going to say, what's in a digital swag bag?

Is it AirPods? Can they send me some AirPods? I mean, I don't know what kind of, I did not attend any of the parties, let's say, at Digital Sundance. Our friend and former guest, Katie Rich wrote a. wonderful piece for Vanity Fair about such events, but I did not go to any. Such virtual parties and being in like the corner of the bar. I imagine it was a lot of coupons. Like a lot of coupon codes, like a lot of discount codes are like, like, because it's, you can't have anything physically in there.

But like, I don't know. I don't get any of these party invites. I'm not cool. I'm not. Oh, God. I might have done it out of morbid curiosity, but even. even in a digital sphere, even if it's like Twitter, like social anxieties are just like magnified in that, in those type of spheres. So I would have been, I would have ran for the

hills maybe as someone who is terrified of others. I would be much more inclined to go to a party in person where I can just sort of like gawk and eat free food and drink free drinks and not have to look at, like, myself in a weird little corner of the screen where, like, that's, because that's the thing about Zoom is that it's impossible not to be self-conscious, because you can always, you know, see yourself to some degree or another. And, like, body language doesn't exist across Zoom's, right? Right, right. And conversation is impossible. Like me, you rely on that. Yeah.

But, no, we didn't. The Sundance is very interesting because it's both yours and mine. first experience watching Sundance movies and, in your case, being accredited for Sundance. And yet, it's this very like, you know, what's the term for when something is a fake version of something? I don't know. I'm losing my vocabulary. We're recording this in the evening, and my brain is shot. I've watched 33 feature films.

My brain is uttermost. I also, because I... It's like a hologram of a real film festival. Yeah. Yes. So... The ghost of a festival. But yes, I also watched all of the short films as well.

You watched... Okay, so what are your numbers? What are your numbers for Sundance this year in terms of what you watched? All of the shorts, which I believe comes to 50 or around 50 and 33 features. A few I got to see early. But, yeah, my brain. And that's like... has liquefied and fallen out of my eye sockets.

And it's not like there are a ton. It's not like Sundance. For people who don't know and are not super familiar, the film festival like Toronto has like hundreds of movies. Sundance isn't that many. There were only this year 10 in the dramatic competition. And then a bunch sort of screen in, you know, documentary competition, which I think is just another 10.

And then there's maybe like. I believe it was something like 70, 75 films. Yeah, exactly. So it's like you watched, you know, almost half of the films to be watched, which is like, I watched all of the U.S. narrative competition titles, at least. And then I tried to get a sampling elsewhere, but. I paid my way, so I saw nine movies. Hell yeah. Which is fine.

Of the dramatic competition movies, the only one that I really wasn't able to. to buy a ticket to because it was sold out was CODA, obviously, which we will get to. But I saw John and the whole, on the count of three, and passing. So I saw three of the ten U.S. Dramatic Competition titles, as well as a few others. We will talk about it. But yeah, we both had really different experiences, but enough that we can sort of cover the breath. The vibe with this year's Sundance, obviously, is it's happening in a pandemic. It was sort of the last film festival

to happen before the pandemic, and we didn't know how good we had it, and certainly the people who were there, didn't know. You saw a lot of Sundance attendees and press people that went last year that they're like, wait, was that horrible fucking cold that I got coming back

from Sundance? Did I get COVID then? Yes. Yes, exactly. Yeah, that like did I have the flu in late January. There was probably a lot of that. Yeah. So the thing,

but the thing I sort of wanted to mention about sort of film festivals in general during the pandemic was for the ones that weren't outright canceled, South by Southwest was canceled, can was canceled. Or like, that weren't Venice that just decided that's just like, we'll do it. Whatever.

Caution to the wind. Right. But like the North American festivals. Well, Toronto was geo-restricted, where if you didn't, you weren't Canadian, you couldn't purchase, you couldn't screen anything digitally even. But like the American festivals, one of the interesting sort of side effects of the pandemic was people who normally wouldn't be able to attend a film festival because of geography, because of, you know, logistics and whatever. were able to, if they were sort of savvy about it and were able to sort of like seek some stuff out, we're able to screen movies from these different festivals.

This is why a lot of people were able to watch Minari over the summer. This is why people, this is how I was able to watch Nomadland and on the rocks and French exit at the New York Film Festival, even though I wasn't in New York. And so Sundance had this aspect too, where if you're, you know, not necessarily accredited press. And Sundance is an incredibly difficult to access film festival, not just because of the cost of getting a pass, let's say, or buying tickets, but like getting to Park City, Utah and staying in Park City, Utah is incredibly cost prohibitive. It's a very, it's not like tell your ride level, but like it's not Toronto in a normal year or even New York Film Festival. And the tickets to New York Film Festival movies are expensive and there's not. a ton of screening so it's a little hard to do but like and you're staying in new york if you're

traveling there and that's not cheap but um sundance is a lot is pretty exclusive and that's why the culture around sundance is you're either accredited press or you are in some way or another in the biz right you're in there are there are people who attend sundance as a filmgoer but you really have to have the means to do it so there's a democracy of Sundance this year that is really interesting. And you pair that with the fact that the lineup is paired down. You got the sense that, like, there's not a ton of major stuff premiering this year that you might, something like a Brooklyn that would have premiered a few years ago wasn't going

to happen this year. Something like... Or honestly, probably even something like the father last year. Right, exactly. Nothing that, like, already, like, besides Judas and the Black, Black Messiah and the one with the generic title, who I can never remember the title of,

The World to Come. I can never remember that title. We'll talk about that movie. I'll shame you. Nothing else already had distribution, right? None of, like, pretty much. Or am I wrong? Well, Land did.

Night of the Kings did. Night of the Kings premiered. This is what I was, I thought it was odd that it went to Sundance. I mean, it was like a late screening. It's in the like sidebar that's meant for movies that have already premiered elsewhere. But like it did a digital qualifying run. So it's like it was a movie that was already digitally available to people.

It's a great movie. I hope people seek it out. It's the Ivory Coast foreign Oscar submission. Right. Um, this year. But land had, I think land is the, no, land had a distribution prior to Sundance. That was always going to be a focus movie. Right.

Together, together is with Bleaker Street that was at least bought before the festival. Oh, okay. Before it premiered. I've seen it listed as an acquisition in certain roundups. So there's that sort of thing about like... I think the announcement happened after the Sundance announcement happened. I see. Yeah.

Well, that's sort of... It would be a chicken or the egg thing. Right, right. But I guess my larger point is to sort of like close that loop and finish a thought, which is such a rare thing for me. The democratization of being able to. watch movies at these kinds of festivals during this pandemic has been pretty interesting. And for me, who I didn't go for press accreditation for Sundance, because there's really, I don't really have a professional avenue for it at the moment, besides this.

It was cool to be able to, you know, cherry pick. Again, I wasn't able to see everything, and it would have been, you know, cool to see more. and I did end up spending a little, you know, south of $150 on tickets. It was so cheaper than New York Fest tickets. Yeah, totally. New York had some of those tickets that were $25 that you and I paid for, and, like, that's a junk of coin. $15 a ticket is about what it costs to see a movie in New York on a good day. So, like, that's fine.

And, like, you could be putting it on your TV, and you and your roommates or you and your partner could be watching the movie. So it's like, how many? I mean, I was going to say, you were like, this is our first Sundance for both of us. And I'm sure that's true of a lot of our listeners, too. And that's one of the cool things about the whole, like, virtual festival sphere. And because the lineup was paired down, I think you get, there's always my impression, at least, with Sundance is we asked, I talked about this with Katie a little bit before because Katie has been to Sundance before. And I was curious as to sort of How you know what to see at Sundance

With Toronto, there's a lot more of like There are movies that have played either maybe Cannes or Sundance Earlier in the season Or like you get a sense of What is going to be maybe a studio's awards play There's a lot more information that you know about Toronto movies ahead of time To help you make your decisions about what to see And even still, there are some things where you seek them out

and you try to see something and take a chance on something. But I feel like with Sundance, you know so much less about these movies. And she was just like, for some of them, you know, maybe you've been reached out to by publicists. For others, you just sort of follow the word around town for maybe like catching the second screening of a thing that people really liked. But I think a lot of that in a regular Sundance year, there's a lot more sort of top-down direction, pushing from people, whereas it felt like this was, I was following, I was able to follow sort of the buzz from other people with a lot of this kind of stuff. And it felt very sort of a high discovery factor in this, from my own first time perspective. But I thought that was cool.

I will say for my scheduling too, it definitely felt like, you know, taking some crap shoots and hoping that there would be discovery there. And there were actual, like, things that I felt like I discovered this movie, you know, not like me myself, but like it allowed for an element of surprise. Do you have like a number one? Like if I was to be like, what was your favorite thing you saw sentence this year? Is there one that jumps out or is it a handful? I mean, it's a lame answer because it already premiered at another festival before this, but it truly is the world to come. I love that movie. Talk about that movie. Who's who's in it? It's kind of already gotten pegged as another.

like period lesbian drama there is a romance between um katherine waterston and Vanessa Kirby that um uh yeah i just think it's a movie that there is a lot more going on there certainly about how history has treated women and the ability for women's stories to be kept and told um it is set uh during the american frontier days i believe in the mid 19th century where Catherine Waterston's character and her husband, played by Casey Affleck, have just recently had a child who's died, and they don't really have much communication without the outside world, because in those times, like, you would have to travel to your town center to see people,

and Vanessa Kirby and her husband moved nearby, played by Christopher Abbott, and a romance buds. And then other things happen that I think are incredibly significant to what the the actually is, beyond a romance, that I wouldn't want to give away. The timing of this year's award season, because the Oscar calendar bumped itself back a couple months so that now if something premieres by the end of February, it'll count towards this year's Oscar race. You're in this sort of new and kind of for this movie in particular, kind of a bummer territory

where by the time this thing screened at Sundance, we're already past the indie spirit nominations were past most of the critics awards. So we already know that the world to come doesn't really have even those sort of fleeting Sundance hopes where you're in February, it's the beginning of the year, you don't know what the whole year is going to become, anything could become an indie sensation

where we already knew at this point that all of the levers that the world to come could have maybe pulled in this award season didn't happen. So it's just like... Well, and like even in Sundance terms, it was the last day of the festival

like after the night after Judas and the Black Messiah premiered so it was like everything was completely winding down at that point. And I think it feels like the scheduling of this movie because it'll be opening in theaters next week and then early March you can watch it on VOD

I would suggest our listeners choose that option right now but definitely seek this movie out. It just feels like the type of movie that is a little screwed by this because I don't necessarily know if it was, if its intentions are fully for Oscar,

even though it got scheduled at that point, and it feels like, unfortunately, it's just going to get buried, you know? Well, and so much of what you talk about in terms of awards, hopes for movies that are this small, is what can help it get a little bit of box office? In a regular year, you would be like, well, at least if the world to come could get, like, an indie spirit nomination or, like, a Critics Award somewhere,

maybe it can get a little bit more attention and a little bit more box office and in this year that's not really a thing like box office is such a you know odd amorphous you know thing and keeping stats of vod and digital stuff is even more amorphous and you know uh i don't even bother with that kind of thing but it feels like with so with a movie like the world to come it's almost just like it's back to just a movie existing for a movie's sake and just see it just because just because it's good. Like just, you know, seek it out as a good movie. Whereas something like Judas and the Black Messiah, which you just mentioned, is another movie that, like, didn't screen in competition is, was sort of the, maybe the only movie at Sundance that

felt like it was platforming itself for its awards run here. Like, this was part of the platform for it to almost kick off its awards campaign, because it's one of the latest, later breaking movies into the award season. And then, like, obviously this week, as we're recording this, Daniel Kaluya has picked up Golden Globe and SAG nominations for Best Supporting Actor. He's sort of become... I think we both agree that he's possibly just going to steamroll. I don't know if I would say steamroll, but I would put him as the frontrunner right now.

He seems like... It seems like the buzz on him is just beginning. And I think it could, you know, keep getting bigger. He's of the major contenders who I feel like if we're talking about supporting actor, your major contenders at this point are Leslie Odom Jr. for one night in Miami and Chadwick Bozeman in Defive Bloods. And even though he didn't get a SAG nomination, I think Bill Murray for On the Rocks is probably still in the hunt. Who am I forgetting who got SAG nominated today?

Sasha Baron Cohen. Sasha Baron Cohen for Chicago 7, who, like, could be a contender, like, not to, like, and then, of course, the juggernaut that is Jared Leto for, what is that, the little things? That's another title that's so general, I can never think of it. I think the fact that the title of that movie is the little things is the funniest thing about all that. That's one of those pop punk songs from, like, the early 2000s, right? Wasn't there a song called The Little Things? That's like the title of a Nicholas Sparks movie. It's a terrible title.

I still have to see that movie. but like I think of those performances and like there are good performances in there I think Sasha Baron Cohen is good in that movie I think Leslie Odom Jr. is good in one night in Miami but I think by a large margin I know let me make my point before you nitpick

I'm a bitch I think of those performances with the caveat that I haven't seen Jared Lotto yet Kaluas is by far the most dynamic the most impactful on his film his film is reverent I don't want to say reverent because that makes the movie sound

gauzier than it is but like He's playing Fred Hampton It's the story of the Black Panthers in Chicago Right and the movie knows Absolutely How important he is And like the movie centers itself around him

Even though he is definitely a supporting actor And that he's absent for quite a bit of the movie It's Lakeith Stanfield's movie but like he's the kind of supporting performance that has such a light on it and then he does so much with that spotlight that like it's a classic classic Oscar winning performance and all the ingredients are there and you know he's fantastic as it is so that is the one movie that I think sort of used Sundance as the kind of platform that it could uniquely be this year because of what the Oscar calendar is. Mm-hmm. So. And people had seen it for a while now.

They, I think, kind of like, hand-selected press and ask them to stay quiet about it. Because, of course, when that happens, you see like hints and suggestions about things. But the movie's fantastic.

Absolutely. I think it'll be a Best Picture nominee. Oh, you do. You can watch it on HBO Max next. week. Yeah, I think that's right. It's definitely soon. So you think it's a best picture nominee contender?

I absolutely do. I mean, Warner Brothers, they have that antenna. Yeah, that's a good point. That's a real good point. And Warner Brothers is better at the Oscar thing than people sometimes give it credit for for being sort of. Sometimes the bigger studios

get underrated for not being Fox Searchlight or not being when the old day is Miram. Max, do you know what I mean? But WB does pretty... Well, and am I remembering it wrong or did it show up on the AFI top 10? I think it did. I can look it up to make sure. I'm positive it did. Yeah. Yeah, it's breaking at the right time. It's maybe the one film that is doing the late in the game February release the best

without having what Minari and Nomad Land did, which was play festivals very early. which is also working out for them. Like, it's not, Nomad Land and Minari are still doing quite well this award season. But, um, Duda's and the Black Messiah is doing the wait till the very end thing

pretty well. And hopefully... In a way that I honestly think, I mean, like, of course, this is harqueable. It didn't get the SAG ensemble nomination that I probably would give it. It didn't get,

uh, more than a song nomination. And Daniel Kaluya at the, the globes, but, like, Oscar ballots aren't even out yet for nominations. Like, this movie is going to be hitting at exactly the right time. Yep, yep. Everybody loves the movie. All right.

Now with that out of the way, though, let's talk about the sort of the more, you know, Sundancey Sundance movies, the smaller ones. One other that we haven't really gone into that you saw and I didn't, that is eligible for this year, probably won't get anything was land, the Robin Wright nomad land without the nomad, I guess. It's just land. It's just land. It is no sad land. Right, right. Tell me about land. Robin Wright, it's her feature directorial debut. She's done some television at least of directing. She stars in the movie as well as a woman who is going through a certain kind of grief that is revealed over the movie, and she runs away to, I believe, the Rocky Mountains to live in a cabin on her own and not

be around any people because people are more isolating than actually being alone. And she has to, like, fight with the elements and figure out how to live because she's, like, a woman from the city. Yeah, I mean, I think it's a solid movie. I think she directs it well. I think the script, when people actually have to speak, is not very good. But it's a beautiful, like, movie to watch. I think her performance is great.

It's not going to go anywhere with Oscar. I think it's just one of those movies that this is the timing of it, and it happens to be eligible. but I would say for listeners to seek it out. Again, it's another movie that next week will be in theaters and we'll be on VOD shortly after. All right. The other movie that I wanted to talk about that is not a 2020 or a 2020 holdover, although I want to talk about the asterisk I want to put on that in a second. But the big winner of this year at Sundance in a lot of ways was Coda.

absolutely the biggest word of mouth from people covering the festival. It won a bunch of the awards at the end. It got bought for a record, I want to say, $25 million. Absolutely the record. From Apple. By a decent margin. It beat just the previous year Palm Springs set the record by like a penny or something. Oh, that's interesting. And that was like what? I think it was around like 22 million. Cota was bought by Apple TV Plus for 25 million. Apple TV Plus, my most hinterlansy of the new streaming platforms that have now decided to start acquiring films. It's worth it for Dickinson.

It's got some good stuff on it, but it's the one, it's absolutely the one I visit the least. So it's the one I'm always just like when they acquire something, I'm always just a little bit just like, oh, like I'm. Well, here's the thing about the money they spent on this movie. I think what it really signifies, aside from the fact that this is a movie that people like and people were competitively bidding for it, I think what it really signifies more than anything is that Apple is trying to make themselves a player in these type of situations. And they were willing to shill out the money to get the movie that everybody was talking about. Was their biggest 2020 movie Greyhound or did they have anything else that they tried for? They bought Greyhound. Right.

But in terms of what they released this year, was there anything? Well, they partnered with A-24 for Boy State and on the Rocks. Oh, did they? Oh, right. That's right. They were on the rocks. For some reason, my mind always wanted to put on the rocks with HBO Max, but no. They also partnered with, I believe, G-Kids.

I could be wrong that it's G-KKKids, but they also had Wolf-Walkers. I don't know if Wolf-Walkers is G-Kids, but whatever that company is, that Apple did partner with them. You're right about that. I shouldn't give, the other thing is, I should say, I watch via usually Roku, sometimes an Amazon firestick. So like, for everybody who has Apple TV, like, that's great. That's a great place for Coda to end up, because everybody who has Apple TV, like they, you know, it's probably, you know, in their laps at this moment. The one really interesting thing, and I'll give you a minute in a second to a minute in a second. What's wrong with me um for you to talk about how you don't love this movie um i don't it's the the theory that

i heard maybe from like one person but now i've decided it's just like a possibility because i want it to be is that apple should rush release this by the end of february and get marley matlin a best supporting actress oscar which i would love just for the wildness of it and it's the Glenn Close Oscar besides. You couldn't, that would, that would, I think, they could drop it right now and put it in a bunch of people's homes and they can watch this nice little movie that makes a lot of people happy already that have seen it and just to make people happy. But like a sudden drop of a movie into an Oscar race, I think that's a not a good idea. Well, it's also, it's also a lot to ask. You're not going to get a nomination for a movie suddenly that nobody had not heard of.

I agree, but you know I love chaos. And that would have been, that would be, the fact, dropping. As judged by the group thread today, with Jared Leto and Amy Adams being nominated, that sag, you do love the chaos. Listen, I'm not saying I wanted Amy Adams to get a SAG nomination. I'm just saying that I knew it was going to happen. And you said it, and you were right, and you deserve the credit. But like, air dropping Marley Matlin, an Oscar winner, into this category.

that now everybody, including me, has decided that Glenn Close is probably going to win, would be Chef's Kiss Chaos. Like, absolutely phenomenal and remarkable. I was bummed that I didn't see Coda. Everybody else seemed to like it. You insisted on often being the fly in the punch bowl about this movie. So I want to give you your moment to sort of say your piece. Okay, it's less that I think it's a fly in the punch bowl. I do kind of, I was like, not butt hurt, but like, a little butt hurt. This is a festival. It was a lot of things that have nothing to do with the movie, but like nobody was really talking about any other movie but this. It feels like it sucked all the oxygen out of the room, and it shows because so few of these other movies, and a lot of

them are good and like a lot of people would like a lot of these movies didn't get bought or like there weren't deals happening for them. I think like Quest Loves documentary Summer of Soul is one of them. Hopefully we'll hear somebody buying about buying that soon because it premiered on the same night. Cota is the first movie that started the festival and it was just like it was the movie that the whole week truly sucked all the oxygen out of the room. And then when the prizes happened, which like the audience award most predictable thing but then the jury gives it three separate prizes and like they only had the 10 movies to pick from in the competition and like there's worthy like winners there like the best performances I saw were in movies that won no prizes um so here's

my only other and with the caveat that I've only I only saw three of the other dramatic competition movies. From what I was seeing from other people, it didn't seem like any of those other movies were all that well liked, with the exception of Wild Indian, sort of, and together together. Like, even passing, which got a lot of good response, I saw a lot of people being like, it ran the spectrum of people's responses. And that's, I mean, I think this maybe wasn't the festival for the movie, to be honest.

Like, I understand why it premiered at Sundance, but like... Passing? Yeah, it's, it was even not quite what I was expecting. It was a little bit more, like, and I hadn't, I haven't read the source novel. I know a lot of people that do and loved it, and all the people I know that have read the book, liked the movie. So we should say really quickly before. Patricia Heismith vibe. Yeah, go ahead.

No, just before, I don't mean to cut you off, but I just want to sort of give a little. Passing is the movie based on the novel by Nella Larson. It was adapted and directed by Rebecca Hall, the actress Rebecca Hall. It's a black and white movie about two women in the 19 what. Like, I'm terrible with like time. like earlier in the 20th century, right? Like 1920s, maybe or something like that? Let's say 20s.

Or the 30s? Maybe, sure. Definitely pre is, you know, a good deal pre-civil rights movement. Tessa Thompson and Ruth Nega play old childhood friends. Ruth Naga is actively passing as a white lady married to a white man, married to Alexander Scars Guard. Tessa Thompson, who is sort of like momentarily mistaken for white and allows that to slide, but is in general not passing for white, is married to Andre Holland. There's a lot to do with, obviously, race and class and Harlem, and Ruth Negas character is very sort of interestingly, like, sort of wants to go back to feel this sort of the Harlem vibe, which at the time was.

very vibrant and very something that she was sort of drawn back to but obviously she's living in two different worlds and I think she's really, really great in this movie. I think Tessa Thompson is also really good. I think Andre Holland is also really good. I think Bill Camp shows up for a few scenes and is like

fantastic. I'm curious to see when this movie starts being seen by more and more people where it shakes out Netflix bought it, right, where it shakes out in terms of authorship,

in terms of Rebecca Hall being a, you know, white woman sort of taking the reins of this. I'm sort of hesitant to make much of a, you know, declarative statement on it one way or another because I think in certain areas

it's not fully my conversation to have. but um well she's of a mixed heritage too her mom is a famous opera singer who has passed for white um so like she's been very outspoken about that connection to the story in a way that feels like trying to get ahead of it yeah and it's starting to uh be a little labored um in a way that it's just like the movie kind of it doesn't for everybody But to me, it's just like you've made this kind of substantially artful movie that has a lot to unpack and a lot to say, maybe it's time to let people just process the movie. Yeah, I liked it. I maybe didn't, beyond the Ruth Nega performance, I didn't ever sort of tip over into loving it and, you know, for whatever reason. I feel like my favorite things at the Sundance, I gave out a lot of three and a half stuff. as I'm looking at my list on Letterbox of the stuff besides the stuff that I outright didn't like I gave out a lot of three and a half stars because there was a lot of like this is really good but I want to sort of sit with that for a while and that was definitely one of them the other one that I felt that way about was mass I don't think I ever talked to you about what you thought you didn't like mass I really liked plenty about it that's decent I don't I didn't respond as strongly as some people

people did. That's another movie that did kind of run the gamut of responses. And I think people who saw it later versus the people who saw it first liked it a lot less. It makes sense that it ran the gamut because either you're into this kind of thing or not, where it's like, sit me in the middle of a room with, you know, four adults around a table with this sort of terrible event from their past that they are slowly. sort of unpealing like an onion for the audience. This was written and directed by Fran Cranz, who people might know from the television show Dollhouse or the film The Cabin in the Woods. It's two married couples who are clearly being brought together

for some kind of summit. You get the sense very early on that it's a reconciliation, but it takes you a while to figure out, you know, you pick up things. I love the sort of excavation. It's sort of like, like you're a paleontologist and you're sort of brushing dirt away from a dinosaur skeleton or a little bit.

The picture becomes a little clearer, a little clearer. That's a good way to put it for the kind of like almost scientific remove that it has at the first like half hour of the movie. But I found that really fascinating because then I'm, it was a lot of you're almost studying these people for clues, right? And I found that really fascinating. And then all of a sudden, their sort of facial expressions and the way they move and the way they

sort of interact or don't interact with each other becomes, it's not a puzzle, but it's like, it's like it said, it's a portrait sort of being slowly revealed to you. And I really liked that aspect of it. And then once you really get to know what it's about, there is a, you know, there is a school shooting at the center of it and one couple's son was murdered by the other couple's son, which I don't think is a spoiler because I think that's sort of apparent very early on. I don't know how you would market this movie without making that apparent. There was a moment or two where I was like confused and it felt like you are meant to discover which couple is which. Yes, I think

you are. Know that that is what it is. Yes. And that's one of the reasons why I think the front half of the movie is significantly better than the back half of the movie. See, I think the back half works because it's four really great performances. It's Martha Plimpton and Jason Isaacs and Ann Dowd and Reed Bernie. And I think if any one of those performances was weaker than it was, and maybe they didn't all work for you, but they really worked for me. And I thought that is what sells the second half of the movie. And there is a turn. at the very end of the movie that I think really could have come across a lot worse, but it hangs on and becomes, like, it's a, it's somewhat, that's something of a

shocking moment within the parameters of this movie that doesn't really have anything overtly, uh, actiony happening. Um, it's all very dialogue based. And so even the more shocking things are dialogue based. Um, but there's like a last five minutes thing that happens that really, really worked for me as well. I'm closer to pushing this one up to like a four-star thing than I am with passing, which maybe is I'm closer to pushing back to a three-star thing, if that makes sense. I'm probably closer to pushing mass lower than I have it already. I have a hard time.

Here's the thing. Like, I think a lot of people like us who are potentially awardsy-minded or like that's just their writing beat, whatever, flocked to this movie because of the potential for that. And I don't know if it fully makes good on it because I don't think the script is very good. I think it really, really kind of forces big character arcs out of these people in a way to me that feels like these people are having like a 90-minute conversation. That feels crazy to me, the kind of leaps that they end up going through on a personal level, these characters. Well, except for, sorry, I don't mean to interrupt. But I just, I think, I think the movie establishes so much that, like, these people have been through years of a legal sort of wrangling with each other, that that to me didn't seem like that much of a leap, that within these 90 minutes, they would traverse that much ground because they've been sort of laying the groundwork for this for so long, if that makes sense.

And see, I didn't necessarily feel, I felt that sense of history, but I didn't feel like groundwork, right? Sure, sure, sure. And, like, again, this is us trying to not, like, go too into specifics because, like, if people see this movie, this is a movie you should kind of go through all of the beats with. I'm less sold on all of the performances. I think Martha Plimpton is really, really good, but she, to me, was the most frustrating character. So it's like she's giving a really good performance selling me on, like, character beats that I don't buy on this. on the page right um right and i also think reid burney is fantastic he's probably the most understated of them and i think has the most difficult role um jason isx is the most like the

the four of them are very archetypal right in the conversation that they're having and that frustrated i don't see i don't know if i agree with that that's interesting i also think he does we just talked about this with our uh when a man loves a woman episode he has a big stretch where he does the crying voice thing isn't actually crying that I was like, this is not good. I really liked it. And And Dowd, who I love,

who very much is doing the And Dowd thing, that is good, but I don't think it's the right energy for the movie. You can kind of feel her actively slowing the movie down in a way that's not working. There were times when she seemed more mannered than maybe the movie could accommodate at that moment.

But I also felt like that was there in the movie to be like a prickly thorn towards the Isaacs and Plimpton characters that like every

this is not to like make so much about this movie because there are other movies to talk about but like there's so much of that movie is watching one person say their little piece that they have to say, and then watch that reverberate off of the other three characters that I thought was really interesting. And I thought, you wouldn't think that the directing for a movie that is

essentially four people in a small room talking would be much. But I think the way that it, just like, just the sequence of who you're looking at when people are talking, I think is really good. I think you're, I don't think you're wrong about the writing. Every once in a while, I kept thinking, like, I can't believe this isn't based on a play just because it has the setup of a play. But the language is not the language of a play. If this was a play, it would be maybe overly

wordy and florid and whatever. You know what I mean? But it didn't feel super lighterly. You and I are on the same page about this, though, that like when people are like, oh, it's so stagey, it's just people talking in a room. Like, we think that's stupid because like interesting conversation can be cinematic and you can watch it. And it's like

I think of like one night in Miami that does it incredibly well and makes it cinematic. and like kind of flows on all of these beats and pivots in the conversation to make something that's really investing and really exciting and I would say don't think that this movie does that well. I would say the same thing about something like Ma Raney's Black Bottom, which was, you know, talk got a lot of talk about, you know, being a filmed adaptation of a play. But I think George Seawolf does a really good job, again, of sort of like taking our eye where our eye needs to go. And I do think, I don't think Frank Cranes is on, you know, that level yet. He's still very much like a, I don't know if this is his first film, but it's, you know, he's an emerging talent.

But I do think there were good instincts there in terms of just like letting you watch those sort of words reverberate for the other characters. Just to sort of put maybe a button on this, I don't see this as being an awards play. I think it is too very much, you know, four people in a box kind of a thing. I don't see that as making a thing. The subject matter is a hard sell, too. Yeah. Unless the movie is just a lot better. Like, not to be put too fine a point on it.

But, like, to sign up for this movie is kind of an ask. And you hope that the payoff is you're going to see something amazing. And I don't know if that's what it does. I think it's really good. I think when it becomes available, seek it out. I think it's very good. All right. What else did we want to talk about?

Talk about Summer of Soul. Another movie I didn't see, but you loved. This movie was also on the first night of the festival. I feel like it got weirdly. Like, I watched it and immediately went to bed because I, like, started it at 10 o'clock at night. And I am, listen, I am an old person. I like to sleep. I, like, was like, oh, people are going to be flipping over this movie.

It's, um, Questlove directed this documentary about the Harlem Culture Festival where they were basically doing concerts for a summer in Harlem, black artists for black audiences, right? And it's the same summer that Woodstock happens. So it's like, in history, it's kind of got dubbed the Black Woodstock, but it's like nobody talks about it, right? Because the movie puts a really smart point on how black history and the moment and black art is not given the significance that it should, and it's really frustrating to see a movie that's about that, that also does that, and get buried at the festival. In a similar way, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But the footage for it, like, I, like, tweeted out, or, like, my letterbox log, something was, like, put this footage in the fucking national film registry.

The footage of it is incredible. I mean, the artist that you see, like, you'll see people like Nina Simone, Sly and the Family Stone, other, like, gospel names that maybe people haven't heard of but should. And, like, Questlove has said he used, like, a third of the footage. This footage was being kept in this guy's basement for, what, 50 years. Someone will buy this movie. Oh, absolutely. We should also say it did win the prizes for the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award for documentaries.

so like it did you know get some shine yeah and like it sounds like the type of thing that like you know exactly what it is because it's concert footage and you know it's a lot of talking heads contextualizing it yeah but like it is absolutely like one of the best versions of that movie you've ever seen and like the concert footage is jaw dropping yeah another prize that uh from a movie that I did not see, but you did. This is becoming a theme. Jockey, which was a movie with Clifton Collins, Jr., an actor I love, won the special jury award for Best Actor. I believe it was the only acting prize given out for this year's Sundance. You seem to like... In the U.S. competition, at least.

Right. Right, because there was an ensemble award for Coda, but that was also U.S., but Anyway. Cota won the audience award, the Grand Jury Prize, the directing prize, and an ensemble prize. Right. But so my impression was you liked Clifton Collins but didn't love the movie. Yeah. I mean, I think it definitely follows maybe a softer version of a movie that you've seen before. Clifton Collins Jr. plays a jockey who's like gone through the ringer. He's had the injuries. He's, you know. Um, he, uh, works with Molly Parker, who, like, believes in him, tries to get him these, uh, uh, races, basically, uh, when he's past his prime. Um, and his son, or a young man shows up who's a new jockey, uh, that's been following him around, basically says, I am your son. Um, and it's kind of a movie of them bonding and discovering if that's true or not, uh, Clifton Collins Jr. doesn't believe it at first. So, you know, if you've seen movies like The Wrestler, it's very similar to that, but in a horse race setting and, you know, not as taxing on like the spirit to watch. But in other regards, I feel like it's just a very soft movie. It's gorgeous to look at. It's well shot.

But, I mean, Clifton Collins Jr. is good. I want a showcase that gives him more to do that showcases him even better, to be honest. This one was acquired by Sony Classics, so there is that. Two things I wanted to mention. A, big ups to any movie that showcases the canonical shortness of an actor.

I very into that. Also, can we give it up for Molly Parker? Can we just... Molly fucking Parker, Molly Parker also needs a better showcase. She's so good in everything. In everything. She's the best performance in pieces of a woman and she barely speaks and is barely in the movie.

The degree to which I wanted so much more Molly Parker and so much less Shia LeBuff and pieces of a woman cannot be un-overstated. Like, I cannot say that loudly enough. I kept, every single time there's a goddamn scene with Shia LaBuff being terrible in that movie. actively derailing that movie. All I'm doing is be like, what's Molly Parker doing right now? What's that character doing? And I get that, like, the movie is about keeping that character on the other side of a TV screen for most of that movie. I don't like that movie. I don't either.

I think Vanessa Kirby is as good as advertised. I think she's very, very good in that movie. But I do not, did not like that movie. I didn't like even, and I love Ellen Burstyn, but I didn't even think, I thought Ellen Burstyn was a couple of really loud monologues, and that's about it in that movie. Right, right. I kind of liked Eliza Schlesinger Did not appreciate having to look at Benny Safdi

That is my opinion of pieces of a woman Anyway You do not like Safdi as we know I don't The other acting though I wanted to When while we're talking about acting Maybe my favorite performance Or at least my favorite performance

In a movie I didn't like Was Christopher Abbott in on the count of three Which won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award The somewhat notorious Waldo Salt screenwriting Award seems to always go to movies and or screenwriters that, like, it's almost like the Grammy Award for Best New Artist, where you look back in 20 years and you're just like, really?

I think Christopher Abbott's really, really good in a movie that does not know what it needs to be and sort of falls victim to a lot of my sort of recurring Gerard Carmichael problems, where he seems to his provocations never really seem to add up to as much as he thinks that they do. And that was a movie about, it's a suicide-packed comedy,

if that appeals to y'all, with Gerard Carmichael and Christopher Abbott. And sort of they go through this day as it's going to be their last day. And Christopher Abbott has sort of these long-standing traumas that he wants to confront. and he in particular is a lot, but in a way I really responded to.

He is both really entertaining, but like with that absolutely, like, you never lose sight of the fact that, like, this is a real person who's, like, going through some real shit at the center, but he's just, like, compulsively watchable, and he's really funny. He's the funniest parts of the movie when the movie actually manages to pull stuff together and be funny. He's the one doing it. I was less and less taken with the performance as it went on. Yeah.

Though, like, at least in the first, like, half hour, I agree with you. And on the opposite way, I was more taken with Carmichael as the movie went on. It's, I agree with you, it's not a movie that I liked. I think it is very much in the mold of a 90s indie, like, ha, ha, Guns are funny macho indie movie of the 90s that I don't like already.

I mean, we haven't seen a movie like that in a while, but to me, all of the stuff with Gerard Carmich and Tiffany Haddish at the end, Tiffany Haddish, who first thing I ever saw her in was in his sitcom, in Gerard Carmichael's sitcom.

So they definitely go back. But there's the subplot about she's his girlfriend. friend, she's pregnant, and she ends up he ends up sort of questioning whether he wants to kill himself because he's got the kid on the way

and yad, yada, yada. None of that I didn't really buy any of that as deeply as I needed to buy it for this movie to work for me. And I think that was a big problem for that movie. But anyway, that wins the Waldo

Salt Screenwriting Award over probably other things that could have. You really liked Together Together. That sounded like something that maybe. And that's, Patty Harrison is in that one. Talk about that one a little bit because we both love Patty Harrison. Okay, so we both love Patty Harrison.

It was probably the movie I was most excited for because of Patty Harrison in a starring role. She's opposite Ed Helms, who is a heterosexual man in his 40s, who is single, who wants to have a baby, and she ends up being his surrogate. and it's like the tone of the movie is going to make people think of a lot of rom-coms but it's I mean not to put a trite term on it but it's a friend com really love that oh my god I love that in every way that you think that the movie is going to

punk out and become the thing you don't want it to be it really doesn't and like there is actual depth two people without like huge traumatic things that they go through like Patty Harrison. I won't spoil it but the movie ends with Patty

Harrison's face and it's such a beautiful shot and she gives such a great performance and it's just like we just need more movies about friends basically is what I'm going to say. I love a movie where the stakes are friendship. This is what we talked about in the station agent

right? I loved that movie. Absolutely, the stakes of this movie are friendship. Yeah. Because he very much, Ed Helms' character, very much like, has a life populated with people, but doesn't necessarily have deep connections. And she on the opposite side doesn't really have a lot of people in her life, and kind of by choice doesn't have certain connections. Yeah.

And, of course, there's, like, a lot of the things that you do expect of, like, the surrogacy issues and boundary issues. But the movie's incredibly funny and like here was my thing. Like some of the people, some of the responses immediately were saying that it was too saccharin. All of this.

When I found it to be incredibly layered with complex emotions on top of like a sentimental feeling because it wants to be a certain type of movie, right? Yeah. They gave. other movies like Coda a free pass for doing the same thing. It's so funny to me.

Which isn't a dig against Cota because those were the things I liked about Cota. Right. But. It's so funny to me that the Patty Harrison movie is getting tagged as two saccharin because she's so there's a lot of thorns on her comedy. You know what I mean? Like she can be

really the city. And they're still there. There's still there in the movie. But like, it's it is Patty Harrison without maybe like, the, like, really sharp edges that you and I probably love her for, but it still feels like her brand of humor, right? Like, it is, to me, it was the big sick of this Sundance. That's a good pull quote.

Hopefully they use that. Last one I want to talk about before we say goodbye, but I do want to get to this because I think we're both on the same page about this one. when everybody first saw John in the hole and all the reactions out came out and everybody after the other one person was more negative than the last and I was like I can't imagine

I'm gonna hate this movie as much as everybody else does it's not possible I like weird quirky shit like this I'll probably you have a problem when everybody hates something you have this thing in your brain that makes you want to like it and I was like dude you're not gonna like this movie I don't like to be told that I'm gonna not like something before I see it. I want to see it for myself. I want to make my own reaction.

My own reaction is, this movie fucking sucks. But like, it sucks in a way that I want to talk about it for like 25 minutes because, like, I could not believe that nothing happens in this movie after he puts him in the hole to the degree that nothing happens in this movie after he puts him in the whole. It is the most sophomoric conceived in a frat bedroom. It's so dumb. Where it's like all these movies that go into explaining. like misanthropic teens it's like well what if he just didn't feel those like you know it's not even about that though it's not even about like the point of the movie is how empty it is that is the point of the movie the premise of this movie is he's in what like he's like a freshman

or sophomore in high school like maybe even junior high like he's young um probably junior high actually he's like 13 yeah it's like a 13 year old um decently wealthy parents It's not like ostentatiously wealthy, but like, this movie is so bad that, like, it communicates to you how wealthy his parents are by literally showing you a shot of their bank balance at an ATM. That is how dumb it thinks you are that you can't tell from the context clues of their house how rich they are. They have to, like, give you a dollar amount on an ATM balance. That made me furious. Okay, anyway. It's about a teenage boy who puts his entire family in a hole in the ground.

Why does he put them in a hole in the ground? Because he can. That's the only motivation for it. His parents and his sister, he drugs him, he drags him out into the woods, there's a bomb shelter out there for whatever reason, he drops them into the bottom of it. They somehow don't get horribly injured after being dropped from that height into a concrete thing, whatever, whatever.

Doesn't matter. He's on the rope. He like did a pulley system. He's 13 years. They don't show it for a reason because it does defy physics that he'd, be able to hold up their weight. Anyway. So they go into the hole. This happens fairly early.

And then the rest of the movie is like almost bradily determined to not tell you anything. It thinks it's making a really big statement by not answering the question of why he would do this. There is no real good reason. He's not traumatized by anything. He's not abused by them. His dad sort of is strict, but like not too strict. His sister's a little mean to him, but not over. not outside the bounds of what regular, you know, sibling relationships are like.

Every, at every single turn, like he plays a lot of video games, but they're... It's like anti-sikosis. Right. He plays a lot of video games, but they're tennis video games. So, like, every time, it seems like it keeps giving you these things with, like, you think you want an explanation. I'm not going to give it to you. I'm not giving you easy answers, whatever.

But in the absence of easy answers, it doesn't give you anything. It just wastes your goddamn time for 90s. minutes or however long it is. It's probably longer than that. It felt like forever. But it's just, and it's so pleased with itself for not telling you anything. And meanwhile, there's these like dumb interstitials of this like parallel story that I texted you and Katie afterwards. And I was like literally what the fuck was that? What was the fuck was going on? The director has, I read the director's notes for this movie. The director says that this whole like framing device is only there to say, yes, you're watching a fable, which

No shit I can tell just by like the tone and context of this movie. And B, he wants to say, well, this could happen in any other home. It's not just, this is not a unique story. This is potentially all homes or more homes, bitch. But again, it's a fable except for the definition of a fable is a story that teaches a lesson. And this movie refuses to come to the part where it's a lesson or to explain. explain anything because that's its vibe. It doesn't want to explain anything. So, like, then to frame itself around being a fable is just, like, such a sophomoric way of doing it. And then,

I mean, whatever, I don't want to spoil the ending, I guess. But just, like, if you think that in the end, something's going to happen to make it all worthwhile, sorry to disabuse you have that notion, because it doesn't happen. And it's just, I couldn't believe that everybody else's reactions to it were not overreacting. I so wanted to be like, come on. guys like let's be serious but like nope it's super stupid it's really dumb and it wastes the talents of jennifer ely which like don't do that like how dare you do that she just shoves her in a hole and put some dirt on her face how dare you jennifer ely is one of our finest we are on this planet for a limited amount of time and we do not get too many you know there's only so many

rotations around the sun and there's only so many jennifer ely movies that she's going to get to do and one of them is this shit. So great. Thank you. I don't know. Oh, I was so frustrated. Not even frustrated feels like it's giving the movie too much credit. That it was wrestling with it or whatever.

No. It also went into the festival with a certain pedigree. It was one of two movies that was included in the can lineup that they announced whatever the line would have been. Right. That's why I wanted to see it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That's why a lot of people, they thought it was going to be a thing. Yeah. Um, the other movie was this, a movie that was in the world competition, uh, called pleasure that is set in the world of amateur porn following this, uh, woman who wants to be, uh, an amateur porn star. It follows a lot of the, like, star is born story beats, but with, you know, some explicit detail of, uh, the actual porn world. Um, I don't imagine, uh, I don't know how people are going to see this movie soon, but maybe you will. It's good. And kind of really smartly observed about a lot of, like, not just sexual mores, but in a way that feels more like richer and authentic and subversive with its eye towards like, what are you sacrificing for success type of things? Or like, what do you even want or do you just, are you just chasing this idea of success, right? Yeah. There's two movies I want to talk. I at least want to mention before.

I was going to say, I have a couple stragglers, too. Let's do rapid fire on these ones just to sort of clean house. Give me your rapid fires. Okay, so of the, all my other rapid fires are almost all horrors, except for Crypto Zoo. And I know we both saw that one. That also got purchased by somebody. Really? I missed that.

Yeah. Where at least it says it on Wikipedia that Magnolia purchased it. Oh. Well, that makes sense. that that's probably the perfect home for that very weird movie that I was far too sober to watch it didn't want to sign for sober people it's animated it's um the animate the I believe the director of this movie did I say that right was uh now I'm forgetting the research that I did while I was watching this but um was the guy who did the follow up to my entire high school

sinking into the sea right but he also was the animator on um rabbit hole the comic book illustration and rabbit hole that I loved that so much. I thought that was so well done and so moving. This is weird and it borders on being really good, but I don't think I ever quite got there. It is a futuristic sort of story about mythological creatures are real. Your sort of griffins and minotores and everything like that and they're hunted down and they're kept in a zoo and there's the it brushes up on these many in a line of biblical origin turning into mythical creature queer um warny yeah so many of them yeah we have them it's cool that it exist i really i would definitely recommend seeing it when it becomes available for you to see um

there are portions under a controlled substance yeah there are times when it sort of doesn't quite go down an avenue. I wanted it to go down in terms of what it wants to say about how we sort of protect people without acknowledging their humanity and that kind of a thing. Whatever. Lake Bell is a voice in this. Grace Zabriski is a voice in this. The girl from

what's the Yorgos-Lanth Alps. Elps, the Yorgos Lantamos movie Alps is a voice in this. And I can't remember That's his partner. Yes. Why can I never remember her name? I feel like an asshole. But it's really interesting. What's that?

Angelica Papuli, I think is the pronunciation? Absolutely. Yes. And thank you. That was really good. The other ones I want to talk about are all horror movies. And in general, two out of three I really liked. I thought censor might have been my favorite thing from the whole festival that I saw,

which is a nod to the video. Nasty's sort of subgenre of the distribution in England of these kind of low-budget exploitation horror movies that got Margaret Thatcher and the conservative sort of bent in England at the time got them all up in arms. Some of the more famous video Nastys are like Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Evil Dead, I imagine, is probably...

I believe Dawn of the Dead was one too. Yeah. So this woman is a sensor. She works with the censor board to essentially decide what cuts movies have to make to be able to be distributed, right? And in watching the movies of this one particular filmmaker, sees similarities to a childhood trauma that she has, and all of a sudden you start to question her sort of hold on sanity, and it's really, really satisfying. The visuals are really amazing without being sort of lazily just a carbon copy of the aesthetics of the genre and era that they're talking about, which I think is really interesting. It does a lot with color saturation that I think is really unsettling in a way that I loved.

You saw this, yes? Yes, I saw it. I immediately wanted to watch it or program it with a Peter Strickland movie. Yes, absolutely. That's definitely the vibe, though probably more accessible than Peter Strickland's movies, like in fabric or a barbarian sound studio specifically. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with you all and all that. I imagine that this will be able to be seen soon because it does feel like one of the more accessible things that I watched.

That it could very easily be picked up by Shutter or IFC Midnight. Yeah. You'll be able to see it eventually pretty soon, I would imagine, sometime in the next year. you are, go check it out. It's really good. It's a fun time. I want the screen draft boys to be able to see it.

They did a video and ask these episodes. They did, yes. Immediately thought of them. The other horror movie that I thought was really effective was we are all going to the World's Fair, which is a sort of trucks in the creepy pasta genre of sort of online role-playing horror games slash sort of excuses for TikTok kids to make creepy horror videos in themselves. But

presents this in a way that is always blurring the line between whether what you're seeing is these kids sort of putting on a show or whether your expectation is that something about this is going to be realer than real and somebody's

opened the wrong door into the wrong dimension or whatever. But it also then layers on this other angle to it there's a lot of dimensions it's the movie that I saw in the

entire festival that I feel most protective about not spoiling anything and I don't even want to say like what the other elements of it are I guess I don't want to get into it because like I feel like it's a movie that you should kind of see fresh to be able to experience it as as it wants you to experience

all I will say is that it's really smart about a lot of aspects of the fact that we in many ways live online, right? And it's it really, it's insightful about the medium of what we're seeing in the movie. And it's smart, but also like while at the same time being like really, really visceral in terms of like, there are certain scenes where you're just like really, really unsettled, like to the, to your, sternum kind of a thing. This rule and the emotion of it too, because I think it gets at, like you said, how we live our lives

online, it gets at a certain emotion about that experience that I don't think I've seen a film ever kind of express. Certainly not as eloquently as it does. Yeah.

Yeah, I kind of, I mean, this is reductive because it's all of these things but not really um i after i watched it i kind of pitched it to you as unfriended meets eighth grade meets slender man which like that's pretty accurate it's accurate but like don't overthink that like pitch you know like don't overthink that because like it sounds like the most reductive version of what the movie is i think it's really complex like when i said like i wanted to feel like i discovered something. Yeah. This was the movie that gave me that experience. Yeah. If you're into, like I said... I hope that people get to see it. It's a, it's a very unique movie. It feels a

little, like, niche. So, like, I don't know who would buy this movie. But, like, we can all hope that whoever does is going to be a distributor that will take very good care of this movie because it deserves it. This is, though, this is a movie where I could see it just like being a word of mouth kind of a thing where I think no matter who ends up distributing it, just get it out there and just let people sort of pass it around to each other. It's the type of thing that I could see

playing like a billion festivals before it actually gets released. Yes. Yes, absolutely. I think Tiff would be a genius to put this in their midnight section. It's a Midnight Madness movie that would do very, very well, I think, absolutely.

If you know anybody who is into like I said, creepy pasta stuff, Or, like, even, like, Jezebel's Scary Stories, like that kind of stuff, um, highly recommended, for sure. What else did you have that you want? Oh, just in really quickly, I wanted to love Eight for Silver, the werewolf movie with, uh, with Boyd-Holbrook, and it's extremely our shit, right? Like, it should be a movie that we love, but it has some of the worst CGI I've seen in a while. The CGI is really bad.

It's like the I Am Legend, C.G.I. Vampire things. Imagine that in Nintendo 64 graphics. Yeah. It was... They looked like a golden-eye character. Yeah. And even without that, I still thought it was, it, um, it's a movie that feels like it watched The Witch a lot and wanted what that movie had and was just like, wanted that... The Witch meets Sleepy Hollow. Those sort of ominous scenes of like staring out into woods and waiting for the woods to stare back and that kind of a thing or it did a lot of the thing of just like it kept returning to like similar shots because the repetition of it was going to make it more impactful or like there are also there are so many shots in this movie of people waking up in a terrified sweat from a nightmare like so many. We should say it's basically like a period Werewolf movie. Period Werewolf movie.

Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. What if the witch but werewolves? Like the occult. Yeah. It's a movie about a haunted grill because like they kill these witches that have a silver like mouthpiece that they put in their mouth and then it sends out these creatures, right?

Or you become a creature. Well, they know that you have to. Yeah. They know that you have to kill a werewolf with silver. with sort of silver kind of arrowheads, right? And so in retaliation for being exterminated by the white people who sort of roll in to their village, they melt down all their silver into a pair of chomper fangs that sort of look like if you wind them up, they would just like go chattering across a table or something like that.

Again, the imagery could use a lot of work. Some of it's affected... They could also stand to cut the prologue of the movie that absolutely dispels any tension in the final act of the movie. Gives it all away, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so not good. What else did you want to talk about? I definitely wanted to talk about

we're all going to the World's Fair. The other movie I want to point out, specifically for the performances, is Wild Indian that played in the U.S. competition. Yes. It is from a native filmmaker. it's about two native men who again a movie I wouldn't want to spoil that much but like this movie got buried so I just hope that people can see it at all it's a very complex movie I don't think it is fully successful in what it's trying to do but it basically is these two men who knew each other in childhood

and their relation to a murder without saying too much and the effect that that it has on their whole life. One of them grows up to be the lead character of the movie played by Michael Grayeyes, who's this really interesting subversion of what we usually see of Native men in films. But he's incredible. He's basically playing a psychopath who has been traumatized his whole life. But then especially, probably, with the exception of Ruth Naga, the best performance that I saw at the festival, the other man, the other adult man, played by Chaskey Spencer, is just, like, mind-blowing in his role. Nice.

And they, like, they lead very incredibly different lives because of the effect of this murder on them from their youth. Cool. Well, that is definitely one that's going on my list. of things I want to see, Wild Indian. We're definitely at the moment we got to quit talking about this, even though we could go into

like a bunch more stuff that you saw and go. Oh, I guess one other thing I would say, watch Street Gang on HBO Max, the documentary about how they made Sesame Street. Oh, yeah. I cried like four times. They told me how they got to Sesame Street, guys. Watch that movie.

Follow Chris on Letterbox. He watched all the stuff he's uh really i don't know how he did it but uh it was pretty something uh my brain liquefied that's how i got to sesame street that's how that's how chris got to sesame street very good all right that is our episode uh for sundance stick with us later on in the week for our next regular episode but for now if you want more this had oscar buzz you can check out the tumbler at this had oscarbuzz dot tumbler.com you should also follow our twitter account at had underscore oscar underscore buzz. Chris, I just shouted out your letterbox, but why don't you tell us in your own words where the listeners can find you in your search? You can find me going to the world's fair on

Twitter.com at KrispyFile, also on letterboxed under the same name. All right. I am on Twitter at Joe Reed. I'm also on letterboxed as Joe Reed spelled R-E-I-D in both cases. We would like to thank Kyle Cummings for his fantastic artwork and Dave Gonzalez and Gavin Mievous for their technical guidance. Please remember to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever else you get podcasts, now including Spotify. A five-star review in particular really helps us out with Apple Podcasts Visibility. So leave us a nice review, or we will come haunt you with our scary, possessed wolf grill.

So there's that. That's all for this week. Actually, that's not all for this week. There'll be a regular episode coming your way in a few more days. But in any case. It's all for now. Well, yeah, it's all for now. We hope we'll be back next time for more, a buzz.

Sundance, Bob. Thank you.