Get ready to experience pulp friction of the edgiest order as a mismatched love story collides with a badass crime drama and all-out revenge and cover-up saga in the consistently surprising Love Lies Bleeding (B), directed by Rose Glass. Set in the 1980s, this often unhinged movie chronicles the sexy relationship between a gym manager played by Kristen Stewart and a nomadic bodybuilder portrayed by Katy O’Brian, with a powderkeg or two threatening the serenity of their sapphic world order. Both women are incredible in the roles; their unbridled feral chemistry is a necessary foundation on which the most outlandish episodes can take place. Ed Harris and Dave Franco are also compelling as outrageous and dangerous men; and it’s clear we the audience are settling in for some supernatural splatter when steroids stoke the kindling of the bonfire. After opening sequences ground the story in a very specific world, some of the plot lines admittedly become completely ridiculous. But Glass keeps the story taut and entertaining with a clever eye for detail and noirish nuances. This is a very fun indie walk on the wild side.
A surprising film debuted at Sundance 2024, and you could say it’s got buzz. And whistles, beeps and chirps. Sally Aitken’s documentary Every Little Thing (B) is a gentle, non-ironic glimpse at the life’s work of a West coast woman named Terry Masear, who operates a hummingbird rescue mission out of her L.A. home. This consummate and patient healer’s own wounded background undergirds the true tale, but the recovering birds are really center cage in this realm, each with cute names and back stories as they begin their fragile resurgence. Aitken gently follows some amazing animals in startling close-up as they learn their flights of fancy again. Like March of the Penguins, it’s a canny diorama exploring the sociological machinations of a bird order. This engaging journey is quietly observant, inspiring and entertaining.
Writer/director Amrou Al-Kadhi’s title character of Layla (B-) is a Muslim drag performer in East London with a one-of-a-kind story to tell in one of several Sundance Film Festival 2024 entries focused on queer identity. Bilal Hasna is mostly sensational in the central role of what is ostensibly a romance film, playing opposite Louis Greatorex, who has a more conventional and mainstream way of presenting himself to society. Opposite such a complex persona, this boyfriend hardly stands a chance. Constantly negotiating several dimensions of identity in one fabulous vessel, Hasna’s Layla is a fascinating portrait, augmented by marvelous costumes, kaleidoscopic parties and music that could be just a little bit better. Saltburn has nothing on this film’s stilettos as the movie balances a walk on the wild side with romcom tropes. Somewhat flimsy writing and fleeting characters threaten to derail the perfectly good pairing at the film’s center, but Layla prevails. Layla’s story deserved just a little bit better but is still an absorbing, singular and fierce wonder to behold.
Just because it debuted at Sundance doesn’t mean it’s any good. And co-directors Daniel Hoesl and Julia Niemann’s German dark comedy Veni Vidi Vici (D+) certainly doesn’t seem to be here to make any friends. It’s a stark portrait of a billionare crime family living in its own bucolic bubble, unimpeachable in every way as they go about terrible activities such as furtive sniper shootings of local innocents. Photographed beautifully but soulless in spirit, the film is dead-set on shocking viewers about these aristocrats without a moral compass but neglects to offer a story or counterpoint to yield any intrigue or interest. The ensemble including Laurence Rupp and Ursina Lardi as the twisted parents and Dominik Warta as a potentially intriguing outsider aren’t given much at all to do. It looks like and is sometimes filmed like a social satire but only tells part of one side of a story. For all the fuss, it ends up a great one-note bore.
As more megaplex audiences get to experience the story of an author exploring his pseudonym in the mainstream hit American Fiction, a new Sundance Film Festival entry depicts a young British novelist leading a shocking double life in Mikko Mäkelä’s Sebastian (B-). Rharidh Mollica plays the indie film’s title aspiring writer who becomes a sex worker to land fascinating stories; and although the actor’s own part is a bit underwritten, his vantage point becomes a gateway to bridging his understanding of several generations of older gay men, with all its fights, frailty and fantasia. The film is very explicit in its bedroom scenes but also rich in honesty and humanity. Sequences opposite the great actor Jonathan Hyde demonstrate why films like this deserve a place in the discourse. Cinematographer Iikka Salminen’s London is one of deep isolation and loneliness, underscoring the austere and clinical viewpoint of its title character. There are also some titillating bits, so get ready. The movie falls into some of the typical traps of auto-fiction and gives scant development to characters such as the protagonist’s friend and colleague played by Hiftu Quasem. Ultimately the film escorts viewers to tender and touching revelations mostly more than skin deep.
This is a last great gasp of mainstream Sundance Film Festival cinema in which a feisty independent-living grandma treks across L.A. to get even with a telephone fraudster who almost got the best of her. Josh Margolin’s Thelma (B) features a mighty performance by the wonderful June Squibb and another by the late, great Richard Roundtree as a friend from a neighboring nursing home with one last great adventure left in him as well. Fred Hechinger is a hoot as her technology enabling grandson, but Parker Posey and Clark Gregg don’t have much to do as his parents. The film is at its clever best as it follows a sleuthing spy type storyline, with hearing aid volume controls and GPS identity bracelets subbing in for the kinds of gadgets Q used to whip up in the lab. As Thelma, Squibb is a fully rounded character with spunk, sass and a sharp mind. The film fully humanizes her character, even though the script and story could have been much stronger. Still, it’s a fun lark and a great chance to watch Squibb and Roundtree whoop it up.
Like Once and The Commitments before it, Rich Peppiatt’s Kneecap (B-) follows in a grand tradition of Ireland-set ragtag musical dramas with a splash of comedy and political revelations thrown in for good measure. Set in post-Troubles Belfast, this Sundance tuner tells the origin story of the titular trio of real-life bandmates – Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, Naoise Ó Cairealláin, and JJ Ó Dochartaigh rapping a blend of English and native Irish rhymes for politically charged times. The characters become accidental activists as their Gaelic native tongue is on the brink of being banned by the government. Kneecap’s music sweeps viewers up into a ketamine-fueled, energetic series of episodes to encounter the meaning of pure defiance, laced with funny animated lyrics and playful surprises. Michael Fassbender helps ground the grassroots story as a martyred leader in exile. He’s head over heels better at acting than his fellow mates in the ensemble; by what the Kneecap bandmates lack in natural acting, they make up in manic energy. It’s a rollicking, rebellious rap revolution with a heart for preserving the best of one’s cultural heritage and a lovely sense of anarchy.
Esteban Arango’s rollicking rollercoaster of a Sundance Film Festival entry Ponyboi (B+) features an unconventional intersex protagonist who shows there’s no clear pathway to forge between point X and point Y when it comes to the thrill of a crime caper. This neon-illuminated film glides successfully on the resplendent and deeply touching performance of River Gallo who is a force to be reckoned with and also the writer and producer behind the work. Gallo plays a resilient Jersey Shore sex worker caught up in a series of misadventures on a berserk Valentine’s Day; soon life on the streets of the turnpike becomes an all-out getaway and a big choose-your-own-adventure between a full escape and an unexpected invitation home by a formerly unsupportive parent. Other familiar cast members are Dylan O’Brien as a vile pimp and drug dealer (he’s magnificent), Victoria Pedretti as a wannabe ally and Murray Bartlett as a mysterious cowboy who may or may not be the titular character’s saving grace. Arango consistently raises the stakes through locales ranging from laundromats to diners and nightclubs; there’s an absorbing sequence in a pharmacy where favors are traded for hormones mid-way through a gangster chase, and viewers simply haven’t seen this exact series of predicaments before. This film is poised to be a gritty hit indie and will hopefully break through for those up for something radically different in a familiar genre.
Just as many moviegoers are experiencing the wider release of awards season darling The Zone of Interest, a film about what’s not happening at the Holocaust, the top prize winner at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival traces the lives of two sisters over two decades through four brief summers visiting their alcoholic father and omits off-screen the other dozens of seasons comprising umpteen collective years of their more consistent formative experiences. Still as a poetic and humanist glimpse at growing up while mesmerized and repulsed by traits of an erratic father figure whose frailties they certainly don’t wish to emulate, Alessandra Lacorazza’s In the Summers (B-) features lovely performances and sensitively maps the topography of the human heart in the unexpected terrain of desert town Las Cruces, New Mexico, with a predominantly Latino cast. Like Moonlight, the kids growing up are played by different actors in each of the film’s successive chapters, capturing a vibe if not a precise facsimile, with urban music star René Pérez Joglar (aka Residente) the constant with a marvelous lived-in portrayal of the troubled father. Each pair of actresses builds a successive solid foundation, paying off in anguished final act performances by Sasha Calle and Lio Mehiel. Along the bittersweet journey are suggested sexual awakenings and implied chemical dependencies, but viewers may find themselves at a distance with only snapshots disclosed along the sisters’ throughlines. Despite a relaxed pace, some critical junctures are rushed or unresolved. Some of the movie’s metaphors about decay and distrust, evident in the unkept family pool and literal scars from skirmishes, become a bit too obvious as the film is revealed to not have a huge head of steam in the plot department. Cinematographer Alejandro Mejía creates delicate frames for an often moving series of portraits, including lovely chapter dividers depicting souvenirs of each epoch of summertimes when the living isn’t easy. Viewers will find they deeply care about these girls growing up even if the film’s format doesn’t always dwell on the most interesting parts of their stories.
