There’s almost always that one person on a foreign travel excursion known for perpetually making the whole group late, constantly questioning the order of things and generally eclipsing the far-flung location with sheer force of personality. Kieran Culkin marvelously portrays such A Real Pain (B+) as one half of odd couple cousins abroad, opposite Jesse Eisenberg, who also wrote and directed the film. The gents’ mutual destination is Poland, where they trace Jewish family roots and trade barbs in an unlikely comedy set amidst a terrain of trauma. Culkin is a fabulous scene-stealer, full of bluster and usually brandishing a blunt, and Eisenberg holds his own as the uptight nebbish admiring and abhorring him in equal measure. In minor roles backing up this two-hander travelogue, Will Sharpe is solid as the group’s tour guide, and Jennifer Grey is delightful if a bit underused as an intriguing fellow traveler. In his mode as filmmaker, Eisenberg exerts incredible discipline telling the story of mismatched men on a mission while chronicling a concurrent commentary about the wry observations of traveling to painful places. Despite the novelty of most of the dramatic interactions, there is still an aching notion the film could have plumbed even deeper themes. In this artful production, subtle sentiment and amusing interactions go with the territory.
Trying out different environments for size, two longtime buddies contemplate changes afoot in their lives while embarking on a revelatory journey. Josh Greenbaum’s meditative documentary Will & Harper (A) traces a 17-day westbound road trip across America via station wagon with friends comic actor Will Ferrell and Harper Steele, a 61-year-old comic writer transitioning from male to female. Thoughtful questions, thorny run-ins, poignant discussions and witty encounters mark this life-affirming chronicle as Harper tells her goofy pal no question is off limits. Scored to a jukebox of great needle drops by the likes of Simon & Garfunkel and Bon Iver with some “Wagon Wheel” and “Luck Be a Lady” tossed in for good measure, the film contemplates the notion of living lonely versus living authentically out in the world. Joyful adventures abound, ranging from riding hot air balloons over Albuquerque to standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon and the Mighty Mississippi. Acceptance comes in unexpected biker bars, just as a restaurant stopover results in a cascade of mean tweets. Ferrell, known for doing whatever it takes for comedy, tones it down to put his friend on a pedestal (several moments overwhelm him) and assembles some of their well-known Saturday Night Live collaborators for some bright cameos. The movie makes an important statement about friendship and acceptance without ever being preachy or treacly. It’s a beauty of a film.
A debilitating accident that would have banished a mere mortal to a fortress of solitude instead prompts a popular actor to soar even higher as a crusading hero in Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui’s Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story (A-). Nearly a decade since his passing, remembered through the eyes of those who knew and loved him, this bittersweet biographical documentary presents the Superman movie actor’s highs and lows as he endeavors to stay grounded in the wake of global superstardom, to break the cycle of a fractured family and distant father and to find power and meaning in his life’s work to advance stem cell science. After an equestrian competition tumble leaves him paralyzed from the neck down, the adrenaline junkie actor turns activist and becomes the man of the masses worthy of his mythic status. Flashbacks to his film career are brief and enjoyable, but this chronicle focuses more on the final chapter of Reeve’s life. It’s also a testament to the love of his life with wife Dana in an intimate and moving portrait of resilience. The film’s format is fairly straightforward, yet a strange connective device in which apparent Kryptonite starts growing on the spine of a cosmos-floating disembodied statue of the actor is not all that fetching. Interviews with the mother of two of Reeve’s children and with his trio of offspring plus fellow thespians Glenn Close, Whoopi Goldberg, Jeff Daniels and Susan Sarandon enliven the storytelling. And appearances by Christopher’s college roommate and lifelong friend Robin Williams add to the film’s plaintive portrait of a man with steely resolve. The tale of a man who changed the planet, daily, may also challenge viewers’ superpowers of stoicism.
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.
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.
The tradition of film protagonists who pine for prime time glory has whisked away a portly Baltimore heroine with fabulous flair and hair to break bandstand barriers, a Brighton Beach widow to risk addiction en route to game show gains and a failed comedian to pursue his darkest impulses with a sinister smile on a late night broadcast. The isolated adolescent characters played by Justice Smith and Brigette Lundy-Paine in Jane Shoenbrun’s psychological horror-drama I Saw the TV Glow (B-) dream of escape into a nostalgic supernatural girl power show to fight monsters of the week, but it’s unclear who’s the show-runner and if either is remotely in control of overcoming a series of traumas. Shoenbrun creates a luminous look for this movie, laced with ribbons of lavender haze and mesmerizing low budget creature effects, and a detailed backstory so fully fleshed out, you almost wish the show-within-the-show took center stage. As committed as both leads are to their roles, they bring similar ambivalent energy that doesn’t always fully enliven the pace but offer aching portraits of coming of age in a world of mixed signals. It’s a film full of creative ideas, many more fully rendered than others. A less than satisfactory final act fails to build on some of the most intriguing plot points, but the movie is overall an original with enough intrigue and whimsy to earn this mystery box a recommendation.
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 multiplex audiences get to experience the story of an author exploring his pseudonym in the mainstream hit and Best Picture nominee American Fiction, a Sundance Film Festival entry now at the Out on Film festival, 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.
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.
