Viewed as part of Virtual Sundance Film Festival 2026
In Giselle Bonilla’s The Musical (C-), Will Brill plays a frustrated playwright and middle school teacher who hatches the perfect plan to exact revenge on Rob Lowe’s character, the principal who has wronged him. The game plan seems foolproof: ruin the school’s chances of winning the prestigious Blue Ribbon of Academic Excellence by staging an inappropriate and chaotic school play. At the film’s center, Brill doesn’t register with the comic timing nor the screenplay words to properly propel the dark comedy. There’s some fun with occasional outrageous jokes at the expense of woke culture, and the kid ensemble is roundly enjoyable. Bonilla maintains consistent gallows humor, but the enterprise just doesn’t get much lift. Anyone who has viewed the 2016 TV series Vice Principals or the 1999 movie Election has already seen a much better interpretation on similar themes. By the time the showdown goes on in the final act, there’s not much more to say or sing.
Viewed as part of Virtual Sundance Film Festival 2026
Based on her spirited original screenplay, comedienne Iliza Shlesinger stars as a global humanitarian licking her own wounds after losing both her job and her love interest in Josephine Decker’s joyful dramedy Chasing Summer (B). When her character retreats to her Texas hometown, she experiences a kind of Millennial coming-of-age that starts screwball and evolves to sentimental. There are good ensemble performances by Cassidy Freeman and Megan Mullally as family members, Lola Tung as a new friend and Tom Welling as a high school sweetheart, but it’s Garrett Wareing who rises to the top as a handsome and confident new younger boyfriend, providing our protagonist with a memorable age gap relationship which could either be a summer fling or much more. Shlesinger is largely a hoot as her fish out of water maneuvers a summer job at the skating rink including extracurricular keggers. The actress demonstrates considerable sass and spunk; and as screenwriter she gives herself some pretty fun situations and scenery to chew. It’s not the most original film (it’s telling it’s not even the only Sundance movie this year about the insights one learns on a return to one’s hometown: see – or rather don’t – Carousel). The romantic plot is electric, and our leading lady is funny opposite the more traditional Lone Star State women as she flexes her character arc. It’s well filmed and entertaining thanks to Decker, and a screen star is born in Shlesinger.
Viewed as part of Virtual Sundance Film Festival 2026
The grand tradition of a couple finding love against the backdrop of history continues in the nearly decade and a half chronicled in a new Sundance Film Festival premiere documentary. Birds of War (B+), co-directed by its subjects Abd Alkater and Janay Boulos, follows their love and war story. He’s a Syrian activist and cameraman, and she’s a London-based Lebanese BBC journalist. The story traces a pivotal 13 years of their personal archives spanning revolutions, war and exile. With international journalists banned from front-line coverage during the Syrian civil war, international news stations were reliant on activists on the ground to provide footage of the conflict. Exchanging text and voice messages between their respective cities of London and Aleppo, Boulos tasks Habak to clandestinely capture editorially approved stories and segments for her viewers. Gradually, theirs shifts beyond a working relationship, and the film deftly balances the gravity of the grim stories they cover with the flourish and delight of young people in love. The documentary traces the duo’s parallel lives and burgeoning love affair as Boulos loses her faith in journalism and Habak faces the inevitable fall of Aleppo. As both Syria and Boulos’ homeland of Lebanon undergo dramatic developments, the couple reflects on the sacrifices made because of politics and war, but also on the insights they’ve gained along the way. The film is powerful and emotional and a standout of the 2026 Sundance slate.
Viewed as part of Virtual Sundance Film Festival 2026
Mohammed Ali Naqvi’s documentary Hanging by a Wire (B) showcases valiant rescue efforts to save eight schoolchildren trapped mid-wire nearly 1,000 feet over a ravine in a daily use cable car in a remote part of the Himalayan foothills. With ten hours until the transport’s snapped wire is expected to drop the cabin of kids to the ground, viewers witness an array of techniques being employed to try to avert disaster. The film’s director orchestrates reenactments and captures fascinating interviews with locals and lieutenants juxtaposed with crystal-clear drone footage of the race against time. It’s a lean and exciting, if not particularly surprising, entry into real-life sagas of heroism. Some sophisticated techniques to save the stranded are no match for the ingenuity of some unexpected problem solvers. It’s clear why international attention turned to this North Pakistan tale, and this doc fills in many of the details with skill and finesse that will suspend disbelief.
Viewed as part of Virtual Sundance Film Festival 2026
Despite clearly positive intentions, Rachel Lambert’s domestic drama Carousel (C) is a whole lot of the same. It’s nice to see Chris Pine in a dramatic role: here he portrays a sad dad coping with changes in the physician clinic where he works, with an anxious daughter (Abby Ryder Fortson) and a childhood love interest (Jenny Slate) re-emerging in his life. The plot just doesn’t spark and the dialogue doesn’t crackle as the film quietly observes the machinations of domestic life. Most confounding, the chemistry between Pine and Slate doesn’t manifest with much natural energy, and it’s unconvincing these lifelong connections had a palatable past relationship. Still, despite the inertia of this particular movie, Chris Pine’s presence in it should remind casting directors we want to see more of him challenging himself in future juicy roles.
Viewed as part of Virtual Sundance Film Festival 2026
Talk about men with a mission! J.M. Harper’s Soul Patrol (B+) is a moving documentary about a valiant recon team in Vietnam comprised of Black soldiers reuniting a half century later. It is enlightening and therapeutic for all involved, including this elite team’s wives endeavoring to pierce the veneer of bygone and often troubling memories. It is all the more poignant leveraging Super 8 camera footage captured by the Company F, 51st Infantry soldiers in action, many of them teenage innocents abroad facing adversity and experiencing a singular solidarity bonding them forever. The flashbacks are effective and in some cases quite tense as viewers learn the origins of the men and the challenges they faced on a variety of battlefields. Harper chronicles an abundance of history with craft and cunning, collapsing the past and modern day subjectively and with mastery. By the time the Blind Boys of Alabama’s “I Shall Not Walk Alone” plays as the heroes appear in modern day in the aisle of a Piggly Wiggly grocery store, it’s truly a stand up and cheer event.
