By: Henry J. Fromage –
We’re more grabbag than usual here, with a few big releases from last year and some from next year hitting the first couple of days of Sundance.
25. Fire of Love
My Sundance kicked off with a relative bang with Sara Dosa’s profile of married volcanologists Katia & Maurice Krafft. Dosa explores their love for their craft and their love each other with nearly equal gusto, and while the Miranda July’s lyrical narration may cross over into a bit to flowery for me, there’s no denying the spectacle and power of the footage they captured by venturing closer to the mouth of volcanoes than practically anyone before them (particularly with a camera). Stunning. Three Beers.
26. The Last Thing Mary Saw
This new Shudder release is set on a farmstead in 1843, where a puritanical family mourns the death of their mother and grandmother, particularly two young girls dabbling in increasingly forbidden activity. This is way too much of a slow burn pretty much until a creepy Rory Culkin shows up, and then it hits the gas with both feet. Pretty darn good ending that horror fans will mostly agree was worth the wait. Three Beers.
27. Belle
I wasn’t a huge fan of Mamoru Hosoda’s breakout Mirai a few years back, but it got plenty of buzz and an Oscar nomination that his latest is looking to replicate. There’s no denying the sentimentalist streak running through this story of a rather too meek high school girl who to her surprise becomes a singing superstar in the virtual reality world of “U”, and ultimately that confidence bleeds into her real-world interactions. It’s also a fairly literal retelling of Beauty and the Beast set in “U”, among other things, which contributes to probably more length than it earns, but you also can’t deny the visual inventiveness nor earnest heartfulness of the film. Three Beers.
28. The Eternals
So, I wish that I could be the one to come and tell you that Chloe Zhao’s Marvel sojourn was misunderstood, and this is a secret masterpiece, but outside of the occasional too short, impeccably framed magic hour shot, it’s like the Marvel machine swallowed her whole, or… perhaps more accurately, the DC/Warner machine did. The comedy hits are off, the drama is unearned, and the action is CGI nonsense (don’t even get me started on the truly godawful CGI on display with Patton Oswalt’s drunken dwarf in the post-credits stinger- none of this is lies). Worse, though, this doesn’t feel like it integrates with the Marvel universe really at all, and even drags it in an unwelcome direction. Marvel’s first outright dud. Five Beers.
29. After Yang
Mononymed Youtube film essayist turned director Kogonada played Cannes with his second film, and Sundance is showing it in a new section highlighting some of the big festival hits of last year that have yet to get a release. A24 will get it in theaters at some point, and those that liked the slow, philosophical rhythms of his first, Columbus, will find much to like in this light sci-fi story of a family (Colin Farrell and Jodie Turner-Smith play the parents) coming to grips with the obsolescence of the Yang, the android fulfilling the role of older sibling to their adopted daughter, and what that really means for those big questions of life, death, the universe, and everything. Others may find it dull, and I can understand that position, too. Perhaps a movie to be in the mood for, but Kogonada certainly has an immaculately delivered style. Three Beers.
30. Living
Yep, another rumination on life and death, this time set in the vaguely Gilliam-esque of a London governmental office, where Bill Nighy presides over a clockwork machine of bureaucratic inaction, at least until he goes to his doctor and receives a terminal diagnoses of six to nine months. The pleasures of this film are either modestly British or Britishly modest, but Nighy plays them beautifully and the destination is worth the journey. Three Beers.
31. Master
The easy comparison you’ll see many places is Get Out, and while there are certain parallels in the incessant and at times suffocating microaggressions particularly the rich and woke white wage on the black folks that enter majority white spaces like the fictional Northeastern Ivy League Ancaster here, debuting director Mariama Diallo very much makes her own film here. Regina Hall and Zoe Renee are both oppressed by both those terrors and some more concrete ones, and Diallo threads the needles of social critique, satire, and truly creepy horror with aplomb. Amazon has this one already, and expect to hear plenty more about it. Two Beers.
