By: Henry J. Fromage –
Yes, I know the 2022 Oscar nominations just dropped yesterday, but the 2023 movie season gets an official kick-off in Sundance.
46. Nam June Paik: Moon Is The Oldest TV
This documentary traces the career of South Korean avant-garde artist Nam June Paik, the progenitor of television-based art and a visionary for how TV and eventually the internet would transform culture and the world. He also was just a funny guy, full of wild ideas and eager to collaborate with like-minded souls. Between his own presence and Steve Yeun reading his words, you get a real feeling and appreciation for the man, whether you can stand avant-garde art or not. Two Beers.
47. Cat Person
Based on the divisive but fascinating New Yorker article by the same name, this inevitable adaptation does a superb job of bringing all of the sticky sexual politics on display in that piece to life. Emilia Jones and Nicholas Braun are both superb as a somewhat neurotic (her fears get visualized at every turn) college girl and the older guy who keeps coming into the theater she works at who she thinks she kinda falls for. This is no rom-com, though, skewering the pathetic truths of both this specific relationship and modern dating in general. In the third act it takes a bold departure that complicates readings of everything all the more, but I dug it. This will be a conversation-starter for sure. Two Beers.
48. Young. Wild. Free.
Algee Smith plays a high school kid who’s got some alluded to anger issues, a bit of a tough home life, and not many prospects outside of an undeniable artistic talent that he’s not quite sure how to turn into a career just yet. His life is upended when he’s a bystander to a convenience store hold-up, by a pretty-sounding stranger who plants a kiss on him before she leaves. A torrid, movie reference-stuffed affair/crime spree ensues, which I promise all comes together in the end despite the air of unbelievability that permeates most of it. It’s an audacious swing that doesn’t entirely cohere in the way it hoped it would, but is worth the watch nonetheless. Three Beers.
49. AUM: The Cult At The End Of The World
This documentary exhaustively lays out the rise and fall of Japan’s notorious AUM cult, which went from innocuous yoga to surprising cultural ubiquity, even getting play on talk shows for its megalomaniacal guru Shoko Asahara, to full-on Doomsday cult culminating in a series of murders and the deadly 1995 Tokyo Subway Sarin Gas Attacks. It’s an interesting breakdown of how both post-War, post-economic Japan was the perfect breeding ground for this kind of cult, and how the same insidious gameplan surfaces its terrifying visage all across the world time and again. Two Beers.
50. Sorcery
This atmospheric horror film hails from Chile circa 1880, where a young Huilliche girl sees her father murdered in front of her eyes by their German immigrant employers. Forced to leave, she takes up with a man she finds to be a leader of an indigenous resistance movement that utilizes another kind of weapon in their fight- sorcery. This makes for an intriguing mix of anti-colonial verve and folk horror that plays a bit slower than it probably should, but hits where it needs to. Three Beers.
51. The Starling Girl
Eliza Scanlen stuns once again in a role polar opposite to Babyteeth. Here she plays a teen girl who’s part of some unnamed fundamentalist Christian community who starts to feel some stirrings for the youth pastor who’s recently returned with his wife from his ministry in Puerto Rico. Unfortunately, he returns an inappropriate interest, and things go exactly as well as you’d expect them to. The draw here is Laurel Parmet’s subtle direction and Scanlen’s perfectly calibrated performance as a thoroughly good girl who gets on a path to growing up too fast without any of the emotional tools or support to handle that. Two Beers.
