Movie Enthusiast Issue 27: 12 films to watch from Sundance 2017 (Nuns! Manifestos! Rooney Mara eating pie!)
As the rest of the country was in chaos last month, the 2017 Sundance Film Festival proceeded as per usual. Even if the festival weren’t taking place in the middle of a political maelstrom, it would be hard to keep track of everything premiering there and sorting the wheat from the chaff from afar. I’ve done my best to pick out 12 films of note from this year’s edition for you to keep an eye out for the rest of the year.
The Big Sick
Directed by: Michael Showalter
Starring: Kumail Nanjiani, Zoe Kaan, Holly Hunter, Ray Romano, Anupam Kher
Premise: Pakistani boy meets American girl. They fall in love. Parents have other plans in mind. Based on the story of the film’s co-writers (Emily V. Gordeon and Kumail Nanjiani).
Verdict: Heads-up—that title is, indeed, an indication that this is a disease movie, at least in part. Evidently this one’s a winner, and the influence of Judd Apatow as producer melds intriguingly with the immigrant-identity aspect of the story. I’ve also heard that the screenplay gives Return of the King a run for its money in the ending fatigue department.
Call Me By Your Name
Directed by: Luca Guadagnino
Starring: Armie Hammer, Timothée Chalamet, Michael Stuhlbarg, Amira Casar, Esther Garrel, Victoire Du Bois
Premise: An Italian boy falls for an American scholar who comes to study at his father’s villa for a summer. Its Carol, but for brainy, ’80s Mediterranean boys.
Verdict: Luca Guadagnino is known for his outlandishly gorgeous production and sumptuous Euroromances, and he’s likely to continue to make a name for himself with this James Ivory-written adaptation of André Aciman’s beloved novel. I read the book last year knowing this was around the corner; yeah, uh, get ready for this to be a hot topic of conversation the rest of the year, not in the least because it does for peaches what Guadagnino’s I Am Love did for prawns.
Dina
Directed by: Dan Sickles and Antonio Santini
Premise: A documentary about the neuro-atypical romance between a creative Kardashian fanatic and a Walmart door greeter, and all the roadblocks, anxieties, and miscommunications they encounter along the way.
Verdict: Winner of U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Documentary. An observational documentary that goes more in the way of narrative than cinema-vérité, Dina has moved audiences and proven to be surprisingly hilarious, and never at the expense of its subjects.
Don’t Swallow My Heart, Alligator Girl!
I’m including this as a bonus just so you know that a movie with this title exists.
A Ghost Story
Directed by: David Lowery
Starring: Casey Affleck, Rooney Mara, Will Oldham, Sonia Acevedo, Rob Zabrecky
Premise: Rooney Mara eats a whole pie all by herself while Casey Affleck observes her as an It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown-style sheet ghost.
Verdict: Literally all anyone will say about this movie is that Rooney Mara eats that whole pie all by herself in a single take because oh why not.
Golden Exits
Directed by: Alex Ross Perry
Starring: Emily Browning, Adam Horovitz, Mary-Louise Parker, Lily Rabe, Jason Schwarzman, Chloë Sevigny
Premise: A 20-something Australian import to Brooklyn upsets the neighborhood balance between a young archivist and a music producer.
Verdict: If I were actually embedded in the film industry, Alex Ross Perry would be my nemesis; his glib smart-aleckiness leads him to make wildly dumb pronouncements about people and ideas he dislikes or disagrees with. Nevertheless, he’s one of our more intrepid indie filmmakers, even if his particular flavor of adventurousness never leads him far beyond Brooklyn. This movie has nabbed some not-unfavorable Rohmer comparisons, so since I’ve been working through that French director’s Six Moral Tales this year I guess I'll give Golden Exits a chance.
I don’t feel at home in this world anymore.
Directed by: Macon Blair
Starring: Melanie Lynskey, Elijah Wood
Premise: A nursing assistant returns home from work to find her home burglarized of silverware and laptop. With no faith in the police (or humanity), she drags her obnoxious neighbor into her impromptu quest for justice but finds herself descending ever deeper into a spiraling underworld of violence and criminality.
Verdict: Winner of U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic. Well with a name like that… Melanie Lynskey runs the show in this surprisingly hyperviolent escapist fantasy about, from what I gather, taking revenge on the real-life jerks behind all those trollish Twitter eggs.
Last Men in Aleppo
Directed by: Feras Fayyad
Premise: A documentary portrait of volunteer first responders to the ongoing bombing and terrorist attacks in Aleppo.
Verdict: Winner of World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Documentary. My man on the ground Victor Morton (a friend who attends Sundance every year) had positive things to say about this prizewinner, noting its careful counterbalancing of harrowing war sequences with joyful moments. And I’m especially intrigued by his likening the film to Of Gods and Men insofar as both movies are “act[s] of witness”—martyrdom, as it were.
Manifesto
Directed by: Julian Rosefeldt
Starring: Cate Blanchett
Premise: Cate Blanchett dons 13 different personae to give a crash course in artist manifestos.
Verdict: This was fun to see as an art installation in New York, but I can’t imagine it working as a theatrical release! (There’s a moment in the exhibit where all Cates, each on different screens, drone the key line of their respective manifesto in unison. It’s WILD.) At the very least, the fact that the artist released his work in this format means more people will get to enjoy Cate Blanchett’s turn as a funeral orator reciting the Dada Manifesto to a Pushing Daisies-esque crowd of mourners.
Mudbound
Directed by: Dee Rees
Starring: Carey Mulligan, Jason Clarke, Mary J. Blige, Rob Morgan, Jason Mitchell, Garrett Hedlund
Premise: Two men returning to Mississippi after World War II forge a fast friendship that both challenges and is challenged by the racist and barbaric social hierarchy of the South.
Verdict: “This year’s The Birth of a Nation” is not a moniker anyone want to earn at Sundance, but lo, here we are. Mudbound sounds like an excitingly well-made film, if one that starts out a touch muddled (sorry) and builds to a riveting conclusion. Dee Rees has her fans from her previous Sundance debut, Pariah, and I hope this movie finds the legs to give her a shot at more projects down the line.
The Nile Hilton Incident
Directed by: Tarik Saleh
Starring: Fares Fares, Mari Malek, Mohamed Yousry, Yasser Ali Maher, Ahmed Selim, Hania Amar
Premise: A Cario police detective investigates the murder of a singer in a Nile Hilton hotel. Before long he’s discovered her secret relationship with the hotel’s owner—also a member of parliament—and a whole lot more corrupt-government intrigue.
Verdict: Winner of World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic. Victor Morton’s a fan, and I trust his judgment: “This film understands that the essence of film noir is corruption in the universe, and that what makes Z an all-time great political thriller is how institutional corruption rains on the just and unjust alike, and by the just and unjust alike.” Sold!
Novitiate
Directed by: Maggie Betts
Starring: Margaret Qualley, Melissa Leo, Julianne Nicholson, Dianna Agron, Morgan Saylor
Premise: A girl raised in a non-religious family in the 1950s joins a convent. Her journey of faith is challenged by the hardships of monastic life and the Second Vatican Council.
Verdict: Winner of U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Breakthrough Director. Nuns, amirite? This sounds like the vastly superior of the two nun movies this year (the other one’s a farce with Alison Brie and Dave Franco; don’t ask), though I can’t picture Melissa Leo playing a Mother Superior and having her be anything other than scenery-chewingly ridiculous. I think this movie avoids the trap of casting judgment on the various forces at work in its protagonist’s crisis of faith, though I’m hesitant for yet another movie about a vowed religious having a crisis of faith. Surely the interior lives of monastics comprise much more than just that one, tired narrative?
Wind River
Directed by: Taylor Sheridan
Starring: Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olsen, Jon Bernthal
Premise: A rookie FBI agent investigates a body discovered in the wilderness of the Wind River Indian Reservation. She teams with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife agent who discovered the body, and before they know it they’re smack in the middle of a stark and unsparing Taylor Sheridan screenplay.
Verdict: If you were a fan of Sicario and Hell or High Water I guess you’re not going to be disappointed by Taylor Sheridan’s directorial debut. The plot description has a whiff of Fargo to it, though that’s probably me just projecting my desires for Sheridan to ease up on his bleak vision of the world just a bit.
Other titles to look into: Thoroughbred, Columbus, Beach Rats, Person to Person, Landline, Casting JonBenet, Berlin Syndrome