Sundance

Between its dearth of new features and a couple of movies actually being pulled down, this year’s Sundance seemed a little feeble this past weekend, and Yahoo reports that those feelings are shared by producers who came away from the festival feeling that “independent film does not currently have a viable business model.“

Though Lucas (Tom Blyth) is good at his job as a plainclothes police officer tasked with arresting men for public indecency, he lives in fear of his own queerness being exposed. Work is the only place he ever “meets” guys like Andrew (Russell Tovey) who make him wonder what his life might be like gay people weren’t forced to hide their identities. The more Lucas thinks about his future, the darker his anxieties become. A grim snapshot of the past, Plainclothes powerfully explores how normalized bigotry and state surveillance go hand-in-hand.

Twinless, writer / director / star James Sweeney’s dark comedy about two men (Sweeney, Dylan O’Brien) who bond after the death of their twins, was screening at in-person and online as part this year’s Sundance Film Festival. But Variety reports that the film has been yanked from the festival’s digital portal because people couldn’t stop recording clips and posting them to social media.

With cicadas swarming Baltimore in the summer of 1987, ASCII artist Connor (Albert Birney) is even more inclined to stay home playing games on his Macintosh. At first, Obex doesn’t seem like much compared to any of the other floppy disk games he has ordered through the mail. But when his dog Sandy vanishes one day, the game’s fantasy world of monsters and magic starts to consume his mind. The film’s experimental, lo-fi depiction of pre-internet screen addiction is imaginative and artful. The story’s a bit thin, but its visuals are strong.

Aimless twentysomething Becca (Katarina Zhu) doesn’t know what she wants out of life, but everyone wants a piece of her. Her sickly gambling addict father William (Perry Wang), her best friend (Rachel Sennott), and men like John (Austin Amelio) she does camshows for all see her time and attention as things they should be able to demand without question. It’s hard for her to say no, but when she unexpectedly receives a pet rabbit, the responsibility pushes her to start pushing back. Writer / director / star Zhu delivers a tremendous, but quiet performance that mirrors the film’s nuanced ideas about intimacy.

In the fictional country of Atropia (which is actually a training facility in California styled to resemble an Iraqi village), few people take their jobs as seriously as struggling actress Fayruz (Alia Shawkat). She knows there’s something twisted about roleplaying as a chemical weapons expert for the benefit of soldiers visiting Atropia before they’re deployed to fight in the real, ongoing Iraq War. But it’s a paying gig where she happens to be falling in love with a fellow pretend insurgent (Callum Turner). Though Atropia gets unwieldy between its romantic and satirical modes, it nails the Bush era’s “patriotic” madness.

Love Me, co-writer / directors Sam and Andy Zuchero’s new feature about a satellite and an ocean buoy falling in love after humanity’s fall, was one of the most fascinating films playing at this year’s Sundance film festival. And Deadline reports that it’s finally making its way to theaters some time early next year.

There was a lot of great stuff at the festival this year, and you can check out a pair of excellent features in theaters starting on August 18th: a harrowing reimagining of Frankenstein called Birth/Rebirth, and Landscape With Invisible Hand, which envisions a different kind of alien invasion.

Director Laura Moss’ birth/rebirth — a monstrous, moving, Frankenstein-inspired thriller starring Judy Reyes and Marin Ireland — was one of the most impressive films featured at this year’s Sundance film festival.

Not be outdone by Amazon and Netflix, both of which have scooped up new films at Sundance, Apple is now getting in on the action. Deadline reports that the company has acquired the rights to the musical drama Flora and Son from director John Carney. It’s particularly notable because a previous Sundance acquisition from Apple, CODA, went on to win best picture at the 2022 Oscars.

After picking up the rights to the horror film Run Rabbit Run, Netflix has made another acquisition at the Sundance Film Festival, snagging the psychological thriller Fair Play, helmed by writer and director Chloe Domont. Deadline reports the deal is “in the $20 million range.”

Out of context, the concept of bending it like John Wick might not make all that much sense, but that’s exactly the energy all throughout a new trailer for director Nida Manzoor’s debut film Polite Society premiering at Sundance this year.

There might not actually be any extraterrestrials in director Jake Van Wagoner’s Aliens Abducted My Parents and Now I Feel Kinda Left Out. But a new trailer that’s dropped ahead of its Sundance debut makes the movie’s story about a space-obsessed boy convinced that his parents have been taken off-planet, and a neighbor who’s willing to hear him out seem like a heartwarming, Spielbergian sort of affair.

Ahead of its midnight premiere at this year’s Sundance, the rights to XYZ Films’ Run Rabbit Run from director Daina Reid (The Handmaid’s Tale, Space Force) have reportedly been acquired by Netflix.

The Sundance Film Festival isn’t just a great place to catch the latest indie films, it’s also where companies — include the big streaming services — go shopping for new content. This year’s edition just started, and we already have one acquisition: Amazon bought the rights to Filipino horror fairy tale In My Mother’s Skin, which is due to hit Prime Video by the end of 2023.

And I’ll be covering it alongside my colleague Charles Pulliam-Moore, so expect plenty of reviews and thoughts over the next 10 days, as we gorge ourselves on movies. One of the premieres I’m most excited about is Birth/Rebirth, from director Laura Moss, a reimagining of Frankenstein that just got a very cool poster that has me even more intrigued.