Critic's Notebook

Easy Prey

David Bolen/Sundance Institute

MOVIE REVIEW
Thelma (2024)

By SARAH MANVEL

Writer-director Josh Margolin has taken direct inspiration from the “Mission: Impossible” movies (Tom Cruise is thanked in the credits) to make an action movie starring an elderly woman which does not once patronize her. It takes the dual challenges of being old and caring for the elderly and turns them into riotous action sequences filmed by David Bolen with all the flash of a thriller, and with Simon Astall’s music hitting the same dramatic notes. Climbing two flights of stairs is no small achievement when your body is winding down, so it’s a completely fair comparison, and kind of surprising no one has done this before. This is also the first starring role of June Squibb’s film career, and considering her acting career has lasted over 70 years, better late than never – but oh, what a loss, because she’s wonderful. Funny, devious, charming and with a determination to assert herself that never turns to bitterness, Ms. Squibb’s Thelma is an absolute delight. From the Sundance Film Festival onwards, this will redefine crowd-pleaser.

Acting the Maggot

Sundance Institute

MOVIE REVIEW
Kneecap (2024)

By SARAH MANVEL

Look, either you think it’s hilarious that a man shouts a well-known terrorist slogan at the point of orgasm, or you’re not going to enjoy “Kneecap.” But not enjoying this movie would be a big mistake. It is simply the best movie ever made about being young in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and a strong new addition to the canon of movies about disaffected youths finding their voices through rapping about sex and drugs. The fact their language is Irish means the movie, and the real-life band of the same name this is about, is a fresh new take on language preservation and so-called minority culture rights. It is the first ever Irish-language movie shown at the Sundance Film Festival, and made with a screaming sense of humor that is, from start to finish, a joy.

Affluenza

Gerald Kerkletz/Sundance Institute

MOVIE REVIEW
Veni Vidi Vici (2024)

By SARAH MANVEL

As with “Love Me,” “Veni Vidi Vici” is another movie aimed at 13-year-old girls from the Sundance Film Festival that has not been marketed as such. The clue is in the age of the narrator, Paula Maynard (Olivia Goschler), the cosseted daughter of an Austrian gazillionaire who is learning what capitalism allows the privileged to get away with. And her family is indeed privileged. Her stepmother, Viktoria (Ursina Lardi), wants another baby, so is shopping for surrogate mothers – “your sperm, my egg, her stretch marks” – and her father, Amon (Laurence Rupp), a hugely successful businessman, murders people for fun.

The Stolen Children

Emily Kassie/Sundance Institute

MOVIE REVIEW
Sugarcane (2024)

By SARAH MANVEL

One of the worst things about adulthood is realizing there’s no worst story out there. Someone will tell you about a story about rape, torture, child abuse, exploitation, or being sold by their drunk mother for beer money; and you never get to think “this is the worst story I will ever hear.” But the greatest thing about adulthood is that you have power and agency which children are denied; and the greatest thing about great adults is that they use their agency and power to improve things, if not only for themselves, then for other former children. Canada has some dark, shaming history in its treatment of its children, most notably the “scoop” – its practice of forcing indigenous children into residential schools where their connection to their language and culture was tortured out of them. It bears repeating that one residential school had its own electric chair. But the best thing about Canada is that it is finally beginning to face up to those horrible, horrifying wrongs. “Sugarcane” is about one family and several communities’ attempts to address the awful things that happened at one residential school: St. Joseph’s Mission in British Columbia. This is an important documentary about courage and the different ways people seek justice, but be warned, it also contains some of the worst stories you could ever hear.

Sunshine and Rainbows

Arun Bhattarai/Sundance Institute

MOVIE REVIEW
Agent of Happiness (2024)

By SARAH MANVEL

Bhutan has made itself famous for its happiness index, for which 75 people criss-cross the nation asking the people they encounter around 150 questions about their personal happiness out of a scale from zero to 10. The survey is mainly in English, which is a surprise, and the king uses it as a base for developmental decisions around the nation. “Agent of Happiness” follows several of the surveyors as they complete their work before focusing in on Amber Kumar Gurung, who is a charming man in his early 40s who cares for his mother and is in a tricky personal position. He is ethnically Nepali; and his family was stripped of their citizenship when he was a toddler, meaning his entire life has been shaped by his statelessness. No full-time work, no wife and family, and only limited hope for the future. Directors Arun Bhattarai and Dorottya Zurbó undertake in-depth filming with the most interesting interviewees Mr. Gurung comes across, but also had the sense to follow Mr. Gurung as he searches for happiness for himself.

Sinnermen

Harry Pot/Sundance Institute

MOVIE REVIEW
Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat (2024)

By TIM HAYES

Johan Grimonprez, the documentarian behind "Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat," anticipates that his video essay will cause some controversy when it gets shown on the Belgian television networks that cofunded it. You might think it would cause some in the States and the corridors of the United Nations also, except that international involvement in the death of Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba in 1961 has been accepted and historicized since roughly the day after it happened, relitigated by radical activist art and mentioned in Oliver Stone films as an example of exactly the kind of things Oliver Stone films are about. Mr. Grimonprez analyzes the affair through a huge quantity of rigorously cited archive footage, interviews, academic literature and testimony. And jazz, since the film wraps the Congo Crisis inside the global anticolonial currents surging at the time, reflected in Black music and U.S. civil rights struggles as much as anywhere else. But it's the Belgian colonial powers that look worst in the harsh light that Mr. Grimonprez shines on them.

L.A. Stories

Sundance Institute

MOVIE REVIEW
Little Death (2024)

By TIM HAYES

Weird California strikes again in "Little Death," Los Angeles being the natural home of stories about scriptwriters strung out on drugs while cracking up, or of young adults on a night-time quest to find both stolen property and in a very real sense themselves. Director-cowriter Jack Begert finds house room for both those stories in one film, through the direct method of telling the first of them up to the halfway point and then following a dangling thread straight into the other. A TV series might do something similar for an episode; and Quentin Tarantino knits his characters together all the time with the kind of crime connection that happens here. But Mr. Begert does it bluntly, a suture. And he does it after a particular swerve in story number one that feels like he's improvising, riffing on themes that might cohere into something or might not.

Devil's Advocates

Sundance Institute

MOVIE REVIEW
Realm of Satan (2024)

By TIM HAYES

Cheerful locals and neighbors, if not yours then somebody's, go about their normal domestic lives in Scott Cummings's nonnarrative Sundance-premiering documentary "Realm of Satan." They clean their nice black Maseratis; they hang the laundry on the line; they empty the dishwasher. They engage in mildly fetishistic sex and cavort a little in the woods around Poughkeepsie, N.Y., although some of these good folk are comfortably middle-aged and the level of cavort might be limited by wear to the knees. They live in well appointed houses full of terrific heavy drapes and esoteric knick-knacks and the odd goat or raven allowed indoors, plus several portraits of Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan to which they all belong. They are living their best lives, as should we all.

Writer's Tricks

Sundance Institute

MOVIE REVIEW
Sebastian (2024)

By SARAH MANVEL

The young writer at the heart of “Sebastian,” Max Williamson (an astounding Ruaridh Mollica), doesn’t seem to know how lucky he is. As many queer authors in London can tell you (ahem), it’s not usual to find a literary agent based on short stories written in university, nor for your first book to get such rave prerelease reviews that you’re personally profiled in the newspapers, complete with a professional photoshoot. If you have a job freelancing for a serious monthly magazine there’s no way you’d dismiss even the most boring advertorial as beneath your talent, when that writing work affords a London rent. And even if you were the most gilded literary talent in your city, your peers in your creative writing workshop will never, ever applaud your work. They’d nitpick out of jealousy. But having said all that, the device of the ongoing deconstruction of Max’s writing is clever meta-critique of the plot of “Sebastian,” in which this young man with such obvious talent decides to risk it all by delving into sex work. Gay sex work, no less. It’s a tremendous high wire act; and it’s a testament to the bravery and skill of everyone involved that the movie succeeds completely.

All Is Full of Love

Sundance Institute

MOVIE REVIEW
Love Me (2024)

By SARAH MANVEL

In 2008 the robots left behind after life on earth becomes extinct had a VHS tape of “Hello, Dolly!” to teach them about love in “Wall-E.” In 2024 the robots left behind after the Earth becomes extinct in “Love Me” have the entire internet, or at least a version of the internet in which pornography does not exist. That means the whole movie is actually aimed at 13-year-old girls, and leaves the adults wishing for better use of the incognito button.