The 2024 Sundance Film Festival opened in Park City, Utah, on January 18 with hundreds of films set to premiere over the next ten days. Several Third Coast Review critics are attending the festival in-person and virtually, and sharing dispatches of what we're seeing and what to watch for in theaters and streaming in 2024.
Girls State
There are few things I admire more than consistent directors, especially in the documentary field. And I think it’s time the world adds to the list the 20-year team of Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss, who gave us the startling work Boys State in 2020 (which won Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize). They also collaborated on such films as The Overnighters, Mayor Pete, and last year’s exemplary The Mission. Something of a followup to their 2020 prize winner, the pair comes to us with Girls State, which tracks a handful of high school girls (among hundreds) who attend a week-long immersive experiment in American democracy in Missouri (Boys State took place in Texas, for those interested). The girls come from every imaginable background and part of the state and must learn to build and run elections, build a government, and consider a world in which women are running everything from the Supreme Court to the governorship (in other words, it’s Barbieland—and I say that without a hint of sarcasm).
Many of the lessons that are discussed in Barbie are played out in the “real” world of these teenage-led political systems. And while the program is meant to empower and give rise to the ambitions of a representative government, it also shows these girls that they can’t even be treated as equals in a system like this. For one thing, for the first time, the Girls State program is being held in a separate but nearby part of the same college campus as Boys State. There’s also the specter of Roe v. Wade being overturned (the leaked opinion had just happened when Girls State begins), which leads to many a discussion about women’s right to oversee their own bodies. Even the most conservative girls have issues with Roe being abolished. There are dress codes in place at Girls State that the boys don’t have, and these many inequities even lead one journalism student to write a powerful story about the sexist differences between the two programs.
The campaigning is sometimes outrageous, some girls lose elections because they aren’t great public speakers, and personality can still win out over a solid platform—in other words, politics as usual. I liked that these girls weren’t as cutthroat as the boys in the first film, but maybe that’s an issue that some of the would-be policymakers would like to address as well. There are conversations about wanting to be liked, apologizing too much, and the confidence issues that hit just as hard as they did in the biggest movie of 2023, and I liked seeing it brought to the forefront while also watching the ways these girls’ brains worked and how adaptable they could be. And the girl who wins the election for governor is the one I would have voted for; she’s a fiery inspiration. — Steve Prokopy
Freaky Tales
Oakland gets a lot of love on the nostalgia circuit, perhaps no more so than in the latest from filmmaking partners Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck (Half Nelson, Sugar, Mississippi Grind, Captain Marvel). Freaky Tales weaves together four interconnected stories circa 1987 that drag us through the worlds of punk rock, West Coast hip-hop, skinheads, violent crime, martial arts, the greatest underdog movies of all time, the Golden State Warriors, and a mysterious green energy that seems to change the course of each of these stories in unique ways. With less-than-subtle nods to the likes of John Carpenter, Walter Hill, and David Cronenberg, as well as a structure borrowed heavily from Tarantino, the movie isn’t afraid to have fun while also tackling issues around racism, homophobia, misogyny, police corruption, and Oakland’s unique political climate that blends the counterculture with old-fashioned prejudice.
Featuring an impressive blend of unknown actors and known-quantity greats like Pedro Pascal, Ben Mendelsohn, Jay Ellis, Dominique Thorne, and the late Angus Cloud, Freaky Tales sometimes feels like it’s spinning its wheels just to watch them spin, and I’m not sure the reaches for greater meaning always work. Still, the segment that centers on Pascal as a retiring enforcer out for revenge, and the final segment that centers on the Warriors player turned martial arts master are fantastic, bloody, and feature a hint of supernatural influence. It’s fun to see these normally straight-forward, character-driven filmmakers try on different stylistic hats this time around; I’m just not sure it all plays out as they intended, especially when only half of the film’s segments really approach being emotionally driven. — Steve Prokopy
I Saw the TV Glow
Under its super-charged surface story of an obsessed young fan of a TV show, I Saw the TV Glow has a great deal going on, including the story of an identity transformation that some might mistake for mental illness to the very amusing idea that shows we loved as kids are actually terrible, cheaply made, brain-dead nonsense. The latest from writer-director Jane Schoenbrun (We’re All Going to the World’s Fair) tells the story of teenager Owen (Justice Smith) who grows up in a household with an abusive father and dying mother (Danielle Deadwyler). He’s just trying to survive when he meets an older classmate (Brigette Lundy-Pain) who introduces him to a late-night show, Pink Opaque, which airs on a kids channel but is clearly made for more sophisticated sci-fi/fantasy/horror fans. Owen’s new friend is not only convinced this show is the greatest one ever produced, but she thinks that the storyline reveals the presence of a supernatural world just below the surface of our own existence. And before too long, Owen believes the same.
Smith does a remarkable job showing us Owen’s vulnerabilities, especially when, as an adult, he begins to doubt his own memories—not just of the series but also of what's out there trying to hurt or kill him and his friend, who vanishes from town just weeks before the series is cancelled. Naturally, the only way to stop whatever is about to happen to humanity is to make new episodes of the show. I Saw the TV Glow goes beyond just being trippy to actually transforming its characters into paranoid, possibly dangerous soldiers in the fight to stop some sort of takeover of the planet, their bodies, or whatever exactly is happening. Schoenbrun’s visual artistry is on full display, as it was in their previous film, complete with neon-soaked lighting scenarios. Paired with an impressive sound design, the film, though still grounded in reality in some spots, takes a fantastical look at the fluid teenage brain, and it is, at times, terrifying. —Steve Prokopy
Power
Oscar-nominated documentarian Yance Ford (Strong Island) is not afraid of challenging subjects, in his own life or in society at large. In Power, a slight 85-minute documentary coming soon to Netflix, he focuses on the latter, specifically the systemic and inherent abuse of power exercised by police forces across the country. As is noted in the film, police departments are the only government body in the country we fund directly and allow to have essentially unchecked authority over us, a massive contradiction in a country founded on principles of independence and liberty. Couple that with the widespread and undeniable racism ingrained in the force itself and you've got a Molotov cocktail just looking for a match.
As a film positioned to convince those who still need convincing that police forces should be defunded, abolished, reorganized or at the very least held accountable for their illegal actions, Power is undeniably effective. For nearly an hour and a half, Ford intertwines archival footage of police brutality, riots and trainings with interviews with scholars and experts laying out the case against the police as we know it. Unfortunately, that case is made rather quickly and the rest of the film begins to feel redundant and reductive. Worse, Ford hints more than once at possible solutions or potential paths to breaking out of these harmful cycles, but seems entirely uninterested in bolstering his case by going any further down any of these paths. —Lisa Trifone
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