The EW movies department weighs in on the highs, lows, and whoas of this year’s fest.
Read on below for the good, the bad, and the woo-woo extremes in between.
LikePalm SpringsandCODAbefore it,Real Smooth which won the festival’s annual popularity contest, a.k.a.
Cooper Raiff and Dakota Johnson in ‘Cha Cha Real Smoth’.Apple TV+
LG
Biggest Shoes Filled: Living
A dying city bureaucrat yearns to make his final months count.
JR
We Love Your Earlier Work Dept.
: Call Jane
For herCarolscreenplay alone, Phyllis Nagy will always own our hearts.
Aubrey Plaza in ‘Emily the Criminal’.Sundance Institute
And despite the presence ofElizabeth BanksandSigourney Weaver, feistiness was in short supply.
The movie’s uncanny necromancing a singular mix of B-movie gore (so many intestines!)
and metaphysical mystery was somehow both strange and surpassingly lovely.
Bill Nighy in ‘Living’.Sundance Institute
Did O’Connor soldier on?
Did she convert to Islam and change her name?
Did she continue to record and make art?
Elizabeth Banks and Sigourney Weaver in ‘Call Jane’.Sundance Institute
Wikipedia awaits these inquiries and more.
(RememberThe Blair Witch Project?
Or 2004’s we-built-a-time-machine prize winner,Primer?)
Daryl McCormack and Emma Thompson in ‘Good Luck to You, Leo Grande’.Courtesy of Sundance Institute/Nick Wall
Sometimes good ideas are enough.
