Sundance Film Festival 2025: Day 5 capsules | Buzz Blog

Tuesday, January 28, 2025

Sundance Film Festival 2025: Day 5 capsules

The Wedding Banquet; Atropia; Love, Brooklyn; Zodiac Killer Project; Khartoum and more

Posted By on January 28, 2025, 7:00 AM

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The Wedding Banquet *** [Premieres]
A lot has changed for queer people in the past 30 years, and a lot hasn’t—and co-writer/director Andrew Ahn finds a solid balance between the two in his remake of Ang Lee’s 1993 art-house hit. In this incarnation, gay Korean immigrant Min (Han Gi-Chan)—facing an ultimatum from his grandmother (Minari Oscar-winner Youn Yuh-jung) that could threaten his legal status in the U.S.—attempts to set up a green-card/beard wedding with Angela (Kelly Marie Tran), the best friend of Min’s long-term partner Chris (Bowen Yang). There are additional complications as Angela and her own partner, Lee (Lily Gladstone) attempt to conceive a child through IVF, even as Angela struggles with lingering issues with her own mother (Joan Chen), and the plot starts to feel kinda overstuffed with everyone’s various dramas. But what the script by Ahn and original Wedding Banquet screenwriter James Schamus lacks in structural efficiency, it makes up for in plenty of solid laugh lines, and opportunities for every one of the cast members to shine. Perhaps more importantly, it feels savvy about recognizing not just how queer folks create families of choice, but where those folks can still feel the need for the families that raised them, and how they can try to find a way back into right relationships. Even when you’re one or two steps ahead of the characters in figuring out what comes next for them, it’s hard to resist the crowd-pleasing good vibes.

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Zodiac Killer Project [NEXT] ****
On its most basic level, Charlie Shackleton’s documentary is like a feature-length director’s commentary for a movie that was never made—but that description alone can’t possibly capture what’s so distinctive, fascinating and entertaining about it. Shackleton narrates this video essay that begins from his failed attempt to secure the movie rights to a memoir by former California Highway Patrol officer Lyndon Lafferty, describing Lafferty’s decades-long personal investigation into the identity of California's notorious Zodiac serial killer, and his conviction that he knows that identity. Without those rights, Shackleton ends up describing in detail the film he would have made, and in so doing crafts an amazing deconstruction of conventions and clichés within the ubiquitous “true-crime documentary” genre: the opening credits with their layered images; the “evocative B-roll” of objects and out-of-focus people; where it would be obvious to end one episode for a cliffhanger. Along the way there are also frank explorations of ethical questions in such endeavors—he jokes about why the images he’s showing on screen aren’t actually the places he’s describing—and how appealing they can be to audiences even when they’re making some inexcusable artistic decisions. Mostly, it’s a remarkable acknowledgement of why the predictable components of true-crime docs can still be so appealing, delivered in a package that is itself a one-of-a-kind creation, even if it's one that Shackleton laments will never be seen by as many people as yet another documentary about a serial killer.

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Atropia **1/2 [U.S. Dramatic]
Hollywood satire and military satire are a potentially tricky mix under the best of circumstances, but things are going to get really messy really quickly if you also try to add earnest messaging to the mix. Writer/director Hailey Gates drops us, circa 2006, into The Box, a 24-7 urban warfare simulation environment in the California desert created by the U.S. military as a training ground, fully stocked with actors and movie-biz professionals to prepare them for combat in Iraq. Among the “extras” is Fayruz (Alia Shawkat), an aspiring actor far more interested in advancing her career than in advancing American military interests, and the movie is at its funniest when Fayruz’s self-serving machinations keep blowing up in her face. But eventually there’s also a relationship between Fayruz and an Iraq veteran (Callum Turner) cast as the scenario’s primary insurgent “villain,” and nothing about that subplot really clicks, despite theoretically explaining why Fayruz might start taking seriously that this job is about helping soldiers avoid getting killed. And it feels a little bit hat-on-a-hat to repeatedly emphasize how environmental laws require special treatment if an endangered tortoise is found on site, because yes, isn’t it crazy that a tortoise’s life appears to be more valuable than a human life. Not every collection of gags also needs to be a bold political statement, especially when the statement is as familiar as, “Isn’t war ridiculous?”

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Heightened Scrutiny ***1/2 [Premieres]
Director Sam Feder makes a powerful return to the Sundance Film Festival following his acclaimed 2020 documentary Disclosure. This time, Feder delivers an urgent and deeply illuminating investigation into the relationship between media narratives about transgender Americans and the surge in regressive anti-trans legislation. The film connects the dots, exposing how biased reporting fuels discriminatory laws that have devastating impacts, especially for trans youth. At the heart of the film is ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio, whose fight for justice takes center stage. Through strikingly intimate storytelling, Heightened Scrutiny captures Strangio’s relentless preparation for a historic Supreme Court case on transgender care, United States v. Skrmetti, shedding light on the high-stakes battles transgender Americans face today. The film doesn’t shy away from Strangio’s personal struggles—his self-doubt, the dangers to his safety, and the weight of public exposure—making his courage and determination even more inspiring.
Feder’s expert direction blends meticulous research with a raw emotional core, while Strangio’s commitment to his community and unshakable integrity solidify him as a guiding light in the fight for trans rights. Heightened Scrutiny is a powerful rallying cry for justice and understanding and a testament to the strength of those who champion equality in the face of adversity. (Aimee Cook)

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Love, Brooklyn **1/2 [U.S. Dramatic]
The reference in the rom-com satire They Came Together about how “New York is almost like another character” gets played straight in director Rachel Abigail Holder's feature, in a way that ends up feeling fairly forced. It is a sort of rom-com, with writer Roger (André Holland) struggling with writer’s block over his latest assignment—exploring the way Brooklyn is changing—even as he attempts to find a new-normal friendship with his ex-girlfriend Casey (Nicole Beharie) and figure out the terms of a relationship with widowed single mom Nicole (DeWanda Wise). The three lead actors are all terrific, with a particularly sharp chemistry between Holland and both of his leading ladies in very different ways, and a fun supporting turn by Roy Wood, Jr. as Roger’s not-sure-how-happily-he’s-married friend. It just becomes clear very early on—as art gallery owner Casey explains the subtext of a painting about Lot’s wife—that this is a narrative about figuring out how to move on rather than keep looking back, and it doesn’t get any more subtle as the narrative moves along. By the time we get to the inevitable moment when Roger’s creative floodgates open and narration shares his insights on how Brooklyn itself is a place where you might need to let go of its past in order to embrace its future, it becomes a case where New York being another character makes for one character too many.

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Khartoum **1/2 [World Documentary]
If the central cinematic conceit of this collaborative documentary works for you, I can understand it feeling far more powerful—but that conceit just did not work for me. It’s a device born somewhat of necessity, as the filmmakers began telling the stories of five Sudanese people—young bottle collectors Lokain and Wilson, tea merchant Khadmallah, civil servant Majdi and resistance volunteer Jawad—in their native country, but had to shift gears when all five ended up among the millions of expatriate refugees of the civil war that began in 2023. What they do instead is place the film’s subject in a green-screen-painted room, and re-create moments from their lives using projections and digital post-production. Some of those moments are undeniably disturbing, particularly as the children explain in detail the violence they have witnessed, but the layers of artifice make it hard to connect fully with the experiences being described; Majdi explaining what it was like to put his son on a bus, never knowing when or if the might see him again, should pack the same punch simply in the man’s own voice. It’s heartbreaking seeing the moments of everyday life, from conversations over coffee to simple shopping trips, that have been disrupted by war, while the stuff that supplements those images never manages to feel real.

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The Virgin of the Quarry Lake **1/2 [World Dramatic]
Though I’m willing to acknowledge that a more thorough understanding of the era in Argentine history being portrayed here could make the story more resonant, that doesn’t change the experience of watching it from being frustrating. It’s set in the summer of 2001 in a Buenos Aires suburb, as 19-year-old Natalia (Dolores Oliverio) tries to finally connect with her long-time crush/friend Diego (Agustín Sosa), only to find Silvia (Fernanda Echevarría), a new young woman Diego met online, becoming a romantic rival. Director Laura Casabe does a great job with the coming-of-age elements, particularly when capturing the games Natalia and Silvia play to try to pull focus towards themselves, like Silvia’s casual name-dropping about her international travels. The problems in Benjamín Naishtat’s script, adapted from a pair of short stories by Mariana Enriquez, come with the attempt to fold in an almost supernatural horror story arising from the tensions surrounding the country’s impending economic crisis. Some of those elements do prove effective, like the recurring image of an unhoused man’s abandoned shopping cart, dripping with what appears to be blood, yet it’s just never clear how we’re supposed to connect Natalia’s specific passions with the disintegration of the society around her. By the time the film just fades to an ending, I was as confused about the nature of its characters as I was about Argentine social history.

About The Author

Scott Renshaw

Scott Renshaw

Bio:
Scott Renshaw has been a City Weekly staff member since 1999, including assuming the role of primary film critic in 2001 and Arts & Entertainment Editor in 2003. Scott has covered the Sundance Film Festival for 25 years, and provided coverage of local arts including theater, pop-culture conventions, comedy, literature,... more

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