For those in the film industry, movie theaters are more than just a place to see the newest indie or big-budget movie franchises. Cinemas serve as a sort of second home or an office away from the workplace.
Nicholas Braun And Emilia Jones Starring In Cat Person
The Sundance Film Festival is making a glitzy return to Utah this week, after two years of retreating online as an unavoidable result of the pandemic. Whereas there will be a highly digitalized, in-person premieres and parties will allow for that all-important mix of cheers and applause, word-of-mouth murmurs (it’s a significant market festival), and celebs having to wear beanie hats.
Then which big films should everyone be looking out for?
Eileen
Eileen by William Oldroyd. Photograph: Courtesy of Sundance Institute
It’s a gentle year for A-list talent, which is interesting because they tend to head to the mountain peaks with some of their terrible films, supplying a loud diversion from the lesser, mainly better choices. But for every Roller coaster or Four Positive Days, there’s a Best Of luck to You, Leo Grande, or The Father, and all indications point to the dark psychological thriller Eileen falling in the latter category. Anne Hathaway reprises her role as a seductive new worker at a prison who forms a sinister friendship with Thomasin McKenzie’s lonely work colleague.Hathaway’s track record at the festival isn’t great (she went from bad in 2014 with Song One now to bad in 2020 with The Last Thing He Wanted), but she’ll be merged this time by director William Oldroyd, whose Lady Macbeth continues to remain one of the best terrifyingly remarkable performances in the last decade, and Ottessa Moshfegh, who became a Booker prize finalist for her acclaimed source novel.
Cat Person
Geraldine Viswanathan and Emilia Jones in Cat Person. Photograph: Courtesy of Sundance Institute
Booksmart co-writer Susanna Fogel’s big screen adaptation of Kristen Roupenian’s viral short story Cat Person, following in the wake of Outstanding Young Woman and last year’s Fresh, promises to provide another morality tale of gender relations in modern dating through a genre lens. The New Yorker story, which became an internet sensation in 2017, focused on a student and the elderly gentleman she becomes involved with, and received praise for its specificity and frankness, as well as the suspense of becoming acquainted with someone you might just never know at all.The film, starring Coda’s Emilia Jones and Succession’s Nicholas Braun, hopes to transform that suspense into a full-throated thriller. Irrespective of how that shift plays out, it’s likely to be one of the festival’s most discussed topic films.
You Hurt My Feelings
You Hurt My Feelings by Nicole Holofcener. Photograph: Jeong ParkNicole Holofcener returns to Sundance for the very first time since 2010’s Please Give (she previously premiered Walking and Talking and Friends with Money there), reuniting with Enough Said star Julia Louis-Dreyfus for another character-driven show based on an unsettling premise. In You Hurt My Feelings (originally titled Beth and Don), Louis-Dreyfus plays a writer who notices her therapist husband admit that he does not really rate her work, a vicious moment of truth that contradicts his years of support. It’s an intriguing setup for an uncomfortable assessment of what we truly desire and need from our spouses, and hopes are sky-high given Holofcener’s mainly indisputable track history in this particularly thorny neighborhood.
Past Lives
Past Lives by Celine Song. Photograph: Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Jon Pack
Another of the greatest pleasures of Sundance is seeing a reliable supporting actor encouraged to lead, a wave of well-deserved goodwill propelling “that one from that thing” into the spotlight. Greta Lee, a scene-stealer from Inside Amy Schumer, Girls, and Russian Doll, will take the stage this year, following in the footsteps of John Hawkes, Nicole Beharie, and Dale Dickey. She’ll be maintaining a completely straight face in her recent movie, the romance drama Past Lives, which is about an early life romance that is ended prematurely by a situation but is given the opportunity to flourish decades later during a brief visit to New York. It’s from acclaimed playwright Celine Song and A24, and it did sound like the type of thing you’d want to see.
Magazine Dreams
Jonathan Majors in Magazine Dreams. Photograph: Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Glen Wilson
It’s difficult to imagine a more high-profile breakthrough year than the one Jonathan Majors, 33, is about to embark on, a mix of big and small but all underpinned by a fascination with darker subjects. In February, he’ll play fan favorite baddie Kang in the new Ant-Man film (a multi-film villain set to rival Thanos) prior to actually roughing up Michael B Jordan as an old friend seeking vengeance in Creed III, but first, he’ll come back to the arthouse and the festival that first helped bring him to popularity with 2019’s whimsical award-winner The Last Black Man in San Francisco.In Magazine Dreams, he’ll go for rancid over sweet, playing a temperamental bodybuilder who pushes his body and mind to the limit. Majors established himself as a capable male lead in last year’s stirring but underappreciated Korean War drama Devotion, and it will be interesting and satisfying to see him gain traction this year.
Landscape with Invisible Hand
Landscape with Invisible Hand by Cory Finley. Photograph: Courtesy of Sundance Institute
There is something really fascinating about a young director who switches gears with each film, refusing to stick to one genre or tonality, and it’s what makes Landscape with Invisible Hand one of the festival’s more good potential unknown factors. Cory Finley directed it, and his debut film Thoroughbreds premiered at Sundance in 2017. It was a dark comedy in the vein of Heathers, which he immediately followed with Bad Education, a Hugh Jackman-starring drama about public school embezzlement. The unanticipated director is heading back to Utah with an optimistic sci-fi satire about a future in which aliens rule the world by only granting advanced technology to the richest humans. It’s based on MT Anderson’s novel and stars Tiffany Haddish, William Jackson Harper, and Emmy nominee Asante Blackk from When They See Us.
Passages
Franz Rogowski and Adèle Exarchopoulos in Passages. Photograph: Guy Ferrandis/SBS Productions
Ira Sachs is yet another heading-back director this year. He was last seen at the festival in 2016 with Little Men, which accompanied the highly lauded premieres of the heartbreaking elder gay love story Love is Strange and Keep the Lights On. His previous film, Frankie, which premiered at Cannes, was viewed as an uncommon misjudgment, so all eyes are on his newest, relationship drama Passages, to see if he can reclaim his past glory. It’s a drama written in Paris about a gay couple who have affairs, one with a man and one with a woman. It stars Ben Whishaw, Adèle Exarchopoulos, and Franz Rogowski from Transit, and it sounds like the kind of intriguingly chaotic and emotional level exploratory drama that Sachs excels at.
Bad Behaviour
Jennifer Connelly in Bad Behaviour. Photograph: Courtesy of Sundance Institute
While Sundance is a venue for showcasing previously unknown talent, it is also a venue for those who have fallen out of contention to re-enter the contest. Prior years ’ve witnessed welcome comebacks for Michelle Pfeiffer, Holly Hunter, and Kate Beckinsale, and this year, Jennifer Connelly has a chance to return to the lead in the dark comedy Bad Behaviour after an unrewarding role in Top Gun: Maverick. She plays a morally corrupt former child actor who falls apart and drags others with her at a quiet surrender, forced to rely on her lamest instincts. It’s the directorial debut of actor Alice Englert, whose mother is none other than Jane Campion (who was one of many great things about last year’s Sundance premiere You Won’t Be Alone).
Nicholas Braun And Emilia Jones Starring In Cat Person
