{"id":19581,"date":"2023-01-28T14:49:04","date_gmt":"2023-01-28T22:49:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=19581"},"modified":"2023-01-30T10:34:22","modified_gmt":"2023-01-30T18:34:22","slug":"sundance-dispatch-for-the-sickos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/sundance-dispatch-for-the-sickos\/","title":{"rendered":"Sundance Dispatch: For the Sickos"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

To some extent, all independent film festivals cater to sickos. Indie film is generally where you\u2019ll find the bravest directors taking the biggest swings at the weirdest ideas. The Sundance lineup always has plenty of mainstream appeal, too, but every year there are a handful of films that, to one degree or another, make you say, \u201cYES\u2026 HA HA HA\u2026 YES!<\/em>\u201d Here are five of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 \u2022 \u2022 \u2022<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Infinity Pool<\/em><\/strong> arrives just in time to ride the wave of stories like Triangle of Sadness<\/em>, The Menu<\/em>, Glass Onion<\/em>, and HBO\u2019s White Lotus,<\/em> where the fecklessness of rich people is a running theme. It\u2019s set at a White Lotus-type resort in the fictional tropical country of La Tolqa, where the justice system is extremely harsh unless you are wealthy (surely this could only be true in a fictional country). That it was written and directed by Brandon Cronenberg, son of David and a gleefully twisted chip off the old block, lets you know that you\u2019re in for a gloriously messed-up time. I bet even his dad watches this and says, \u201cGeez, kid, is everything OK at home?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among the guests at this resort are failing novelist James Foster (Alexander Skarsgard) and his rich wife\/patron, Em (Cleopatra Coleman). James is surprised when another guest, the uninhibited Gabi (Mia Goth), recognizes him and gushes about how much she loved his book. She and her husband, Alban (Jalil Lespert), invite the Fosters on a jaunt outside the resort compound, where an accident occurs and a local man is killed. The person responsible for this, even if it was inadvertent, can be executed. But if you\u2019ve got the money, you can pay the La Tolqa government to make a clone of you\u2014complete with your memories and consciousness of guilt\u2014and have that person put to death in your stead. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are endless tantalizing possibilities with this premise, and Cronenberg goes with a lot of funny ones. This isn\u2019t saying much if you\u2019ve seen Antiviral<\/em> and Possessor<\/em>, but Infinity Pool<\/em> is easily B-Cronez\u2019 most laugh-out-loud movie (if you don\u2019t mind your chuckles rough). For after a lawbreaking tourist gets over the horror of seeing their own clone executed, that tourist may realize that there are essentially no consequences for wrongdoing here. Maybe a tourist will even develop a perverse fascination with seeing themselves murdered. A lot of bad but highly entertaining things can happen when you\u2019re bored and rich and nothing you do matters, as James learns when his new friends introduce him to their group of likeminded hedonists for nights of drug-fueled debauchery and entanglements with the local penal system. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The film is graphically violent and sexually explicit (not at the same time, fortunately), covering most of the main taboos. And all respect to Alexander Skarsgard for his full commitment to Cronenberg\u2019s insane satiric vision, but the MVP is Mia Goth as the charmingly unhinged Gabi. Every scene she\u2019s in makes an already wild movie just a little more dangerous. Grade: B+<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 \u2022 \u2022 \u2022<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are a lot of ways you could go with the premise of Fair Play<\/em><\/strong>, too. Emily (Phoebe Dynevor) and Luke (Alden Ehrenreich) are stock analysts at the same ruthless Wall Street financial firm, where they must hide the fact that they are dating. Then Emily gets the promotion Luke was expecting\u2014and is now his boss. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The disastrous potential of that scenario could be fodder for a light rom-com, a searing psychological drama, or anything in between. Writer-director Chloe Domont has made a darkly satiric and rather chilling comedy about ambition, greed, and love, all with a twisted undercurrent. For example, when Luke proposes to Emily, they are in a public bathroom and both smeared with blood, and I\u2019m omitting the most notable detail (where the blood came from). And that\u2019s the first scene. \u201cLight rom-com\u201d is off the table. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of the blood drawn here is metaphorical, though, as Luke lets the change in status (and income) between himself and Emily curdle their relationship. He tries to be cool with it at first\u2014Alden Ehrenreich, erstwhile young Han Solo, is good at playing a guy who\u2019s a Good Guy\u2014but he soon succumbs to jealousy and his own sweaty desperation to succeed. For her part, Emily thrives in the new position but is taken aback to learn that the top boss, a vicious S.O.B. named Campbell (Eddie Marsan) who tells you how many seconds you have to speak before he lets you say what you came in here for, wants to fire Luke. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a whole TV season\u2019s worth of potential farce and tragedy here. The fun of Fair Play<\/em> is watching it unfold and being surprised (or not) at the directions it chooses to go. Phoebe Dynevor (from Netflix\u2019s Bridgerton<\/em>) emerges as a powerhouse, taking Emily from a somewhat timid junior analyst to a ladder-climbing ball-breaker without missing a step. It seems at first that Luke is the more ambitious one (you will absolutely die when you see his most embarrassing moment), but it\u2019s hilarious and breathtaking\u2014and, yes, a little alarming\u2014to see Emily be seduced too. Grade: B+<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 \u2022 \u2022 \u2022<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The potential toxicity of boundless ambition is also a theme in Magazine Dreams<\/em><\/strong>, which boasts a career-making lead performance by Jonathan Majors but is only so-so otherwise. Majors plays Killian Maddox, an amateur bodybuilder who aspires to fame. He has the body for it (you might make an \u201cah-ooga!\u201d sound when you see what an understatement that is), but he\u2019s socially awkward and self-doubting. A competition judge once told him his deltoids were too small, and he never got over it. He tenderly cares for his ailing grandfather. When he posts nervous, stammering workout videos on YouTube, commenters tell him to kill himself. He seems like a sweet, earnest young man\u2014except that he also uses steroids, has ferocious anger issues, and writes letters to his bodybuilding idol that are worryingly similar to the ones Stan wrote to Eminem. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Writer-director Elijah Bynum (Hot Summer Nights<\/em>) wants us to wonder: When is Killian going to snap? He\u2019s like Travis Bickle, if Travis Bickle could tear you in half. His ideas of what women like to do on a date are better than those of the Taxi Driver<\/em> protagonist, but he still botches it by being too intense and hyper-focused. Whiplash<\/em> comes to mind, too, particularly in an intense sequence where Killian goes to a competition straight from being beaten up and oils up his bloody body before taking the stage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Majors is fantastic at earning both sympathy and disdain, playing a troubled man whose troubles aren\u2019t entirely his own making (though some are). When Killian says, \u201cThere are thoughts in my head I have no one to talk to about,\u201d and then meets someone who can help him, and that person takes advantage of him instead\u2014can you blame him for being lost after that? As his Google searches go from \u201cHow can I get people to like me?\u201d to \u201cHow can I get people to remember me?\u201d you feel the ominous rumblings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the movie pulls its punches in the end, resolving in a way that I think contradicts what it was leading up to. That issue aside (which might be a matter of taste), there\u2019s definitely a turning point in the story where the film ought to be in the home stretch\u2014yet there\u2019s more than 30 minutes left in the runtime. The movie starts repeating points it\u2019s already made. And if there\u2019s one thing I know about bodybuilding, it\u2019s that you gotta keep things tight. Grade: C+<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 \u2022 \u2022 \u2022<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Courtesy of Sundance Institute.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n


The 24-year-old title character in Eileen<\/em><\/strong> (played by Thomasin McKenzie) has much simpler ambitions: She just wants something<\/em>. Living in LBJ-era Massachusetts with her drunk ex-cop father (Shea Whigham), she works as a secretary in a boys\u2019 prison and has nothing else in her life. For fun, she peeps on couples in lovers\u2019 lane. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Into her life swings Dr. Rebecca Saint John (Anne Hathaway, in full Theater Girl mode), the prison\u2019s new platinum-blonde psychologist. Worldly, glamorous, and mysterious, with a sassy Massachusetts accent not found in naychuh, Rebecca takes a shine to Eileen, who\u2019s thrilled to have an exciting new friend. Like the femme fatale in a film noir, Rebecca says things like, \u201cSmoking is a nasty habit. That\u2019s why I like it.\u201d Eileen is smitten. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then what? I\u2019m not tellin\u2019. There\u2019s a teenage boy in the prison (Sam Nivola) who killed his father and now refuses to speak to his mother (Marin Ireland). Dr. Rebecca has her work cut out for her. How these elements tie together will be a treat for you to discover. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Directed by William Oldroyd (Lady Macbeth<\/em>) and based on Ottessa Moshfegh\u2019s 2015 novel, Eileen<\/em> is instantly fascinating and never stops being intriguing. Eileen herself is a peculiar, idiosyncratic character, enough to build a movie around without even needing a partner in crime; the arrival of the enigmatic Rebecca is just icing on the cake. The setting and circumstances have a Carol<\/em> vibe, but this story of a young woman finding herself goes much darker places. Grade: B+<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 \u2022 \u2022 \u2022<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rotting in the Sun<\/em><\/strong> is another one where I don\u2019t want to tell you the plot past a certain point (even the Sundance blurb goes too far, I think) because it\u2019s so much more fun to be surprised. The seventh film by Chilean writer-director Sebasti\u00e1n Silva to play at Sundance, this is an all-out comedy, albeit another dark one, in which Silva plays what one hopes is a fictionalized version of himself. The cinematic Sebasti\u00e1n is living in Mexico City, depressed, doing ketamine, reading The Trouble with Being Born<\/em>, and googling suicide methods. That\u2019s after he googles himself and then has to add \u201cdirector\u201d because there\u2019s a young actor named Sebasti\u00e1n Silva who\u2019s more famous. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At a friend\u2019s suggestion, Sebasti\u00e1n goes to a gay beach resort to relax and recuperate. There he meets one thousand penises (it is a nude beach), one of them belonging to Jordan Firstman, a real-life American Instagram influencer who is playing (again, one hopes) a fictionalized version of himself. Jordan is shallow and unfunny, the epitome of a vain social-media parasite with a million followers. \u201cCome meet my friends!\u201d he brays to Sebasti\u00e1n. \u201cYou\u2019re gonna hate them!\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jordan pitches Sebasti\u00e1n on a dumb idea he has for a TV show, which Sebasti\u00e1n wants nothing to do with. But back home in Mexico City, his career floundering and HBO execs not biting on his own pitches, Sebasti\u00e1n desperately agrees to partner with Jordan for his dumb show. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The only other thing you need to know is that Sebasti\u00e1n lives in a small apartment building owned by his best friend, and that a housekeeper named Veronica (Catalina Saavedra) assists, meddles, and bumbles. Silva finds abundant comedy in his own ennui, in mocking Instagram influencers and shallow gay party culture, and in shocking us with frank casual sex. His own performance is understated, the sane one surrounded by crazy people; tellingly, he’s one of the few men on the beach to keep his swim trunks on. Firstman is hilariously grating and phony (I really<\/em> hope this isn\u2019t his true personality), and Catalina Saavedra\u2014who played the lead in Silva\u2019s first Sundance movie, The Maid<\/em>\u2014is painfully funny as the hapless Vero. Poor Vero! Poor everyone, really, except us, laughing from a safe distance. Grade: B<\/strong> \"\"\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Check out our coverage of this year\u2019s Sundance documentaries here<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More from our man on the ground at Sundance, including mini-reviews of \u201cInfinity Pool,\u201d \u201cEileen,\u201d and \u201cFair Play.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":19583,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1416,340],"tags":[1419,1436],"class_list":["post-19581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-festivals","category-movie-reviews","tag-film-fests","tag-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/92"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19581\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}