{"id":25653,"date":"2025-02-03T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-02-03T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=25653"},"modified":"2025-02-02T17:58:36","modified_gmt":"2025-02-03T01:58:36","slug":"sundance-2025-dispatch-bronx-boys-and-sugar-babies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/sundance-2025-dispatch-bronx-boys-and-sugar-babies\/","title":{"rendered":"Sundance 2025 Dispatch: Bronx Boys and Sugar Babies"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In my previous Sundance report<\/a>, I complained about the dramatizations in the music documentary Move Ya Body<\/em>, deeming them \u201cboth uninspired and unnecessary.\u201d Well, that movie is basically The Thin Blue Line<\/em> compared to <\/strong>Sally<\/em><\/strong>, the National Geographic-produced biographical documentary of Sally Ride, who became a national celebrity in 1983 when she became the first American woman in space. The bio-doc portions of the picture are just fine, rote but compelling, detailing her early years, her entrance and acceptance into the space program, and the shocking sexism she encountered from both her colleagues and the press (her facial reactions to some of their questions, which may as well have been asked of a 1950s housewife, are priceless). And the considerations of how and why she had to hide her homosexuality are poignant and pointed. But the soft-focus dramatizations of her and her lover making out are beyond tasteless, and by the time the picture cuts from her lifelong partner choking up about her cancer diagnosis to maudlin \u201cevocative B-roll\u201d of two women on a beach during sunset, I found myself aching to watch a Wiseman movie<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In The Perfect Neighbor<\/em><\/strong>, director Geeta Gandbhir dissects a shocking crime in a cinematically unconventional way, and the effect is shattering. Her subject is the 2023 murder of Ajike Owens, a Florida mother of four, who was shot dead by neighbor Susan Lorincz after months of bickering and 911 calls over pretty disputes. Owens was Black, Lorincz is white, so it became yet another instance of racism under the guise of \u201cstand your ground laws.\u201d Gandbhir primarily (and brilliantly) uses body cam footage, from Lorincz\u2019s previous \u201cKaren calls,\u201d to show a pattern of behavior that culminated in this horrifying act of violence; she also begins with the shooting and then works up to it, so we see the ticking bomb counting down. It\u2019s a riveting, raw, emotional piece of work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is tempting to call Omaha<\/em><\/strong> slight; it\u2019s an 83-minute slice-of-life drama that primarily consists of a father and his two kids on a road trip. But this is the everyday drama of millions of people. John Magro is excellent as a working class widower who wakes his kids one morning and tells them they\u2019re going to Nebraska; he doesn\u2019t tell them why, so we don\u2019t know either, and since he can\u2019t tell them the dire financial and emotional straights he\u2019s in, Magaro has to convey all of his fear, desperation, and uncertainty in his face and eyes (and does, beautifully). The constant dread of barely scraping by is ever-present; the concluding scenes might be unthinkable to those who haven\u2019t felt that dread, but are profoundly affecting to those of us who have. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m probably predisposed to appreciate Mad Bills to Pay (or Destiny, dile que no soy malo)<\/em><\/strong>, because it\u2019s set primarily in a chunk of the Bronx not too far from where I dwell. But I can also note that writer-director Joel Alfonso Vargas knows these streets, the specifics of these neighborhoods, and a late montage of tableux from the less-than-picturesque Fordham shopping district is accompanied by lush music that might seem incongruent if you don\u2019t know the area, but if ya know, well, ya know. The movie around it spends its opening sections mirroring the relaxed but aimless existence of its protagonist, 19-year-old Rico, until he finds out he got a girl pregnant, and has to grow up fast. Like Omaha<\/em>, Mad Bills <\/em>is a movie that knows what it is to live a tentative existence, and how easy that makes it for everything to go down the tubes; the dialogue is keenly observed, and the performers (particularly Juan Collado as Rico and Destiny Checo as his baby mama) are quietly credible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The first thing that catches your eye in Seeds<\/em><\/strong>, the U.S. Documentary Competition winner from director Brittany Shyne, is the gorgeous black-and-white cinematography, capturing the ingrained textures and natural beauty of her rural South setting. Her focus is on a community of Black farmers, who\u2019ve been working the land for generations and living through the struggle of making ends meet\u2014coupled with their ongoing difficulties securing government help that is easily accessible to their white counterparts. That move, from slice of life to political statement, is difficult to pull off; Shyne does it with ease, and without losing any of the anthropological qualities of the opening hour. She captures, in words and images, their philosophy of farming, not just as work but as a way of life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s not a whole lot to say about Selena y Los Dinos<\/em><\/strong>, a fairly conventional, family-approved bio-documentary about the Tejano singing superstar Selena Quintanilla; it\u2019s a detailed history of her rise to fame, via home movies and testimonials and performance footage and archival interviews, so if you love or are at least interested in the artist, you\u2019ll find it compelling. One aspect is worth shouting out, however; director Isabel Castro treats Selena\u2019s tragic death in 1995 as the shock it was at the time, letting it land unexpectedly just as it did in real life. She does not mention her killer, who was part of the inner circle for years, or foreshadow what\u2019s to come with ominous music and foreboding sound bytes, and that\u2019s a wise, unexpected choice that gives her passing the impact it deserves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those who check out Rachel Fleit\u2019s Sugar Babies<\/em><\/strong>, intrigued by the premise and looking for cheap thrills (not saying I\u2019m guilty, but not saying I\u2019m not<\/em> guilty) may be surprised by what it\u2019s ultimately, really<\/em> about. The ostensible subject is Autumn, a college student and TikTok influencer who uses her appearance and sexual savvy to make big money as on online sugar baby, making money from horny men without actually meeting them. But it\u2019s less about her than her community, Zoomers in the low-income town of Ruston, Louisiana, who support and value each other while subtly creating an environment that keeps them all from escaping the overwhelming poverty of the area. And beyond that<\/em>, it\u2019s an unexpectedly somber indictment of the gig economy, wherein Autumn\u2019s activities are just another online side hustle, like Instacart or DoorDash, all but required to make ends meet in a state that has (despite the tireless efforts of its governor) failed to raise its minimum wage in a decade and a half. A lesser documentary would stop at showing what<\/em> Autumn does; Fleit is a savvy enough filmmaker to ask why<\/em>.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read all of our Sundance 2025 coverage here<\/em><\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our Sundance coverage concludes with mini-reviews of “Omaha,” “The Perfect Neighbor,” “Selena y Los Dinos,” and more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":531,"featured_media":25655,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1416,340],"tags":[1419,1436,1809],"class_list":["post-25653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-festivals","category-movie-reviews","tag-film-fests","tag-reviews","tag-sundance-2025"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25653","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\/531"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25653"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25657,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25653\/revisions\/25657"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}