{"id":28502,"date":"2026-01-26T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=28502"},"modified":"2026-01-28T13:50:01","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T21:50:01","slug":"sundance-dispatch-once-more-unto-the-breach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/sundance-dispatch-once-more-unto-the-breach\/","title":{"rendered":"Sundance Dispatch: Once More Unto the Breach"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I hadn\u2019t attended the Sundance Film Festival in person since 2023<\/a>, finally priced out of the trip to Park City by the seemingly unstoppable cost of travel and (especially) housing, particularly when online<\/a> options<\/a> were available. But the news that this year\u2019s edition would be the festival\u2019s last in its home base of Park City, Utah, coupled with the recent passing<\/a> of guiding light Robert Redford, pushed me to take the trip, finances be damned, and I\u2019m glad I did. There\u2019s a sense of joy at this festival, a feeling of everyone sorting through their memories (moviegoing and otherwise).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, there are new movies to see and new memories to make, and many of them are special as well. You will occasionally hear the hipper-than-thou dismiss one indie or another as a \u201cSundance movie,\u201d and the shorthand is pretty universally understood: the kind of navel-gazing, small-truths indie that tends to do very well up here in the mountains, and very little anywhere else. But the thing is, sometimes Sundance movies are pretty good, and if you\u2019re not going to see and enjoy them at Sundance, then for God\u2019s sake, when and where else? All of which is a roundabout way of saying that Ramzi Bashour\u2019s Hot Water<\/em><\/strong> is a Sundance movie \u2014 a Sundance road movie, even, a notable subset \u2014 mellow, laid-back, and lived-in, and there\u2019s nothing wrong with that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lubna Azabal is deeply sympathetic in the leading role of a middle-aged Lebanese single mom, mostly miserable teaching Arabic to white kids at an Indiana college, whose troubled teen son (Daniel Zolghadri) gets expelled for fighting and needs to go live with his estranged father in California. The story beats don\u2019t go anywhere unexpected (aside from some unfortunately broad nudist humor), but the performances are winners; Azabal turns a purely reactive character into something active and alive, Dale Dickey is (as ever) a joy in  her brief but memorable appearance, and Zolghadri is a real find, his mixture of charisma, restlessness, and recklessness legit recalls Mark Ruffalo in You Can Count on Me \u2014<\/em> another \u201cSundance movie,\u201d for the record. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bedford Park<\/em><\/strong> <\/strong>plays in the same key, a movie filled with high-stress situations, but one that barely speaks above a whisper. Moon Choi and Son Sukku (both terrific) star as a pair of unlikely would-be lovers, and writer-director Stephanie Ahn is willing to take her time,  <\/em>letting them soften each other up, let their guards down, and finally make a tentative connection. She\u2019s got a good ear for dialogue, the kind of everyday speech where people rarely say what they really mean, and she shows a welcome sensitivity to actors; she\u2019ll catch a fleeting reaction or a split-second of time alone that tells you everything. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The picture feels personal, handmade \u2014 so much so that it\u2019s a real shame that she\u2019s loaded up with too many subplots and side characters to grapple with and pay off in the third act. It\u2019s best when it sticks to its center: Two people who are both a little broken, in their way, but can see something in the other that maybe<\/em> they can help fix. <\/p>\n\n\n

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Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by William Greaves Productions.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n


The most jaw-dropping announcement of this year\u2019s Sundance slate was Once Upon a Time in Harlem<\/em><\/strong>, the (to me, at least) heretofore unknown project that the late, great documentarian William Greaves shot (but never completed) well before his death in 2014. It seems that in August 1972, he held a cocktail party,  \u201ca gathering of artists and intellectuals, the living luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance\u201d at Duke Ellington\u2019s apartment, and filmed what happened there. There was an astonishing accumulation of wisdom in those rooms, \u201cmiles and miles of memories,\u201d as photographer James Van Der Zee puts it, but Greaves doesn\u2019t leave it there. The party is the framework, the main event, supplemented by individual interviews to provide a more complete oral history of the Harlem Renaissance \u2014 and the deeper it goes, the less it becomes that than the wider cultural and social history of Black America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The conversations he captures are thoughtful, often spirited, and sometimes contentious discussions of the issues that caused friction at the time (integration vs separatism, cultural vs political, men vs women, Dems vs Republicans), and still do; these wounds are easily reopened (\u201cTHAT is your OPINION\u201d), and many of these these debates that raged for half a century have continued for a half-century more. Greaves asks questions and perhaps eggs them on a bit, and the resultant, marvelous film is very much in the form of Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One<\/em> (specifically, its inspired use of split screen). On one hand, this all took place a long time ago. On the other, Eubie Blake casually notes, \u201cmy mother and father were slaves,\u201d a sharp reminder that we are not as far removed from the lowlights of our history as we\u2019d like to think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No one\u2019s more tired of the fawning celebrity bio-doc than I am, so it gives me immense pleasure to report that Broken English<\/em><\/strong>, Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard\u2019s investigation of the mythos of Marianne Faithfull, is an inventive delight. And \u201cinvestigation\u201d really is the right classification, tongue-in-cheek though it may be; the clever premise is that Faithfull is the first subject of the \u201cMINISTRY OF NOT FORGETTING,\u201d where her life and career are examined by a team of researchers, interviewers, and an Overseer (played, of course, by Tilda Swinton). The set-up allows the filmmakers to peer at her through all sorts of different lenses, which is a smart approach. It also allows them to avoid most of the traps of the entertainment bio-doc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

George Mackay is a charmer as the main interviewer, showing the singer, songwriter, actress and all-around icon scores of old interview clips (of herself and others), performances, photos, clippings, liner notes, and more, for her off-the-cuff commentary (\u201cThe night before I did this interview, Mick and I had taken LSD\u201d). It\u2019s a device that works, because she is a) so witty, and b) so utterly intolerant of bullshit. And neither is the movie, which is spirited and thorny, granting her the agency and complexity she deserves, and when she notes, near the end of the picture, that \u201cI hope I\u2019m not too broken,\u201d it\u2019s sort of overwhelming; you feel, in that moment and throughout, a sense of relief that she somehow managed, in spite of everything, to find her way through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luis Valdez was an honest-to-goodness innovator, \u201cthe Shakespeare of Chicano theater\u201d as Luis Garza puts it, but alas, the documentary portrait American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez<\/em><\/strong> isn\u2019t nearly as boundary-bending as its subject. Director David Alvarado does come up with one clever device, transporting the \u201cPachuco\u201d narrator of Valdez\u2019s beloved Zoot Suit<\/em> into his film as a narrator (voiced, as in Zoot Suit<\/em>, by Edward James Olmos), laying things out and commenting on the action, though Alvarado ends up leaning on it a bit too heavily by the end to spell things out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which is not to say that it doesn\u2019t have worth as a conventional documentary. Alvarado thoughtfully explores Valdez\u2019s intersections with, and artistic reactions to, the Latin American story, and shares fascinating stories and electric footage of the \u201cWorkers Theatre\u201d he created and ran for cousin Cesar Chavez during the United Farm Workers strike, which transformed into the theater of social commentary and satire which would become his legacy. But they fumble the ball at the end, barely acknowledging his career after the triumph of La Bamba \u2014 <\/em>why was that his last theatrically released film, one might ask, and one will find no answers here. For much of its runtime, American Pachuco <\/em>is energetic and engaging, if fairly boilerplate; it opens with an American Masters<\/em> logo, an appropriate destination for it. And don\u2019t get me wrong, I love American Masters<\/em>. But I watch those at home, not at film festivals. <\/p>\n\n\n

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


To that end, the question posed by Paralyzed By Hope: The Maria Bamford Story<\/em> <\/strong>is a simple one: Can you tell the story of such an unconventional subject within such a reliably conventional format? Maria Bamford is, as many have said before, something of a \u201ccomic\u2019s comic,\u201d a comedian whose act lives somewhere in the space between stand-up and performance art, and whose struggles with mental illness have provided copious fodder for said act. \u201cWhen I was nine or ten,\u201d she confesses early on, \u201cI remember thinking there was something desperately wrong with me,\u201d and she has spent her life and career picking at that scab.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Directors Judd Apatow and Neil Berkeley\u2019s documentaries on George Carlin and Mel Brooks are entertaining but fairly straight-ahead affairs, motored by the whiz-bang energy of their subjects. Paralyzed By Hope<\/em> is something quite different, dealing with somber topics (Intrusive thoughts! Suicidal ideation! Anxiety! OCD! Serious shit!) without pushing too hard for \u201clevity\u201d \u2014 at least beyond what\u2019s provided by clips of Bamford turning it into material. (They eschew a musical score, which sounds like a small thing, but makes a big difference in tone and feel.) They tell her story with emotion but not sentiment, and that\u2019s the right call. And by the end, when Bamford insists, \u201cI am not a good time,\u201d you may not be so sure.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll own my biases: I may not be the ideal audience for The Last First: Winter K2<\/em><\/strong>, a documentary about a bunch of \u201cextreme mountaineers\u201d who attempted a wintertime summit of K2, \u201cthe most dangerous mountain in the world to climb\u201d in the summer<\/em>. Sorta-spoilers: several of them died, and left loved ones behind in the process, and I\u2019m sorry, that\u2019s inherently difficult to sympathize with. Say what you will about spending too many evenings getting stoned and watching kung-fu movies, but you\u2019ve never once heard of someone freezing to death or falling to their death while doing that<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So perhaps it speaks to the skill of director Amir Bar-Lev (The Tillman Story<\/em>) that his film about what happened on the mountain in the winter of 2021 is so riveting. It\u2019s a fairly straight-forward account, mixing after-the-fact interviews with copious footage from the climbs (because everyone has cameras, or even videographers, so they can post it all on socials), but Bar-Lev also explores the motivations (some sketchy, all colliding) of those involved, weighs the heavy burden of nationalism and even wealth inequality, and does so with clarity and intelligence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the running themes of Judd Ehrlich\u2019s Jane Elliott Against the World<\/em><\/strong> is the difference between a teacher (who teaches students to memorize facts and figures so they can score well on tests) and an educator, because the Latin root words of \u201ceducate\u201d translate to \u201cto lead out\u201d \u2014 specifically, to lead out of ignorance. Jane Elliott is a tough old broad, an 89-year-old author, activist, and, yes, educator, who was radicalized by the murder of Martin Luther King and began teaching, in a rural classroom in Iowa, the \u201c blue-eyed, brown-eyed exercise,\u201d a vivid illustration of the insidiousness of racial bias. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She first taught it to her class of third graders, and then to other groups of kids, educators, and adults, for decades to come. Ehrlich\u2019s film is partly that history, illustrated with excellent archival footage, and partly an illustration of how it\u2019s not history at all; he details how she is leading the fight against the Trump-adjacent Christian nationalists who have taken over the school board in her grandkids\u2019 hometown of Temecula, California \u2014 this ridiculous and insidious notion that you cannot honestly teach U.S. history because it will make white kids \u201cfeel bad.\u201d It\u2019s not a total valentine; Ehrlich doesn\u2019t paper over her flaws, most notably her strained relationship with her family, and wounds her children still nurse over how she neglected them for the work. The complexity matters, keeping Jane Elliott Against the World<\/em> from becoming a typical rah-rah activist doc. She\u2019s an inspiring subject \u2014 she makes you want to keep fighting, because you know she always will.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Worry Well Productions.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n


Buddy<\/em><\/strong> opens with an episode of It\u2019s Buddy<\/em>, a \u201890s children\u2019s show hosted by a Barney-style soft and lovable hero, a \u201cunicorn from a magic land\u201d who teaches the kids who hang around his clubhouse life lessons via games and songs. Unsurprisingly, since director and co-writer Casper Kelly is responsible for Too Many Cooks, <\/em>the aesthetics are bang-on for \u201890s children\u2019s television: garish production design, flat and ugly videography, written-in-five-minutes songs. Unsurprisingly, since this is a Midnight selection, it moves into creepy, unsettling territory; a kid resists Buddy\u2019s pleas to dance, screaming \u201cLEAVE ME ALONE, I HATE YOU,\u201d and at the episode\u2019s end, one of the kids spots her resistant castmate\u2019s blood-stained book in the trash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I assumed this was just the set-up, but more episodes follow, 30 minutes of them, and while it\u2019s a clever conceit \u2014 a paranoid thriller within a bunch of kids show episodes, a clever act of recreation and subtext \u2014 a reasonable viewer will wonder how they can sustain that for 95 minutes? With some difficulty, it turns out. Kelly shifts to a completely different narrative in a more conventional style, featuring Cristin Milioti acting her heart out as a normal mother suddenly overwhelmed with a sense of total terror, and then merges them, not entirely successfully. Kelly can\u2019t quite manage to walk the tricky tightrope between darkly funny and unpleasantly disturbing. Black comedy is hard, after all; steering into pathos, even moreso. Ultimately for all of its ambition, all of its shots at innovation and character-building, Buddy <\/em>is just a slasher riff, and a fairly middling one. I admire its audacity more than its execution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A more successful entry among the Midnight selections, writer\/director Adrian Chiarella\u2019s Leviticus<\/em><\/strong> is built from a dizzyingly smart central premise: its monster is summoned by, in essence, gay conversion therapy (staged here like an exorcism), and appears to those it hopes to kill by taking the form of the one they love. In this case, that\u2019s Naim (Joe Bird), new kid in an isolated religious community, who finds himself drawn to the charismatic Ryan (Stacy Clausen). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The clever structure introduces them after a genre-heavy pre-title scene, lending sinister undertones to what seems, on its surface, a seemingly disconnected queer coming-of-age story. But Chiarella is exploiting one of the most durable tropes of horror \u2014 nothing is more terrifying than religion \u2014 and making savvy choices about what we see and know, and when. Once the premise is established, there\u2019s a slight sense that they don\u2019t quite know where to go, and when a picture is this finely tuned and specific, it\u2019s a bummer to resort to generic jump-scares. (Also, I deeply resent this movie for making me aware that Mia Wasikowska is now old enough to parent a teen.) But there\u2019s a lot to chew on here, and Chiarella and his charismatic stars are ones to watch. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Sundance Film Festival runs through Sunday; our next dispatch will publish Thursday.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our first report from the last Sundance Film Festival in Park City, with mini-reviews of \u201cBuddy,\u201d \u201cBroken English,\u201d \u201cOnce Upon a Time in Harlem,\u201d \u201cParalyzed By Hope: The Maria Bamford Story,\u201d and more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":531,"featured_media":28503,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1416],"tags":[1419,1436,1865],"class_list":["post-28502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-festivals","tag-film-fests","tag-reviews","tag-sundance-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28502","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=28502"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28511,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28502\/revisions\/28511"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}