The sections concerning their release are profoundly moving, as are the sections on the psychological damage of their time locked up and their difficulties reentering society; this took a toll on all of them, one that all the money and all the apologies in the world cannot correct. But the most masterful passages are its closing ones, when Porter seems to be setting us up for a warm, fuzzy, forgiving ending, and then robs us of it, because that would be phony, too simple, too easy. She instead goes with honesty, in all of its thorniness, and that\u2019s a powerful note to end on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The biggest success story of Sundance 2025 was probably Train Dreams<\/em> \u2014 high-dollar Netflix pick-up, surprising cultural penetration, multiple noteworthy Oscar nominations \u2014 and if I had to pick this year\u2019s heir apparent, it would probably be Padraic McKinley\u2019s The Weight<\/em><\/strong>. They\u2019re markedly different in terms of genre (that was a character drama and memory play, this is a survival adventure) but both are picturesque, Pacific Northwest-set period movies that would have been major studio releases not that<\/em> long ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ethan Hawke (whose presence in a film that shares the title with a Band song feels predetermined) stars as a Depression-era widowed father who, in an unfortunate misunderstanding with a group of plainclothes cops, is separated from his daughter and sentenced to working a road gang under Russell Crowe (in the old-school character actor mode that is thankfully becoming his default). A wholly illegal opportunity to cut his sentence short presents itself, and he takes it, leading to five days in the wilderness, battling the elements and his fellow convicts. Director McKinley uses the fury and unpredictability of the outdoors to amp up the tension, and the camerawork and audio design are active and exciting; this neither looks nor sounds like a period prestige picture. It\u2019s not only one of the best things I\u2019ve seen at Sundance this year, but a sure-fire crowd-pleaser to boot. <\/p>\n\n\n\n About a third of the way into I Want Your Sex<\/em><\/strong>, its central characters \u2014 a provocative late-30s visual artist (Olive Wilde) and her twenty-something assistant (Cooper Hoffman) \u2014 have a spirited conversation about sexual freedom and generational norms. It\u2019s the kind of scene that feels like the reason a movie was made, as a response to \u201cthis retro sex negativity\u201d that is not only infecting personal relationships, but portrayals of them in\u2026 movies like this. And Gregg Araki (who, astonishingly, hasn\u2019t directed a feature since White Bird in a Blizzard<\/em> clear back in 2014) is the right director for this material; I Want Your Sex<\/em> is a cartoonishly broad and goofy movie that also has things to say. Both things can be true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Which is not to say that he entirely pulls it off \u2014 the story resolves itself in fairly predictable ways, and the final scene is a real miscalculation, a shrug emoji for a movie that should end with an exclamation mark. But Araki\u2019s bright, bouncy style is a good fit, and his performers all come to play. Hoffman is doing the gee-whiz naive horny doofus thing that was also one of his dad\u2019s specialties (the line between this and Happiness<\/em> is short and direct). Wilde is very funny \u2014 she knows this woman backwards and forwards, particularly when things start to go awry for her, so she lets the mask of her too-cool persona slip, only to reveal\u2026 another mask. And Charli XCX plays delightfully and amusingly against type (her poorly faking an orgasm is one of the comic highlights). Special shout out to costume designers Monica Chamberlain and Adrianne Phillips; Wilde\u2019s costumes are the perfect mixture of sexy, stylish, and mind-bogglingly stupid, and frankly, that\u2019s a good description for the movie as well. <\/p>\n\n\n Wilde not only co-stars in but directs The Invite<\/em><\/strong>, a film with a similar interest in matters of sexuality, though dealt with in (ever so slightly) more polite terms. This story of two couples at a dinner party is a wickedly smart, quietly knowing, and frequently quotable exploration of marital ennui, sexual desire, and keeping up appearances. The dialogue (adapted by Celeste & Jesse Forever<\/em> scripters Rashida Jones and Will McCormack from a play and film by Spanish director Cesc Gay) is convincingly conversational, but also often quotable, full of big laughs and uncomfortable truths in roughly equal measure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The four speaking roles are played by Wilde, Seth Rogen, Penelope Cruz, and Edward Norton, and all four shine; Norton gets to call on his unsung gifts as a comic actor, Rogen gets to a point where everything he says is funny, Cruz has several line readings that will live in your head rent-free. Wilde may have the most difficult role, and she nails it, without sacrificing the quality of her direction \u2014 the tonal turns are gingerly navigated, except when they\u2019re jarring on purpose. It starts out like Who\u2019s Afraid of Virginia Woolf<\/em>, turns into Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice<\/em>, and earns comparison with both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s so much that\u2019s commendable about Vera Miao\u2019s Rock Springs<\/em><\/strong> \u2014 the ambient yet unnerving tone, the director\u2019s gift for stark compositions, the ambition of the storytelling \u2014 that one wishes it all hung together better than it does. In telling the story of a recent widow\u2019s arrival in a coal mining community with her young daughter and elderly mother-in-law in tow, Miao takes a different approach and style in each of its three chapters, moving from domestic chiller to social horror to ghost story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s never a moment\u2019s doubt that Miao doesn\u2019t have command of the frame, but the narrative gets away from her. There are individual moments of great power, but they\u2019re undercut by meandering detours and unfortunate clich\u00e9s (it\u2019s 2026 and we\u2019re still doing jump-scare nightmare wake-ups?). Rock Springs<\/em> is an impressive debut, and Miao is undeniably talented. But all of its sturdy individual pieces just don\u2019t quite snap into place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, another Midnight selection, Undertone<\/em><\/strong>, does all that and more. It plays like a blueprint for an indie horror flick, taking place in a single location, mostly focusing on a single character, and earning most of its scares via deft use of sound and cutting; it\u2019s so small, yet so unnerving. Its story is quite simple: Evy (Nina Kiri) co-host of a paranormal podcast, is caring for her dying mother while recording an episode where she and her co-host Justin (Adam DiMarco) are listening to a series of unexplained but increasingly upsetting audio files that were sent to them anonymously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As a central conceit for a low-budget scary movie, it\u2019s ingenious; what we see in our mind\u2019s eye is far creepier than anything even a big-budget genre movie can conjure up, though first-time writer\/director Ian Tuason also has a strong sense of visual montage to complement the more nerve-jangling moments. And Kiri is quite captivating \u2014 and has to be, since she\u2019s all we see for so much of the movie. She\u2019s strong enough to carry off the uniquely experiential nature of the enterprise, allowing the viewer to hear and imagine things, and freak out, right alongside her. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I try not to watch television at film festivals, because, well, they\u2019re film festivals. And that\u2019s not me being snobby (okay, it\u2019s not entirely <\/em>me being snobby); unless you\u2019re going to show me the whole thing, I don\u2019t want to watch and review part<\/em> of something. It presumably wouldn\u2019t have been practical to screen the entire 15 hours of Mark Cousins\u2019s latest, The Story of Documentary Film<\/em><\/strong>, but it fit into a scheduling slot, and my curiosity, as an admirer of his previous films, won out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The first episode, an introduction and exploration of documentary cinema through the late 1920s, is pretty much what you\u2019d expect if you\u2019re familiar with his earlier, excellent The Story of Film<\/em>: copious clips, split-screen comparisons, and close-reading and thematic analysis in Cousins\u2019s searching, melodious voice-over. Noting that \u201c<\/em>half of all the films ever made have been documentaries,\u201d Cousins delves into the ethical and factual tensions within early nonfiction cinema, noting how, from the very beginning, documentary filmmaking was a means of representation and education, consciously or not. Standbys like Nanook of the North<\/em> and Grass<\/em> are here, but Cousins doesn\u2019t just play the hits, either; there are fascinating clips here from docs I\u2019ve never even heard of. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Similar pleasures are offered by Public Access<\/em><\/strong>, David Shadrack Smith\u2019s chronicle of how, from the 1970s forward, New York City\u2019s Manhattan Cable Television established public television stations where anyone with the time and energy could put anything on television that they wanted. The original idea was community-based public service programming, but the broad (often non-existent) guardrails of cable turned NYC public access into a free-for-all of music, weirdness, and above all, lots and lots of sex.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Smith tells the story with genuine affection for the gonzo energy of those programs, and hits the highlights you\u2019d expect \u2014 there\u2019s ample time for TV Party, Midnight Blue<\/em>, and the network of gay programming that would prove so vital, for culture and education, during the AIDS crisis. But he also makes the baffling decision to spend an outsized amount of time in the home stretch on Jake Fogelnest, whose Squirt TV<\/em> ran on public access much later, in what becomes an unsuccessful detour from the era of interest. I\u2019m not one for the \u201cthey should re-edit and take out this many minutes” school of film criticism, but if Smith dropped Fogelnest\u2019s thread entirely, he\u2019d have a tight 90-minute doc that I\u2019d recommend more highly than this one. <\/p>\n\n\n The footage from that period remains chilling (riots in the streets, hanging in effigy, the works), but Rushdie is such a thoughtful writer and thinker that each stage of his life is drawn with clarity and precision; in his witty and eloquent narration, as well as his archival interview clips, he remains a fierce advocate and symbol. Gibney makes clever use of clips from old movies to capture the wanderings of Rushdie\u2019s restless mind, and in the film\u2019s boldest stylistic flourishes, illustrates an imagined conversation between the author and his would-be killer. Most effectively, he holds the footage of the attack until the film\u2019s end, in what Rushdie dubs \u201ca return to the scene of the crime,\u201d and by the time we see the sheer savagery on display, it lands like a haymaker. It seems like a miracle he survived. We\u2019re lucky that he did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course, in spite of what you\u2019ve seen in this space this week, not all documentaries must deal in grim matters of life and death. Alysa Nahmias\u2019s Cookie Queens<\/em><\/strong> <\/em>is the kind of feel-good doc that occasionally breaks out of a festival like this to something resembling mainstream success, and for good reason: it\u2019s cheerful and upbeat, populated by charming characters and assembled with breezy panache. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It opens with jaw-dropping on-screen text: \u201cEvery year, Girl Scouts sell over $800 million in Girl Scout Cookies, in just six weeks.\u201d Nahmias walks us through those six weeks by focusing on four girls, of different ages, locations, walks of life, and levels of ambition, and they seem like a good cross-section of experiences and attitudes. (They\u2019re all also very good on camera, which helps.) It\u2019s not all smooth sailing; we spend a fair amount of time with a Texas family who are really struggling to hit their goal (and will be left holding the financial bag if they don\u2019t), and even the film\u2019s super-seller, a record-breaker from North Carolina, has a push-pull with her go-getter mom that feels like something she\u2019ll be talking to a therapist about in a few years. But even those conflicts are cleanly resolved, and on the way to their happy endings, Nahmias\u2019s camera captures precious, unguarded moments between these girls and their family and friends. Cookie Queens<\/em> is a little slick, sure. But it\u2019s awfully hard to resist. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Efra\u00edn Mojica is both the primary subject and credited co-director (with Rebecca Zweig) of the semi-experimental documentary Jaripeo<\/em><\/strong>, in which Mojica shows \u201ca little bit of what it\u2019s like to be a young queer ranchero.\u201d Set in and around the Los Fresnos Rodeo in the Mexican state of Michoac\u00e1n, the picture is an exploration of gay subculture within this Mexican rodeo subculture, which first revealed itself to Mojica in little moments and subtle visual cues, even as a small child.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are other subjects as well, many of them much more out, but there\u2019s nothing schematic about the execution here; it\u2019s a heavily stylized picture, visually arresting and tonally dreamlike. But what\u2019s most memorable are the conversations, candid discussions of social norms and personal preferences and the like. Jaripeo<\/em> ultimately does what the best documentaries do: it immerses us in a world we might not even know about otherwise, and helps us understand it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The questions I\u2019ve been grappling with, both this week and in general, about the formal and ethical dilemmas of the celebrity bio-doc \u2014 namely, how do we keep them from all looking and sounding the same, and how do we keep them from being mere PR machines in exchange for access \u2014 are complicated nicely by Antiheroine<\/em><\/strong>, Edward Lovelace and James Hall\u2019s portrait of Courtney Love, which begins with her proclamation that she\u2019s ready to tell her own story (\u201cI\u2019m desperate to get what I have to say on the record\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n That kind of signposting is usually worrisome, an indication that we\u2019re going to hear the most polite and flattering version of the subject\u2019s story, but Love is also not like any other celebrity, and is willing to air much of her own dirty laundry. And she also provides the filmmakers with so much great archival video and imagery that they\u2019re able to make a genuine movie<\/em> out of it, using rapid-fire edits and the sheer volume of material to render the darker moments of the story visceral and scary. They also allow her to basically yadda-yadda the last twenty years (much is made of Hole\u2019s breakup, but their 2010 reunion album Nobody\u2019s Daughter <\/em>isn\u2019t even mentioned), but we get the gist of it; that complaint aside, this is a stellar documentary about a still-fascinating figure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Early in Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass<\/em><\/strong>, we\u2019re told that the title character is \u201ca shining light around these parts,\u201d which makes Zoey Deutch ideal casting; she\u2019s so delightful, so utterly incapable of a false note, that it\u2019s a shame to see her continue to flounder in subpar projects. And unfortunately, that\u2019s an apt description of this gag-a-minute comedy \u2014 if anything, \u201csubpar\u201d is being kind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And that\u2019s a surprise, because it\u2019s directed by David Wain, co-written with Ken Marino, and stuffed with fellow members of their beloved comedy troupe The State. Wain\u2019s They Came Together,<\/em> a bang-on spoof of the modern romantic-comedy, was a Sundance premiere as well, which explains why the festival premiered his latest; that\u2019s the only plausible explanation, at least, since Gail Daughtry<\/em> is so painfully, sweatily, sadly unfunny. The pace is fast and the energy is manic but there just aren\u2019t enough laughs, and even late-in-the-game appearances by Jon Hamm and Paul Rudd can\u2019t turn it around. <\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/invite1-1024x576.jpg\")
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\u201cWe need to document this,\u201d Salman Rushdie said, after the attack that nearly ended his life in 2022. \u201cThat was my first conscious thought.\u201d The result is Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie<\/em><\/strong>, Alex Gibney\u2019s part bio-documentary, part day-by-day recovery narrative, detailing Rushdie\u2019s 40 days in the hospital and months of physical therapy after that horrifying attack, and also the events that prompted that madman to try to kill him: specifically, the 1989 publication of Rushdie\u2019s novel The Satanic Verses<\/em>, and how it prompted a fatwa against him, by no less than the Ayatollah Khomeni. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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