Vox - Sundance Film Festival 2018: movie reviews and newshttps://cdn.vox-cdn.com/community_logos/52517/voxv.png2020-01-23T12:18:48-05:00http://www.vox.com/rss/stream/166475772020-01-23T12:18:48-05:002020-01-23T12:18:48-05:00Why Sundance, America’s largest independent film festival, matters
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<img alt="The Egyptian Theater marquee reads “Sundance Film Festival” in Park City, Utah." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/qMrtqqQsn0XPM9NWFu-eNPmstrI=/0x0:2100x1575/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/52824955/31338530405_6237611703_o.1484844068.jpg" />
<figcaption>The chilly, glossy, always surprising Sundance Film Festival kicks off on January 23, 2020, in Park City, Utah. | Jill Oreschel / Sundance Institute</figcaption>
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<p>The annual festival in Park City, Utah, is where scrappy little indie films go to make it big.</p> <p id="hO4w4s">What do <em>The Farewell, The Last Black Man in San Francisco, American Factory, </em>and <em>Honeyland </em>all have in common? They’re all movies that made waves last year — and all four also premiered last January at the <a href="http://www.sundance.org/festivals/sundance-film-festival">Sundance Film Festival</a>, the most prestigious film festival in the United States and one of the most important pieces of the movie industry puzzle.</p>
<p id="s3w4gg">Every year in mid-January, a mass migration to Utah happens: Critics, filmmakers, industry people, and celebrities head to the mountainous ski resort town Park City, about 30 miles from Salt Lake City, where the annual festival — a 10-day marathon of screenings, panels, parties, and more — takes place.</p>
<p id="Y6TJ2X">Sundance is a lot of things: an exhibition for the most exciting independently produced films from the US and around the world; an early predictor of movie trends; a networking hub<strong> </strong>for filmmakers and other talent looking to break into the movie business; a forum for discussing issues and groundbreaking technologies that affect film and media; a place to spot celebrities in puffy jackets and furry boots; and a palate cleanser after the hectic fall movie season. An estimated 122,000 people <a href="https://apnews.com/627b692e7cf14164bd3fad70b22aa18c">attended the festival in 2019</a> — only a slight dip from 2018’s 125,000 attendees — which makes it the largest festival devoted to independent filmmaking in the United States. </p>
<p id="Yl9PUz">But for the vast majority of people who don’t spend the year breathlessly tracking trends in cinema, the idea of “Sundance” is a bit hazy: What is it? Where did it come from? Why does it matter?</p>
<p id="FRXyYK">Sundance straddles two worlds: the big-name, award-winning movie world and the scrappy indie film world. So paying attention to the festival is a good way to catch the first inklings of Oscar buzz and to get a sense of the issues and topics that are motivating filmmakers and audiences. </p>
<p id="M2CKoL">Put simply, for people who love movies, Sundance is one of the most exciting events of the year. There’s the feeling in the air that any movie could be a breakout hit, any talent could become the next star. Anything can happen in Park City.</p>
<h3 id="4cG4Bm">Sundance helps independent films find an audience, both at the festival and after it</h3>
<p id="p5T1Oi">Films selected to play at Sundance must be independently produced, and they are usually available for acquisition at the festival.</p>
<p id="L6rAZs">Put simply, an independent film is a movie that’s produced and funded outside the major film studio system. Whereas big blockbusters and major theatrical releases are often created, funded, and distributed by studios — think Paramount, Sony, Disney, and Warner Bros. — independent films get their start with independent production companies or filmmakers who secure enough investment (or invest their own capital) to get the film off the ground. </p>
<p id="Qxe476">But producing a film is only half the battle; it still needs to get in front of an audience, and that’s where festivals like Sundance and distributors enter the picture. Distributors attend the festival to “shop” for films they can acquire for future release in theaters and/or on streaming platforms like Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu. When an independent film gets selected for Sundance, its chances of being acquired by a studio (like Lionsgate or Sony Pictures Classics) or an independent distributor (like <a href="http://a24films.com/">A24</a> or <a href="https://neonrated.com/">Neon</a>) go way up. </p>
<p id="mVIw2W">In recent years, streaming companies like Netflix, Amazon Studios, and Hulu, have had deep pockets for acquisition at Sundance. Those companies have also been turning to producing their own original content in recent years, which resulted in <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/sundance-2018-amazon-netflix-buys-2018-2018-1"><strong>none of them </strong>acquiring any films at the festival in 2018</a>. But they all acquired several films, particularly documentaries, in 2019. Industry insiders will be watching closely in 2020, since <a href="https://www.vox.com/streaming">a number of new streaming services</a> from companies with a lot of money to spend, including Disney, Apple, and HBO, may be looking to diversify their offerings with Sundance acquisitions.</p>
<p id="WYH0KO">Some Sundance films are acquired before the festival even starts, but many films that play at the festival are hoping to generate enough notice and buzz to get sold — hopefully to a distributor that can put enough marketing dollars behind them to translate to box office returns and even awards season buzz.</p>
<p id="vc7ffp">But first, a film has to make it into Sundance. Filmmakers must submit their work ahead of time to the festival’s panel of programmers for consideration, and if they’re lucky, their film will be selected to play at the festival to press and industry as well as ticketed audience members (usually in separate screenings). </p>
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<cite>Sundance Institute</cite>
<figcaption>Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Will Ferrell in in <em>Downhill</em>, which premieres at the Sundance Film Festival in 2020. </figcaption>
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<p id="1kpcMq">The chances of being selected are slim. In 2020, 3,853 feature-length films were submitted for consideration (along with 10,397 short films). <a href="https://www.sundance.org/blogs/news/2020-sundance-features-announced">According to Sundance</a>, 1,698 of the feature film submissions were from the US, and 2,155 were international. Ultimately, only 128 feature films were selected to play at the festival, 107 of which were world premieres (meaning they hadn’t been shown anywhere else before). </p>
<h3 id="EUiYo7">Sundance isn’t just about buying and selling movies</h3>
<p id="anhpVp">Since its beginning, the festival has also featured a competition, with <a href="https://www.sundance.org/blogs/news/2020-sundance-festival-juries-announced">a jury of experienced filmmakers, festival directors, and experts</a> awarding prizes to movies playing at the festival. (Disclosure: I was on the festival’s US Documentary jury in 2019.) In all, nearly 30 prizes are given out; some of the more high-profile prizes, like the Grand Jury Prize, help films gain a foothold with audiences and with other festival programmers.<strong> </strong>(These are the accolades you often see plastered across the posters for hopeful arthouse hits.)<strong> </strong>Audiences also fill out ballots to vote on audience prizes.</p>
<p id="dSxZjQ">But there’s more to Sundance than buying, selling, and grabbing awards. The festival also programs movies — and sometimes non-movies — that are there not to compete, but rather to cater to the movie lovers who attend. For instance, in 2020 the festival is hosting <a href="https://www.sundance.org/projects/max-richter-s-sleep">a documentary and special performance of Max Richter’s <em>Sleep</em></a>. There are <a href="https://www.sundance.org/2020-sundance-film-festival-program-guide/SPE-guide">special events</a> and screenings of <a href="https://www.sundance.org/2020-sundance-film-festival-program-guide/SPT-guide">films that premiered at other festivals</a>. And there are <a href="https://www.sundance.org/2020-sundance-film-festival-program-guide/MUS-guide">musical performances</a>, <a href="https://www.sundance.org/2020-sundance-film-festival-program-guide/panels">panel discussions</a>, and <a href="https://www.sundance.org/projects/power-of-story-just-art">star-studded conversations</a>, most of which are aimed at filmmakers and others in the industry. </p>
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<cite>John Wakayama Carey/Sundance Institute</cite>
<figcaption>Dick Johnson appears in <em>Dick Johnson is Dead</em> by Kirsten Johnson (<em>Cameraperson</em>), which will compete in the U.S. Documentary Competition Sundance in 2020.</figcaption>
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<p id="5PUrUG">Lots of other things happen at Sundance outside the theater, which are easy to spot while walking up and down Park City’s Main Street. Brands like Chase Sapphire, Acura, and Stella Artois sponsor the festival and set up shop in locations all over town, with showrooms, stages, and spots for festivalgoers to sit and have a cup of coffee. Journalists interview filmmakers and review films. Celebrities and filmmakers pose for pictures on the red carpet. And there are parties for everything — to celebrate film premieres, achievements, brands, and production companies — most of which are only open to invited guests (though a contingent of people always show up hoping to sneak in and spot celebrities). </p>
<p id="hPeouB">You could go skiing, too, but who has the time?</p>
<h3 id="zlMuPw">Sundance started as a way to promote American independent film</h3>
<p id="UDIqhK">The Sundance Film Festival is actually just one program put on by the <a href="http://www.sundance.org/">Sundance Institute</a>, which also sponsors and supports festival events and programs to bolster independent film throughout the year. But the festival is by far the Sundance Institute’s best-known program, so the name “Sundance” is usually synonymous with the <a href="http://www.sundance.org/festivals/sundance-film-festival/">big event</a>.</p>
<p id="0z26zE">The institute maintains a fascinating timeline <a href="http://www.sundance.org/festivalhistory/">about the festival’s history</a>, which is a great source of information about its long and storied history. </p>
<p id="I0LDGi">But here is the tl;dr: Sundance was founded in 1978. At the time, it was held in Salt Lake City and called the Utah/US Film Festival. The idea was to attract filmmakers to Utah, and to promote American independent filmmaking. The first chair of the festival was <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000602/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1">Robert Redford</a> — who generally gets credit for founding Sundance — and he remains involved with the festival to this day, speaking during its opening press conference and frequently appearing in other capacities. </p>
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<img alt="2018 Sundance Film Festival - Day One Press Conference" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/DktFH8AS3CMHR6RJy-_WWGGftHs=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/13709317/906695340.jpg.jpg">
<cite>Nicholas Hunt/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Robert Redford, the president and founder of the Sundance Institute, at the day one press conference of the 2018 SUndance Film Festival.</figcaption>
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<p id="vPQWWQ">Over time, the festival has experienced a number of changes. The biggest came in 1981, when the festival moved from Salt Lake City to Park City and shifted its dates from summer to January. Then in 1984, the Sundance Institute — which had been founded separately — took over producing the festival, which by then was called the US Film Festival.</p>
<p id="Dx27yF">Finally, in 1991, the event was rebranded as the Sundance Film Festival, named for Redford’s character in the 1969 film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064115/"><em>Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid</em></a>. Since then, most of the changes have been programmatic: the addition of a shorts program, new interest in technologies like digital and virtual reality, and the launch of the World Cinema Competition. </p>
<p id="SRN2wg">The festival’s profile continued to rise thanks to some major films that got their start at Sundance, like <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001752/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Steven Soderbergh</a>’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098724/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_37"><em>Sex, Lies, and Videotape</em></a><em> </em>(1989), which would go on to win the prestigious Palme d’Or at Cannes; <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0027572/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Wes Anderson</a>’s 13-minute short <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109322/?ref_=nm_flmg_wr_16"><em>Bottle Rocket</em></a><em> </em>(1993), which would eventually be expanded into his <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115734/?ref_=nm_flmg_wr_15">first feature</a> with the support of the institute; and Sophia Coppola’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0159097/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><em>The Virgin Suicides</em></a> (2000).</p>
<h3 id="4ilSPD">Sundance tells observers a lot about what’s next in movies</h3>
<p id="yjFmSu">Sundance happens before the year’s Oscar season really gets going — in fact, the nominations for the Oscars (which, confusingly, honor films from the previous year) are often announced just before or during the festival, and the awards aren’t given until the following month.</p>
<p id="52kFyo">But there’s still the possibility of the following year’s Oscar contenders cropping up at Sundance, and awards prognosticators are on the lookout. In 2019, <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/7/18/20689014/awkwafina-interview-farewell">Awkwafina</a>’s star turn in <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/7/9/18761355/farewell-review-awkwafina-lulu-wang"><em>The Farewell</em></a><em> </em>launched her into a year that <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2020/1/5/21051218/awkwafina-golden-globes-2020-first-asian-woman-farewell">eventually culminated in a history-making Golden Globe</a>.<strong> </strong>In 2017, the raves for <a href="https://www.vox.com/2017/11/21/16552862/call-me-by-your-name-review-timothee-chalamet-armie-hammer"><em>Call Me </em><em>b</em><em>y Your Name</em></a>, starring Armie Hammer and Timothée Chalamet, made it clear almost instantly that we’d still be talking about it when the Oscars rolled around — and indeed, the film nabbed three Oscar nominations. In 2015, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2381111/?ref_=nv_sr_2"><em>Brooklyn</em></a> premiered at Sundance and was eventually nominated for Best Picture in 2016. Awards other than the Oscars matter too, of course, and many Sundance movies also go on to win Golden Globes, Independent Spirit Awards, and BAFTAs.</p>
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<img alt="U.S. premiere of&nbsp;Lady Macbeth&nbsp;by William Oldroyd, an official selection of the Spotlight program at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/UBml8P4AQVpwx_he2XmMjmeVroM=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/10041981/32479171016_3fa9cca977_o.jpg">
<cite>Jonathan Hickerson/Sundance Institute</cite>
<figcaption>The crowd in 2017 at the US premiere of <em>Lady Macbeth</em> by William Oldroyd, which starred future Oscar nominee Florence Pugh (<em>Little Women, Midsommar</em>).</figcaption>
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<p id="hKLDfn">Sometimes awards chatter can backfire, though. At Sundance 2016, Nate Parker’s film <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/10/12/13175418/nate-parker-the-birth-of-a-nation-rape-allegations-bible-trump"><em>The Birth of a Nation</em></a> generated massive buzz after its premiere, which came just a week after the <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551923/oscars-so-white">#OscarsSoWhite</a> controversy stirred up heated discussions about diversity in Hollywood. The film sparked a bidding war and was eventually purchased by Fox Searchlight for $17.5 million, the highest price ever paid for a finished film in the history of festivals. There was major awards buzz for the film as well, especially for Parker, its writer, director, and star.</p>
<p id="JP94lm">But in the months between Sundance and the film’s premiere, a <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/8/19/12521136/nate-parker-rape-charges-birth-of-a-nation">rape scandal</a> broke around Parker, and though the film still played at the prestigious Toronto Film Festival later that fall, it couldn’t outrun the bad mojo. The film’s <a href="http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=thebirthofanation.htm">gross box office total</a> didn’t quite make it to $16 million, $1.5 million less than its selling price — a loss for Fox Searchlight, which surely expected to have a hit on its hands when it shelled out at Sundance.</p>
<p id="NC06Sd">Movies aren’t just about the awards, though, and Sundance reflects that as well. It’s a great place to spot eventual box office winners (such as 2000’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0449059/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1"><em>Little Miss Sunshine</em></a>) and new talent. Major directors like <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3227090/">Damien Chazelle</a> (<a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2016/12/7/13868628/la-la-land-review-emma-stone-ryan-gosling-damien-chazelle"><em>La La Land</em></a>), <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000759/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Paul Thomas Anderson</a> (<a href="https://www.vox.com/2017/12/18/16691986/phantom-thread-review-daniel-day-lewis-vicky-krieps-lesley-manville"><em>Phantom Thread</em></a>), <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0004716/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Darren Aronofsky</a> (<a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/9/10/16277234/mother-review-aronofsky-lawrence-bardem-tiff"><em>Mother!</em></a>), and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000500/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Richard Linklater</a> (<a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/11/1/16360720/review-last-flag-flying-steve-carell-bryan-cranston-laurence-fishburne"><em>Last Flag Flying</em></a>) all got their start at Sundance. The <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001054/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Coen</a> <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001053/?ref_=nv_sr_1">brothers</a>’ first film, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086979/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><em>Blood Simple</em></a>, premiered at Sundance in 1985 and wound up winning the Grand Jury Prize, catapulting the duo toward fame. </p>
<p id="QSq3ph">A Sundance premiere can mean big things for actors, too: <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0468489/?ref_=nv_sr_1"><em>Half Nelson</em></a>, for instance, which premiered at Sundance in 2006, effectively launched <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0331516/?ref_=tt_ov_st_sm">Ryan Gosling</a>’s adult acting career. Behind-the-scenes names — documentarians, musicians, editors — also have the chance to get spotted at Sundance. No matter the role, it’s one of the most important places for filmmakers to get noticed and to network.</p>
<h3 id="xybEyL">Sundance is trying to lead the pack in diversifying the film industry, too</h3>
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<img alt="Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a featured subject in Rachel Lears’s documentary Knock Down the House, which premieres in competition at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/lZodJbrdL19tdtfAi3RUX-hQqVU=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/13709398/45117897655_da4068493d_k.jpg">
<cite>Rachel Lears / Sundance Institute</cite>
<figcaption>Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was a featured subject in Rachel Lears’s documentary <em>Knock Down the House</em>, which premiered in competition at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival and later began streaming on Netflix.</figcaption>
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<p id="DRr1Xs">Perhaps acknowledging that indie film can be a boys’ club — see the names above — Sundance has also worked in recent years to promote the work of women in the film industry with its <a href="http://www.sundance.org/initiatives/womenatsundance">Women at Sundance initiative</a>. Forty-six percent of this year’s competition films <a href="https://www.sundance.org/blogs/2020-women-festival-projects">were helmed by women</a>. That breakdown outpaces the broader film industry substantially; in 2019, <a href="https://www.indiewire.com/2019/12/women-directors-broke-records-in-2019-including-1-7-billion-in-box-office-1202196522/">though women broke records at the box office</a>, only 12 of the year’s 100 top-grossing films were directed by women. (And only four of those women were people of color.)</p>
<p id="LtHcIm">Sundance also makes a concerted effort to elevate the voices of other minority groups. <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/artsliving/2018/11/28/sundance-film-festival/?ref=Sundance-Institute">Of this year’s 244 projects</a>, 37 percent were made by a person of color, and 19 percent by someone who identifies as LGBTQ, about the same as in 2019. Compare those Sundance stats <a href="http://assets.uscannenberg.org/docs/aii-inclusion-directors-chair-20200102.pdf">to some from the broader film industry in 2019</a>, when just shy of 17 percent of the directors behind the year’s 100 top-grossing films in the US were non-white. (There are no major statistics on how many self-identifying LGBTQ people direct films, <a href="https://www.glaad.org/releases/glaad%E2%80%99s-2019-studio-responsibility-index-film-industry-addressing-glaads-inclusion">though GLAAD tracks on-screen representation</a>.)</p>
<p id="Xe1tjx">Since Sundance can act like a clearinghouse for the best independent filmmakers and talent, an increased percentage of women-led and -produced films at the festival could help increase diversity in the broader industry. </p>
<p id="w8hZP3">The Sundance Institute sponsors other initiatives aimed at increasing diversity in several areas in the industry, as well. One of the major initiatives in 2019, a new <a href="https://www.sundance.org/blogs/news/whats-new-2019-sundance-film-festival">press inclusion initiative</a>, was created to boost the numbers of critics from underrepresented communities at the festival, and Sundance<strong> </strong>has<strong> </strong><a href="https://www.sundance.org/blogs/2020-press-inclusion-initiative--update">continued it<strong> </strong>in 2020</a>, providing stipends through a competitive selection process to journalists from underrepresented groups. (The Toronto International Film Festival launched a similar initiative last September.) </p>
<p id="njsUR0">Why is this necessary? A study conducted by the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative and <a href="https://annenberg.usc.edu/news/research/report-critiques-inclusion-among-film-critics">published in 2019</a> found that the most published film critics are overwhelmingly white and male; additionally, many critics from underrepresented communities work as freelance writers, and covering a festival like Sundance poses a financial hardship, even as it can substantially boost a career. </p>
<p id="Cob8tV">Sundance <a href="https://www.sundance.org/blogs/news/whats-new-2019-sundance-film-festival">allocates some of its top-tier press passes</a> to critics who are part of the initiative, facilitates programming to help new critics navigate the festival, and provides stipends to defray travel and lodging costs for over 50 critics and journalists from underrepresented groups. </p>
<p id="7fYVqP">Sundance’s emphasis on always looking forward to the future of film is what makes it unique. And at the end of the day — once the bidding wars and awards chatter and branding exercises have died down — the festival is vitally important for people who love good movies. Everything from documentaries like <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/6/11/11895826/oj-made-in-america-espn-oj-simpson"><em>O.J.: Made in America</em></a> to innovative horror films like <a href="https://www.vox.com/summer-movies/2018/6/1/17408988/hereditary-review-toni-collette-milly-shapiro"><em>Hereditary</em></a> can appear to shake up the rest of the year in film. And while experienced cinephiles and critics have a sense of what to expect when they arrive in Park City, there’s always the chance that something new and fresh will appear out of nowhere and take the place by storm.</p>
https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/1/19/14267740/sundance-film-festival-explained-robert-redfordAlissa Wilkinson2018-10-05T18:52:57-04:002018-10-05T18:52:57-04:00Private Life is a terrific, heartbreaking look at a marriage through the lens of infertility
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<img alt="Kathryn Hahn, Kayli Carter, and Paul Giamatti in Private Life" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Cc0EwnOU2lpSWRFl9fyUCoezyYw=/25x0:4540x3386/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/58471637/private_life___still_1_39040678661_o.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Kathryn Hahn, Kayli Carter, and Paul Giamatti in <em>Private Life.</em> | Jojo Whilden/Sundance Institute</figcaption>
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<p>Kathryn Hahn and Paul Giamatti play a couple struggling with infertility in Tamara Jenkins’s funny, moving drama. </p> <p id="CJRJtl">Infertility is painful and maddening for the couples forced to grapple with it. But in <em>Private Life</em>, writer-director Tamara Jenkins (<em>The Savages</em>) finds humor amid the struggle and uses it as a way to frame a marriage, one that’s become consumed by the attempt to have a child.</p>
<p id="8uzcwA">The result is a wise, often surprising comedy about pain, love, and makeshift families. It irreverently locates the funny side of the pain — injecting hormones into buttocks, having to deliver semen samples for IVF, readying the house for a home visit from an adoption agency — without making light of those experiences. <em>Private Life</em> is an accessible and complex portrait of two people whose ardent shared desire for a child leads them in some unconventional directions, and it’s a joy to watch whether or not you’ve shared their experience.</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="exblcL"><div data-anthem-component="ratingcard" data-anthem-component-data='{"rating":4,"title":"Private Life"}'></div></aside></div>
<h3 id="nB9dZB">
<em>Private Life</em> is the story of a couple that wants a baby more than anything</h3>
<p id="oE7LBD">Rachel (Kathryn Hahn) — whose biblical namesake despaired for years over her failure to conceive — and Richard (Paul Giamatti) are in their 40s, New Yorkers who met while working in theater and who want more than anything to have a child. After experiencing heartbreak following a botched adoption attempt, they’ve been trying in vitro fertilization, a process that has rendered them both a ball of nerves (not least because of the hormones involved).</p>
<p id="3WITNK">IVF is expensive and exhausting, particularly in the hands of an obnoxiously peppy doctor (Kelly Miller) who likes to fist-bump and say, “Boom!” way too much. It involves the humiliation of shots, probes, and gowns for a procedure that may not even work. And they’ve kept the whole thing a secret so as to not jeopardize the possibility of adoption if it doesn’t work.</p>
<p id="XVRK95">When their cycle fails, Richard broaches the subject of an egg donor, to which Rachel initially<strong> </strong>reacts with vehement disgust but slowly, slowly starts to come around — especially when they hatch a plan to get their step-niece Sadie (Kayli Carter), who is looking for direction in the world, to donate her eggs. And conveniently, Sadie’s looking for a place to stay in the city after dropping out of college again. She lands on Rachel and Richard’s couch.</p>
<p id="TYQCFv">The setup sounds like sitcom material, but Jenkins infuses Rachel and Richard’s arguments and interactions with more depth than most sitcoms ever capture. Rachel is a bundle of nerves, a live wire, and also a smart and funny woman who loves her life with Richard even as she yearns for a child; Richard is supportive and patient but obviously exhausted and wondering how long he can continue the effort. Hahn and Giamatti bring their<strong> </strong>characteristic warmth-with-an-edge to their characters, and as their relationship unpacks itself onscreen, it feels authentic and lived-in, especially when Carter is added to the mix.</p>
<h3 id="KbaP9U">
<em>Private Life</em> shows how nothing, in the end, is really private</h3>
<p id="cJRoBX">It’s been 11 years since Jenkins’s last film, <em>The Savages</em>, in which Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman play siblings caring for their ailing father. Linney and Hoffman’s dynamic in that film bears some resemblance to Hahn and Giamatti’s in this one: people bound to one another (as siblings in the former and spouses in the latter) who find themselves shaken out of their routine by frustrating realities in their family lives, things they wish could just fix themselves so their lives could move forward. </p>
<p id="8lmV6q">But things rarely fix themselves. All of us are left to wait, frustrated, not knowing whether the future holds the fulfillment of our desires or an eternal waiting. </p>
<p id="KmIoGq">The stress of not knowing can take its toll on relationships, which <em>Private Life</em> illustrates richly. There’s friction between Richard and Rachel, to be sure. But it has its effect on the broader family — including Sadie’s parents (Molly Shannon and John Carroll Lynch), who semi-secretly find the couple’s efforts to conceive a bit over the top. Nobody wants to come right out and say it, but it’s clear they think the expense and effort is a waste, an “obsession” that not only isn’t worth it but probably indicates some kind of character flaw.</p>
<p id="BraJ1k">The wisdom of <em>Private Life</em> comes from insights like these. Infertility isn’t just a maddening and excruciating experience because of the struggle to conceive; it also puts a weight on the support systems on which families lean to take care of one another. Arguments that are kept in Richard and Rachel’s private lives seep out into their more public one (the film features a very memorable shouting match on the most publicly private place in the world: a sidewalk in Manhattan) and reveal how their private stressors put pressure on their joint bond. It’s moving and relatable for anyone who’s been in a relationship.</p>
<p id="VZ8Zi3"><em>Private Life</em> refuses to stick to just one mode of storytelling — it has slapstick and melodrama, heartbreak and hope. With all of those elements moving around inside one narrative, its insight feels faithful to life itself. Love, heartbreak, longing, and absurdity all coexist inside not just our private joys and pains, but the ones we share with others. We are lucky Jenkins shares all those things with us.</p>
<p id="RKZ6Jy">Private Life <em>premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and is part of the official selection at the Toronto International Film Festival. It premieres on Netflix and in select theaters on October 5.</em></p>
https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/1/26/16912914/private-life-review-netflix-tamara-jenkins-kathryn-hahn-paul-giamattiAlissa Wilkinson2018-09-20T13:38:25-04:002018-09-20T13:38:25-04:00I Think We’re Alone Now, from Reed Morano, is a gorgeous post-apocalyptic relationship drama
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<img alt="Elle Fanning and Peter Dinklage in I Think We’re Alone Now" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/6otaTFGXDZWWpEu-TemrFONHil8=/768x0:1912x858/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/58442359/38711962201_1025b1bf8e_o.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Elle Fanning and Peter Dinklage in <em>I Think We’re Alone Now.</em> | Sundance Institute</figcaption>
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<p>Starring Peter Dinklage and Elle Fanning, the movie is less interested in the apocalypse and more in what makes us human.</p> <p id="aE7dlN">Post-apocalyptic stories, as a rule, are less about the end of the world and more about what it really is to be a human. Is it our capacity to think rationally and logically? Our drive to create civilizations? Our creative power? Our self-destructive streak? </p>
<p id="sUnjc6">Plenty of post-apocalyptic stories have posited answers like those. But two others show up in Reed Morano’s <em>I Think We’re Alone Now</em>: Our humanity lies in our ability to connect with one another, and in our ability (or perhaps inability) to escape the past. The film handles one of those themes more deftly than the other, but in the end it still adds up to an often moving meditation on what it really means to be human, packaged in one of the oldest post-apocalyptic subgenres: the story of the last man on earth.</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="8bE8O3"><div data-anthem-component="ratingcard" data-anthem-component-data='{"rating":3.5,"title":"I Think We’re Alone Now"}'></div></aside></div>
<h3 id="zTBpdj">
<em>I Think We’re Alone Now </em>is about the last man on earth and the girl who finds him</h3>
<p id="oOxfbG">The story (from a screenplay by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm6782145?ref_=tt_ov_wr">Mike Makowsky</a>) lies somewhere in the intersection of survival tale, relationship drama, and <em>Black Mirror </em>episode. It’s in good hands with Morano, who’s best known for her Emmy-winning work directing the first three episodes of Hulu’s <em>The Handmaid’s Tale</em>, itself a vision of a dystopian future with elements of a relationship drama. </p>
<p id="wj2ByZ">Morano is also a highly respected cinematographer, and she both directed and shot <em>I Think We’re Alone Now</em>. The result is, of course, visually stunning, a movie that makes a nearly post-human world look like a symphony of colors, landscapes, and light. </p>
<p id="eaM0nN">In the middle of that post-human landscape is Del (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0227759/?ref_=tt_cl_t1">Peter Dinklage</a>), whose days are spent alone in a small upstate New York town, following a predictable rhythm. He methodically cleans the houses in the neighborhood: strips the house of useful materials like batteries, drags out the decomposing corpses and buries them in a field, cleans up, and then marks the street outside the house with a huge spray-painted X to signal its completion. He fishes and cooks dinner, reads books from the library, and watches DVDs of classic movies on a laptop, discarding the laptop when the battery dies and picking up a new one from the pile to continue.</p>
<p id="JSe21A">It’s not a particularly social existence, but it’s an orderly one, one he seems to have developed over some period of time following an apocalypse. What exactly happened in that apocalypse isn’t clear. It also isn’t really the point of the movie. What’s important is that Del is alone.</p>
<p id="ur13Bk">Alone, that is, until the arrival of the spunky and auspiciously named Grace (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1102577/?ref_=tt_cl_t2">Elle Fanning</a>), whom Del discovers in a crashed car by the side of one of the streets he’s been clearing. She’s alive, and while she’s unconscious, he brings her home and bandages a wound on her head. Then he’d like her to leave. But Grace seems determined to stay. And she’s brought more baggage with her than Del bargained for.</p>
<h3 id="3KMgD5">For most of its runtime, <em>I Think We’re Alone Now</em> is less a post-apocalyptic tale and more a slow, intimate drama</h3>
<p id="NWwzgk">For a while, <em>I Think We’re Alone Now </em>feels like a more serious version of the first season of the sitcom <em>The Last Man on Earth </em>— somewhere between an exploration of what it would be like to be alone in the world and a relationship drama. Grace prods the reluctant Del into teaching her how to clean houses and coaxes him out of his shell — which, it turns out, he assumed before the apocalypse, when he was a lonely librarian living in the town.</p>
<p id="7e7qMb">It is the slow connection between them that furnishes the film’s strongest argument for what makes us human. Rendered in beautiful landscapes and sensitive detail by Morano, and with two exceptionally strong performances by Dinklage and Fanning, the movie doesn’t so much tell you that they’re growing to care for one another as let you watch it happen. </p>
<p id="N0ikEz">The idea that our only hope for human survival after the apocalypse is our connection with one another isn’t a new one, of course; everything from <em>The Road</em> and <em>Mad Max: Fury Road </em>to <em>Wall-E</em> and <em>Zombieland</em> posits the same answer. But there’s a reason we continue to come back to it in our storytelling — because it’s true — and <em>I Think We’re Alone Now</em>’s version, like <em>Zombieland</em>, gives us a protagonist who had already experienced a kind of post-apocalyptic loneliness before anything had happened to the rest of the world. Hearing him talk about his life before and his life after, we understand the pain he felt, and it makes the post-apocalyptic salvation in the form of Grace feel even more meaningful.</p>
<p id="zm1GSA">The other big<strong> </strong>idea in the film isn’t easy to explain without spoiling it, but it deals with another common theme in post-apocalyptic and dystopian stories: the question of whether, given the choice, it would be better to erase painful memories from our minds, or whether it’s those memories that make us human. This is a central question in a number of <em>Black Mirror</em> episodes as well as movies like <em>Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind</em>: If we were to take away those things from the past that hurt us, would that make us happier humans, or would we become some other kind of beings altogether? This thread feels rushed in <em>I Think We’re Alone Now</em>, and the movie would likely have been improved by a more careful seeding of the idea early on.</p>
<p id="3hWtWs">In the end, <em>I Think We’re Alone Now</em> isn’t very interested in constructing a mythology or exploring the apocalypse itself. It’s more of a relationship drama, one that works as a showcase for two great performances against a post-apocalyptic backdrop that ups the stakes; after all, if you’re the last people on earth, you can’t just go talk to someone else. So if the movie feels rushed in its second half, its pieces still add up to a beautifully humanist whole: Whether the world is worth preserving depends on whom you decide to preserve it with.</p>
<p id="SCL79N">I Think We’re Alone Now <em>premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and opens in theaters on September 21.</em></p>
https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/1/24/16918202/i-think-were-alone-now-review-dinklage-fanning-reed-moranoAlissa Wilkinson2018-07-06T09:32:56-04:002018-07-06T09:32:56-04:00Sorry to Bother You is a bananas satirical comedy about code-switching and exploitative capitalism
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<img alt="Lakeith Stanfield in Sorry to Bother You" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/i1kLnGwoH0X8FQE-4l4W9kOUtfw=/624x0:1927x977/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/58411383/sorry_to_bother_you___still_1_37952712494_o.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Lakeith Stanfield in <em>Sorry to Bother You</em> | Doug Emmett/Sundance Institute</figcaption>
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<p>Lakeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, and Armie Hammer star in the exhilarating directorial debut from rapper Boots Riley.</p> <p id="pg5HGJ">Look up “bonkers” in any good dictionary and the first entry should be <em>Sorry to Bother You</em>, the loony directorial debut from rapper Boots Riley (best known as frontman of political hip-hop group <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coup">The Coup</a>). It’s a live-wire comedy with a social conscience, a commentary on race, labor, and American capitalism that veers in so many directions that it’s best to just strap in and let it take you where it wants you to go.</p>
<p id="4NSOVp"><em>Sorry to Bother You</em> — which brought down the house at its Sundance premiere — is set in a near-future (or maybe alternate-future) Oakland, with only a few dystopic distinctions. </p>
<p id="OAMmBh">As with last year’s <em>Get Out</em>, the movie’s genius lies not so much in how it reflects reality but in how it interprets it. It’s about<strong> </strong>exploitation and profit, about the fetishization of black bodies and the indignities of code-switching, about giving up your dignity and trying to find love. Careening from office comedy to something like horror, <em>Sorry to Bother You</em> is weird and funny and unsettling, and not quite like anything I’ve seen before.</p>
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<h3 id="7YL9cq">
<em><strong>Sorry to Bother You</strong></em><strong> is about a down-and-out Oaklander trying to get by</strong>
</h3>
<p id="buozco">Cassius “Cash” Green (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3147751/?ref_=tt_cl_t6">Lakeith Stanfield</a>) — the character names in this film are intentionally on the nose — is an Oakland native living in the garage at his uncle’s house (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0187719/?ref_=tt_cl_t4">Terry Crews</a>) and struggling to get by, wondering if life really has any meaning at all or is just a pointless grind. His artist girlfriend Detroit (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1935086/?ref_=tt_cl_t1">Tessa Thompson</a>) twirls a sign on a street corner to make ends meet. Cash lands a job in telemarketing at a company called RegalView but is terrible at it, until a coworker named Langston (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000418/?ref_=tt_cl_t8">Danny Glover</a>) tells him people will respond much better if he uses his “white voice.”</p>
<p id="hTreSR">He’s right. Cash starts landing sale after sale, which means even when the telemarketers decide to unionize, led by Squeeze (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3081796/?ref_=tt_cl_t5">Steven Yeun</a>), he gets promoted up the ladder to become a “power caller.” </p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Lakeith Stanfield in Sorry to Bother You" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Gf_Cgk-wJ_nQt5wiI3hWsLIoMGw=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/10076101/sorrytobother.jpg">
<cite>Doug Emmett / Sundance Institute</cite>
<figcaption>Lakeith Stanfield in <em>Sorry to Bother You</em>
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<p id="x4MybU">That’s more fraught than it sounds. The power callers are parceling out what the parent company WorryFree is selling. </p>
<p id="1bc4Tt">WorryFree — led by erratic, charismatic, coke-snorting, cheerfully exploitative CEO Steve Lift (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2309517/?ref_=tt_cl_t2">Armie Hammer</a>) — encourages people facing financial difficulty to sign a lifetime labor contract in which they’ll work for the company for the rest of their lives. In turn, they can stop worrying about things like rent and car payments; the company guarantees bunk-style housing and lousy-looking meals that WorryFree customers insist are delicious. In other words, it’s modern-day indentured labor.</p>
<p id="KF7t57">Cash is desperate enough to sell out his organizing co-workers, crossing the picket line to go to his fancy new job. His job as a power caller is to help sell the labor that WorryFree is serving up, something he’s highly successful at thanks to his “white voice.” Before long he catches the eye of Lift, who has another role in mind for him.</p>
<h3 id="zge6e0">
<em><strong>Sorry to Bother You</strong></em><strong> consciously borrows on the fantastical style of Michel Gondry to become something all its own</strong>
</h3>
<p id="JlQDKI">It would be pointless to describe the rest of the plot, because a lot of the joy of the film comes from the element of surprise. <em>Sorry to Bother You </em>deliberately runs off its rails and then out of the railyard entirely. There are giant horse-men (with prominent genitalia), crazy parties, and a wildly popular TV game show called <em>I Got The Shit Kicked Out of Me</em>, in which contestants go on TV to get beat up for millions of viewers. If you’re looking for narrative cohesion in <em>Sorry to Bother You</em>, you’ve come to the wrong place.</p>
<p id="SapfqA">That does mean that some of the film’s more biting satirical threads start to drop off as it spirals out of control — but that’s on purpose. Riley’s style owes much to Michel Gondry (he sneaks a Gondry joke into the film), whose weirder films like <em>The Science of Sleep</em> and <em>Be Kind Rewind</em> have a kind of magical realism that pushes the audience out of its comfort zone and unsettles expectations. </p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Lakeith Stanfield and Tessa Thompson in Sorry to Bother You" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/6_fgEX5oCbhu2DSuILHYrMTJKD0=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/10076105/sorry_to_bother_you___still_3_26894348339_o.jpg">
<cite>Doug Emmett/Sundance Institute</cite>
<figcaption>Lakeith Stanfield and Tessa Thompson in <em>Sorry to Bother You</em>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="CdG7OY">As in Gondry’s films, Sorry to Bother You’s aesthetic is rough around the edges. Instead of relying on CGI and similar techniques to render fantastical effects, Riley employs stop-motion and surreal elements — Cash’s “white voice” is the dubbed voice of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0189144/?ref_=tt_cl_t7">David Cross</a> — to make the whole thing feel exhilaratingly on the edge of falling apart. </p>
<p id="G3w9AR">Early in the film, when Cash starts telemarketing, he doesn’t just talk to them on the phone; his desk actually drops <em>into</em> the living space of the people he’s calling. And TVs in the background of scenes make subtexts into text, playing chipper ads for WorryFree and episodes of <em>I Got the Shit Kicked Out of Me</em>, the game show that mirrors our penchant for watching people make fools of themselves for attention, but without any of the sugarcoating. </p>
<p id="Ctum2j">WorryFree also evokes some familiar practices— labor in for-profit prisons and the endless cycle of debt that keeps people in poverty — that may <em>f</em><em>eel</em> ripped from a dystopian novel, but are just one tick away from plausible.</p>
<p id="YrgHbt">You might feel a little bit crazy by the end, and several scenes are calculated to evince hollering and cringing. The stellar, nearly all-black cast (particularly Stanfield and a luminous Thompson) deliver performances that are somehow weighty amid the madness, and most of the movie is paced almost like a music video. </p>
<p id="70utPh">With so many competing tonal and thematic elements, its unsurprising that sometimes <em>Sorry to Bother You</em> doesn’t quite come together — but Riley is swinging for the fences here, with a clear vision of what he’s after, and on the whole, he succeeds tremendously. It’s a fantastical, weird, funny, devastating movie, and it proves Riley is a director worth watching.</p>
<p id="nttcRP">Sorry to Bother You <em>premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January and opens in theaters on July 6.</em></p>
https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/1/22/16918208/sorry-to-bother-you-review-boots-riley-tessa-thompson-lakeith-stanfield-armie-hammerAlissa Wilkinson2018-05-30T15:18:03-04:002018-05-30T15:18:03-04:00Movies are blurring fact and fiction on purpose. What does that do to the audience?
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<img alt="American Animals" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/2I7hTMmXrLstjB69__hlQnOYDz4=/96x0:847x563/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/58470957/B6AA1874_381B_4666_A5DC_8A1E7B8370AF.0.jpeg" />
<figcaption><em>American Animals</em> blurs fact and fiction. | Sundance Institute</figcaption>
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<p><em>American Animals</em> is just the most recent example.</p> <p id="lgy8GS">Nonfiction and fiction have always bled into one another on the big screen — movies based on true stories, documentaries with staged scenes — but these days it feels increasingly difficult to separate the two, and sometimes not really worth the effort. </p>
<p id="OoHTZJ">Take Errol Morris’s recent<strong> </strong>Netflix docuseries <em>Wormwood</em>, which is about half interviews with the son and acquaintances of a man who died under suspicious circumstances, half dreamlike reenactments of the mental state of the man (played by Peter Sarsgaard) before he died. The reenactments are so pervasive and extensive — there are whole scenes with scripted dialogue, rather than just representation of something an interviewee is describing — that <em>Wormwood</em> feels like a truly hybrid work, not easily characterized as anything at all.</p>
<p id="EAOsoK">Or consider last year’s runaway hit <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/9/14/16301552/i-tonya-harding-kerrigan-review-tiff"><em>I, Tonya</em></a>, which hinges partly on “irony-free, wildly contradictory, totally true interviews” — according to the film’s title cards — that screenwriter Steve Rogers conducted with Harding and her ex-husband Jeff Gillooly. The interviews are included in the movie, but Harding and Gillooly don’t appear in the film themselves. Instead, it’s their characters, played by Margot Robbie and Sebastian Stan, doing the talking, and their accounts conflict with one another by design. So we’re connected to what “really” happened, but still a level or two of abstraction away from “reality.” </p>
<p id="ZDFhun">Or look at <em>American Animals</em>, which played both at fiction film festivals and documentary film festivals before its general release. It’s based on a true story, with actors playing the main characters — but those people also appear <em>in</em> the film, re-narrating their own tale. Is it a fictionalized true story, a re-enactment, or both? </p>
<p id="w62juz">These are just three recent examples among many. But if you’ve watched a movie in the last few years, chances are you’ve seen one that could fall into the category of blurred realities. Films that push the boundaries of reality are a trend here to stay.<strong> </strong></p>
<p id="gOL9Oz">But<strong> </strong>do those boundaries even matter? When a film is well executed, the question of whether it’s “fiction” or “nonfiction” can seem utterly irrelevant. Good storytelling is good storytelling, and if it gets its point across, who cares?</p>
<h3 id="BZF6Wm">Mixing fiction and nonfiction pushes us out of our comfort zones</h3>
<p id="Ro0657">There are a few reasons to think about the distinction between fiction and nonfiction, not least because so much of American culture today seems to operate on smoke and mirrors, sleight of hand, and outright falsehoods. </p>
<p id="KKoRse">But another, less politically fraught reason is that blurring fiction and nonfiction well can push the audience in ways that<strong> </strong>one or the other might not accomplish alone. Ultimately, the result can be more effective storytelling.</p>
<p id="wR2cfh">There’s something disorienting — and exhilarating — about the mixing of fiction and nonfiction, performance and “reality” (though of course, you can argue that everyone who appears on camera is performing). It messes with the paradigms through which we’ve been trained to consume stories. </p>
<p id="W5AZQu">When we’re told a movie is “fiction,” we assume that what we’re watching is at most a reenactment of reality, not that we’re actually watching the events <em>themselves</em>. These are actors, playing parts; even if what they’re doing is creating an exact replica of the original story, it’s still a copy of the original. (And of course, movies based on true events often alter or embellish their source stories, to varying degrees, for reasons of artistry, clarity, or storytelling cohesion.)</p>
<p id="ciNGQY">In contrast, when we listen to an interviewee or a watch a series of unscripted events in a documentary, we assume we’re seeing roughly what we would have seen if <em>we</em> had been there<strong> </strong>to witness the events presented or discussed. If you watch Frederick Wiseman’s documentary about the New York Public Library, then actually <em>go </em>to the New York Public Library, you see what his camera saw. </p>
<p id="BWNdRN">The difference comes in the relationship between us — the viewers — and what we view. With nonfiction and documentary, what we’re watching exists in our space-time continuum. We could bump into these people we see onscreen on the street, or visit these places. With fiction, we know we’re watching a constructed version of reality. It may be very like our own, but it <em>isn’t</em> our own. </p>
<p id="H76XWb">When those lines are blurred, though, the effect is disorienting even when it’s subtle. Watching <em>Wormwood</em>, we move back and forth between our own universe and the one Morris has<strong> </strong>constructed, which makes us feel disjointed from reality and unsure of what really happened — just like the movie’s main interviewee, who’s spent his life pulling apart layers of lies about his father’s death. </p>
<p id="rLGTR8">Experiencing <em>I, Tonya</em>, we wonder not only how much of what the characters are saying onscreen matches up with the filmmakers’ real-life interviews, but because the two main characters’ accounts differ from one another, we are left wondering how much of the movie’s action matches reality, too.</p>
<h3 id="8Y64V8">A film like <em>American Animals </em>shows how blurring fiction and reality can reinvigorate a familiar genre</h3>
<p id="1wdSMG">One of the most talked-about films at the Sundance Film Festival this year — recently released on HBO — was <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/1/22/16920036/the-tale-review-sundance-jennifer-fox-laura-dern-teen-rape"><em>The Tale, </em>which is something close to, but not technically, a documentary</a>.<strong> </strong>Writer and director Jennifer Fox (who traditionally works in the documentary genre) called it “pure memoir” and gave her 13-year-old self a writing credit on the film.<strong> </strong>At the same film festival, in the documentary category, Robert Greene’s <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/1/25/16912960/bisbee-17-review-robert-greene-sundance"><em>Bisbee ‘17</em></a> mixed interviews with performance to cast a dreamlike spell over a real town’s confrontation of its real history.</p>
<p id="f2EnDo">And one of the festival’s most commercially viable movies to mix the real and the constructed was <em>American Animals</em>, a kind of a heist film and one that I’m still not sure shouldn’t be categorized as a documentary. It’s making its theatrical debut on June 1.</p>
<p id="4ExHta">Directed by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1717925?ref_=tt_ov_dr">Bart Layton</a>, <em>American Animals</em> tells the story of four young men in Lexington, Kentucky, who decide they’re going to pull off one of the most insane heists in American history, by stealing James Audubon’s <em>Birds of America </em>from the library at<strong> </strong>Transylvania University; that book alone is worth $20 million, and maybe they’ll pick up some other rare books along the way, like a very old copy of Charles Darwin’s <em>On t</em><em>he Origin of Species</em>. </p>
<p id="Rbw8P1">Why bother? They’d like the money, of course. But basically, they’re just bored and frustrated with their seemingly dead-end lives. Pulling off a heist will make them feel like they’re living in a movie, and that’s got to be better than their ordinary existence.</p>
<p id="6unkt4">This seems like the formula for a straight-ahead heist movie based on a true story, but <em>American Animals</em> has something else on its mind. “This is not based on a true story,” the title card declares at the beginning of the film. Then the words “not based on” fade out. </p>
<p id="4b2s7Y">So, wait, it <em>is</em> a true story? Yes. It did happen. The actual subjects of <em>American Animals</em> appear in the film as interviewees, and they’re introduced in a visual format that resembles a traditional documentary, centered in the frame and speaking directly to the camera. </p>
<p id="IU1Ljy">Most of the film, however, feels more like a typical scripted movie, with <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1404239/?ref_=tt_cl_t1">Evan Peters</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm4422686/?ref_=tt_cl_t2">Barry Keoghan</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm4245462/?ref_=tt_cl_t3">Jared Abrahamson</a>, and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm4296357/?ref_=tt_cl_t5">Blake Jenner</a> playing the young men as they plot and try to execute their heist, figuring out how they’ll neutralize the librarian (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0235652/?ref_=tt_cl_t4">Ann Dowd</a>) who guards the rare books. </p>
<p id="sRvxZV">The movie doesn’t simply cut back and forth between interview and scripted re-enactment. Again, the lines get blurry. Sometimes the scripted sections change slightly based on different<strong> </strong>interviewees’ recollections; at one point, the real person and the movie-actor version of him sit in a car conversing. </p>
<p id="BVlG9k">Unfortunately, <em>American Animals</em> is not as clever as it seems to think it is. By the end of the film, it’s not clear that it has harnessed the power of its own narrative devices, which could stand to more effectively explore the illusions of grandeur and the boredom of the over-entertained. It loses steam and ends with the vague sense that there’s somehow less to the story than the sum of its parts.</p>
<p id="ZvXcDw">There’s a kernel of something interesting in the film, and it’s the movement between performance and “reality” that makes it work. The young men who attempted the heist in real life<strong> </strong>did it largely because they wanted to feel significant, to feel caught up in a narrative like the ones they watched in movies. </p>
<p id="B0GKS2">Now they <em>are</em> part of a real movie, and yet they’re wiser, and older. As we watch them talk about both the excitement and shame that accompanied their actions, we grasp the moral import of their behavior in a way that more standard heist movies, caught up in the excitement of the caper, rarely do. </p>
<p id="i86JFA">The presence of the “real” people, in addition to their actor counterparts, grounds the film for the audience. So we can’t pretend this is just entertainment or ignore the fact that their choices had a social cost. </p>
<p id="FHzyoi">It’s a heady distinction. Ultimately, <em>American Animals</em> succeeds more if you think of it as a documentary with lots of reenactment, rather than as a fictional film. As part of a broader move toward hybrid storytelling, it’s instructive: In a culture that has experienced “reality” through mediated means for so long that we are often rendered<strong> </strong>immune to the human toll of the stories we tell, there may still be a way to shake loose our calcified ethical compasses. </p>
<p id="tqzKkb">Challenge the paradigm of the viewer, and they may just be startled into seeing their own reality in a new way.</p>
https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/1/26/16912962/american-animals-review-i-tonya-wormwood-bisbee-fiction-documentaryAlissa Wilkinson2018-05-24T14:58:16-04:002018-05-24T14:58:16-04:00The Tale, about a teen molested by a coach, is an unexpectedly vital film
<figure>
<img alt="Laura Dern and Isabel Nelisse in The Tale" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Xv189229XlTMzAIFZiQzDj8LBxg=/13x0:1830x1363/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/58416567/38638602902_041adfa5da_k.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Laura Dern and Isabel Nelisse in <em>The Tale</em> | Kyle Kaplan/Sundance Institute</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Jennifer Fox’s “pure memoir” didn’t set out to dovetail with #MeToo, but it couldn’t have come at a better time.</p> <p id="SU3Y9f">Jennifer Fox’s <em>The Tale</em> premiered at Sundance on January 20, a day when women around the world <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/1/20/16913586/womens-march-2018-photos-new-york">were once again marching</a> following a year of Donald Trump’s presidency as well as the swell of the <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/10/16/16481698/metoo-hashtag-responds-to-mayim-bialik-victim-blaming">#MeToo movement</a>. </p>
<p id="zwlnZc"><a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/1/21/16912774/sundance-harvey-weinstein-robert-redford-sex-lies-videotape">The first post-Weinstein Sundance</a> included panels and discussions about sexual assault and women in Hollywood. There were visits, too, from attorney Gloria Allred, activist Jane Fonda, and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, all subjects of documentaries playing at the festival — the feeling of change was in the air.</p>
<p id="knTdT0"><em>The Tale</em> feels like it was made to premiere that day, though it’s been in the works for years. Fox (best known for her documentary series like <em>Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman</em> and <em>An American Love Story</em>) took her own harrowing story of being molested as a 13-year-old and turned it into a sensitive, innovative, even beautiful feature that cuts right at the heart of the most difficult conversations we’re having as a country. </p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="dCqYWm"><div data-anthem-component="ratingcard" data-anthem-component-data='{"rating":4}'></div></aside></div>
<p id="LVoAif"><em>The Tale </em>is not a film that wears its importance on its sleeve, because it’s deeply personal. But at its January premiere, it felt prescient, almost prophetic — and the months since have only continued to prove how important it is.</p>
<h3 id="ppOCSU">
<em><strong>The Tale</strong></em><strong> </strong><strong>follows </strong><strong>a woman coming to terms with her own history of sexual abuse</strong>
</h3>
<p id="P96S0v">To say that <em>The Tale</em> is about a 13-year-old girl molested by her running coach, and the adult woman she becomes, makes the movie sound like it’s veering into Lifetime Original Movie territory. Fox is a documentarian, and she knows turning a true story into a film can put the audience at a distance from what’s happening. </p>
<p id="aERGFJ">To combat that possibility, she pushes her “fiction” film as close to the nonfiction line as she can, letting the main character (played as a teenager by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm4719471/?ref_=tt_cl_t11">Isabelle Nélisse</a> and as an adult by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000368/?ref_=tt_cl_t2">Laura Dern</a>) bear her name and giving her younger self a story credit on the film.</p>
<p id="CzUefH">The movie runs along two parallel tracks, with older Jennifer returning from a work trip abroad to discover that her mother (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000995/?ref_=tt_cl_t5">Ellen Burstyn</a>) has unearthed a story that Jennifer wrote for an English class as a child. The story, as teenaged Jennifer insists and adult Jennifer prefers to maintain, is meant to be fiction. But it was written in the first person and concerns two adults — riding coach Mrs. G (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm4456120/?ref_=tt_cl_t1">Elizabeth Debicki</a>) and running coach Bill (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0728762/?ref_=tt_cl_t4">Jason Ritter</a>) — who, as the young Jennifer wrote in the story, made her a “part” of their relationship.</p>
<p id="V5dHuB">Jennifer brushes off the story to her boyfriend Martin (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0996669/?ref_=tt_cl_t7">Common</a>) as something she wrote about her first boyfriend, who was “much older” than she was. But memories start to surface. She reluctantly digs backward and begins to grapple with what she’s tried to ignore all of her life: At 13, she wasn’t in a beautiful, open, honest relationship with an adult man and woman, but exploited and abused by a pedophile and likely repeat abuser. </p>
<p id="mI97hF">For Jennifer, acknowledging that fact is troubling not just because she vehemently resists the label of “victim,” but because it means, in a sense, that she has to rewire the way she sees her life since. </p>
<h3 id="4abIjs">
<strong>Fox says </strong><em><strong>The Tale</strong></em><strong> is memoir, and it works as a way to control her own narrative</strong>
</h3>
<p id="Gl2fps">At a Q&A following the premiere in January, Fox called the film “pure memoir.” She said she felt she had to finally make it because the more she told her story, the more she heard from women who’d had similar experiences. Some of the names and places were changed, she said, but in substance the film closely matches her own, real-life experience of molestation.</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Writer and director Jennifer Fox" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/0IU0wWGesARc2wk_fSHGsHFAdkE=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/10078249/38638606682_5b1a68220c_o.jpg">
<cite>Donna Viering / Sundance Institute</cite>
<figcaption>Jennifer Fox wrote and directed <em>The Tale</em>, which she calls “pure memoir.”</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="R9v0Lp">The film is searingly difficult to watch. Young Jenny is groomed by Mrs. G and Bill to believe that she is special and unique, more mature than the other girls who work with the coaches and more worthy of being drawn into their relationship. She believes that they are bringing her into something special, that when Bill begins a sexual relationship with her it’s because he loves her, and not because she’s a ready target for a predator.</p>
<p id="6mPVv3">Nélisse’s performance sensitively evokes those emotions that young Jenny feels without discounting them. (The scenes in which her character is raped by Bill were shot with an adult body double.) That helps us understand the resistance that adult Jennifer feels, even as we’re horrified at what we can clearly see is happening to the young girl. Adult Jennifer addresses characters from her past directly in her memory, and they talk back to her with a frankness that’s unnerving. (Debicki’s performance is especially chilling.)</p>
<p id="md6L9a"><em>The Tale</em> feels like Fox’s effort to regain control of her own narrative, to tell the story in a way that’s emotionally as well as factually truthful, and though the filmmaking occasionally dips in some rocky, too-slow patches, the result is an overwhelming success. The scenes in which she stumbles over how to characterize her experience — was she a victim or not? and who gets to decide? — feel almost unbearably honest. </p>
<p id="evXkPM">Just as adult Jennifer is revisiting her own story as narrated by her teen self, filmmaker Jennifer is re-narrating her own story in a way that includes the audience, bringing clarity to confounding experiences. </p>
<p id="kQRblP">In <em>The Tale</em>, Fox takes an experience that’s far, far too common — and newly visible in American culture — and mines it for its emotional heft, turning it into an interrogation of how those who’ve experienced assault and abuse go on to navigate their lives. It is a story of a woman taking her life back, nested in a film serving the same purpose. </p>
<p id="68P94g">Like any good memoir, it provides a pathway on which women who’ve had similar experiences might find some space to do the same. <em>The Tale</em> is not easy to watch, but it’s a vital touchstone for a culture trying to come to grips with the role abuse and assault has played in far, far too many lives.</p>
<p id="WGCHNh">The Tale <em>premieres</em><em> on HBO on May 26</em><em>.</em></p>
https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/1/22/16920036/the-tale-review-hbo-jennifer-fox-laura-dern-teen-rapeAlissa Wilkinson2018-03-16T10:19:43-04:002018-03-16T10:19:43-04:00The Death of Stalin, a black comedy from the creator of Veep, turns politics into purgatory
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<img alt="Jason Isaacs in The Death of Stalin" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/k0ltL9PmH9VkWNDonw6zv90r-4M=/632x0:1965x1000/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/56678617/stalin.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Jason Isaacs in <em>The Death of Stalin</em> | IFC</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Authoritarians and their sycophants get the Iannucci treatment, and it’s deadly serious.</p> <p id="oKlmmG">The central thesis of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0406334/">political satirist Armando Iannucci’</a>s work can be summed up thusly: Politics is the bleakest kind of purgatory. </p>
<p id="zFEDoQ">In shows like <em>Veep</em> and <em>The Thick of It</em><em>,</em> and the 2009 film <em>In the Loop</em>, Iannucci populates his worlds with characters doomed to a kind of death by bureaucracy. They’re all Sisyphus, cursed for their hubris by a malevolent god to roll a rock up a hill. Then it rolls back. Repeat forever. </p>
<p id="mVMW1v">The thing that makes Iannucci’s work sing is that with a few exceptions, his characters are all too self-deluded, narcissistic, evil, or dumb to realize that what they’re doing is a curse they brought on themselves. In <em>Veep</em>, for instance, Selina Meyer can’t manage to get a single thing done despite being the vice president of the United States, and her staff are too drunk by proximity to supposed power and existential despair to do anything more than run around in ineffective circles. It’s pitch-black and hilarious and kind of depressing when matched up against the reality of Washington, DC. We laugh, because otherwise we’d drown in tears.</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="1THqpZ"><div data-anthem-component="ratingcard" data-anthem-component-data='{"rating":4.5}'></div></aside></div>
<p id="AYPLj7">Now he’s gone and made a movie about the Russians (<a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XH27R1K/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1">based on a French graphic novel</a>). <em>The Death of Stalin</em> is based, sort of, on real events. It opens as the Soviet dictator catches the end of a live concerto on radio and phones the venue, asking for a recording. The concert has not been recorded. A panicked staffer runs into the departing crowd and orders them to sit down and perform the concerto again. “We <em>will</em> applaud,” he says. And the implication, everyone knows, is that not obeying could get you shot.</p>
<p id="q7bIS3">Stalin does indeed eventually die, but not before we’re introduced to his inner circle, the Central Committee, an obsequious cohort of yes-men who stumble over one another to make the leader laugh without inadvertently offending him. The group includes Georgy Malenkov (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001787/?ref_=tt_cl_t7">Jeffrey Tambor</a>), Nikita Khrushchev (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000114/?ref_=tt_cl_t4">Steve Buscemi</a>), Vyacheslav Molotov (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001589/?ref_=tt_cl_t9">Michael Palin</a>), Lavrentiy Beria (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0750971/?ref_=tt_cl_t11">Simon Russell Beale</a>), and others. Everyone’s jockeying for position but trying to stay off the “list” of people suspected to oppose or be otherwise inconvenient to the state.</p>
<aside id="mImM53"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"TIFF 2017: Toronto International Film Festival news and movie reviews","url":"https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/9/5/16249984/toronto-film-festival-2017-dates-lineup-schedule"}]}'></div></aside><p id="N1gvVE">When the Dear Leader has a stroke alone in his office one night — then lays in a puddle of his own urine until morning, which furnishes a running joke once he’s found — the Central Committee starts to put in motion the laws regarding succession, while military leader Georgy Zhukov (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005042/?ref_=tt_cl_t3">Jason Isaacs</a>), Stalin’s children Svetlana (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2057859/?ref_=tt_cl_t2">Andrea Riseborough</a>) and Vasily (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1670029/?ref_=tt_cl_t6">Rupert Friend</a>), and more people show up. There’s some very dark comedy indeed, brought on by the fact that all of the good doctors have been either sent to the gulag or killed under suspicion of trying to poison Stalin. </p>
<p id="d8Jrdt">And then, of course, Stalin goes and dies.</p>
<p id="hG4e9b">In such a crowd of sycophants, the question of who can perform devotion to Stalin the best is an important one. Once the leader is gone, though, it’s like a giant game of chicken: Who will crack first and say something bad? How much power can you grab for yourself without someone accusing you of disloyalty and hauling you out back to get shot? </p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="The Death of Stalin" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/w1sTi0KUYD4uusDwjU6dms77FJI=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/9242057/stalin2.jpg">
<cite>IFC</cite>
<figcaption><em>The Death of Stalin</em></figcaption>
</figure>
<h3 id="OP14aP">
<em>The Death of Stalin</em> is grounded in history but meant for our time</h3>
<p id="LZxdHa">It is bleak stuff, and rendered with less of Iannucci’s signature rat-a-tat-tat joke delivery (though it’s not devoid of some truly inspired epithets). Most of the film’s comedy is situational rather than textual, which is to say that it’s funny because it’s true. Ordinary people living under the thumb of cruel dictatorships are in a perpetual state of placid terror, trying to go unnoticed, and those characters are all over <em>The Death of Stalin </em>(and disposed of unceremoniously). Those who choose to serve the authoritarian leader — to hang out with him, flatter him, laugh at his jokes, watch his John Wayne movies — force themselves into the iron cage. Once you’ve climbed that ladder and been that close to power, you can’t go back. But you’ve placed a big target squarely on your forehead.</p>
<p id="u6i57f">The movie is in English, no Russian accents, and the few times we see printed “Russian” it’s strangely readable. The point is obvious. This is a story about Russia, and it’s grounded in fact, but it’s intended for us and our time.</p>
<p id="UV26Im"><em>The Death of Stalin</em> is Iannucci’s most complex and almost nihilistic rendering of what politics is: A team of bumbling and weak-minded people who lack any real conviction other than a desire for power and position. They aren’t quite in hell; they’re definitely not in heaven. It’s death by middle position, the bleakest version of purgatory on earth with no redemption allowed, and the biggest joke of it all is that they’ve put themselves there on purpose.</p>
<p id="BqGxye">The Death of Stalin <em>opens in limited theaters on March 9.</em></p>
https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/9/14/16304760/death-of-stalin-iannuci-review-veepAlissa Wilkinson2018-01-29T12:20:01-05:002018-01-29T12:20:01-05:009 breakout Sundance movies to watch for in 2018
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<img alt="Helena Howard in Eighth Grade" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/5Gp3d-VwUoF0fOL12a3diYydlf8=/452x0:1988x1152/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/58492003/37817925515_75c501a02d_k.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Helena Howard in <em>Eighth Grade.</em> | Ashley Connor/Sundance Institute</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Movies about teenage girls, racism, infertility, demons, and the apocalypse were the festival’s highlights.</p> <p id="VG3aJu">The <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/1/19/16883536/sundance-film-festival-2018">2018 Sundance Film Festival</a> didn’t yield any true standouts — <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/1/30/14395920/sundance-2017-wrap-up-best-theaters">nothing like last year’s <em>Call Me By Your Name </em>or <em>The Big Sick</em></a><em> </em>— but a general lack of buzz doesn’t mean there weren’t plenty of movies worth watching. Horror, high school stories, infertility comedies, post-apocalyptic dramas, and more ensured that the festival was a succession of startling and sometimes unsettling delights.</p>
<p id="jRaUWB">Here are nine films in particular that we’ll all be talking about later this year.</p>
<h3 id="JhNawp"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt6101602/"><em>Madeline’s Madeline</em></a></h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Helena Howard and Molly Parker in Madeline’s Madeline" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/cR7SX1gbfYaf4tYiAAxARvCJra8=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/10107113/24900506227_86e6a2918e_o.jpg">
<cite>Sundance Institute</cite>
<figcaption>Helena Howard and Molly Parker in <em>Madeline’s Madeline.</em>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="gW5M3t"><em>Madeline’s Madeline</em> is the story of a teenager named Madeline (the outstanding Helena Howard, in what’s sure to be a breakout role) who, after spending time under medical<strong> </strong>supervision for mental health issues, is finding new life and a community away from her obsessive, codependent mother (Miranda July). She finds solace in a theater group — but even though the woman who leads the group (Molly Parker) presents herself as a supportive collaborator for Madeline, it starts to become clear that she’s gleaning more from the relationship than may be healthy for the girl. </p>
<p id="AwS6PW">Writer/director Josephine Decker forgoes a straightforward telling of the story, opting instead for something that feels woozy and original from the start, disorienting by design, drawing us into Madeline’s muddled and sometimes overheated headspace in a way that feels more governed by dream logic than reality. It’s a stunner of a work from Decker and a new twist on the well-trodden theater troupe subgenre. </p>
<p id="m8CzOM">Madeline’s Madeline <em>is awaiting distribution.</em></p>
<h3 id="HrUCsi"><a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/1/22/16920036/the-tale-review-sundance-jennifer-fox-laura-dern-teen-rape"><em>The Tale</em></a></h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Laura Dern and Isabel Nelisse in The Tale" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/vBli2S7w4q-grRQ53xDgAc902RQ=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/10078243/38638602902_041adfa5da_k.jpg">
<cite>Kyle Kaplan/Sundance Institute</cite>
<figcaption>Laura Dern and Isabelle Nelisse in <em>The Tale.</em>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="knTdT0">Jennifer Fox is best known as a documentarian, but for <em>The Tale</em> — which she called “pure memoir” in a Q&A following the film’s Sundance premiere — she shifts to a scripted format, transforming her own harrowing story of being molested as a 13-year-old into a sensitive, innovative, even beautiful feature that cuts right at the heart of the most difficult conversations we’re having as a country. </p>
<aside id="ljrIbK"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"The Tale, about a teen molested by a coach, is Sundance’s most unexpectedly vital film","url":"https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/1/22/16920036/the-tale-review-sundance-jennifer-fox-laura-dern-teen-rape"}]}'></div></aside><p id="CCIO36">Laura Dern plays the grown-up version of Fox as she’s slowly forced to grapple with the fact that the relationship she once had with her 40-year-old swim coach wasn’t a relationship between two consenting adults, and struggles to find her place in her own story — is she a victim? A survivor? A heroine? <em>The Tale </em>is not a film that wears its importance on its sleeve, because it’s deeply personal. But from the vantage point of its January 2018 premiere, it feels prescient, almost prophetic.</p>
<p id="WkUZYT">The Tale <em>will premiere later this year on HBO.</em></p>
<h3 id="pvUuIK"><a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/1/26/16912914/private-life-review-tamara-jenkins-kathryn-hahn-paul-giamatti-sundance"><em>Private Life</em></a></h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Kathryn Hahn, Kayli Carter, and Paul Giamatti in Private Life" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/DqS6iNnqxTDXaoVCxMlYcTmA8bE=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/10105383/private_life___still_1_39040678661_o.jpg">
<cite>Jojo Whilden/Sundance Institute</cite>
<figcaption>Kathryn Hahn, Kayli Carter, and Paul Giamatti in <em>Private Life.</em>
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<p id="2UIVIV">Eleven years after the Sundance debut of her highly acclaimed feature <em>The Savages</em>, Tamara Jenkins returned to the festival with <em>Private Life</em>: a funny, moving film about a couple’s maddening and harrowing struggle with infertility. Starring Paul Giamatti and Kathryn Hahn, it offers wise, funny, and often surprising commentary about pain, love, and makeshift families. </p>
<aside id="UmxL6x"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Private Life is a terrific, heartbreaking look at a marriage through the lens of infertility","url":"https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/1/26/16912914/private-life-review-tamara-jenkins-kathryn-hahn-paul-giamatti-sundance"}]}'></div></aside><p id="0IE1Ql">It achieves this by irreverently locating the humor in the suffering — injecting hormones into buttocks, having to deliver semen samples for IVF, readying the house for a home visit from an adoption agency — without making light of those experiences. The result is an accessible and complex portrait of two people whose ardent shared desire for a child leads them in some unconventional directions, and it’s a joy to watch whether or not you can relate to their experience.</p>
<p id="kzK7ji">Private Life <em>will premiere</em><em> </em><em>later this year on Netflix.</em></p>
<h3 id="7jVk5L"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt7014006/"><em>Eighth Grade</em></a></h3>
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<img alt="Elsie Fisher in Eighth Grade" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/M7qNsbkF1GQyigNaM4UK3fu9h-U=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/10107115/24855647888_3430848e2a_k.jpg">
<cite>Sundance Institute</cite>
<figcaption>Elsie Fisher in <em>Eighth Grade.</em>
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<p id="NUYdgW">Frankly, I have no idea why <em>Eighth Grade</em> is as good as it is. YouTube personality and comedian <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC81hVmI5eEBIt3s3HQpJd_w">Bo Burnham</a> has never, to my knowledge, been an eighth-grade girl, but he nails the experience in this film, which he wrote and directed. </p>
<p id="JdWsuc">Elsie Fisher stars as Kayla, who’s in the final days of her hormonal eighth grade year, and desperate to have some friends and not feel like such a loser. Her story yields an understated film that doesn’t patronize Kayla’s interior life, but <em>man</em> does it know what it’s like to feel like the weird one in the room, with no idea how to fit in. And as a bonus, if you didn’t attend middle school in the age of YouTube, <em>Eighth Grade</em>’s portrayal of adolescence in the digital era will send you into fits of gratefulness. </p>
<p id="LouwDF">Eighth Grade <em>will be distributed by A24.</em></p>
<h3 id="4786YI"><a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/1/24/16918202/i-think-were-alone-now-review-dinklage-fanning-reed-morano"><em>I Think We’re Alone Now</em></a></h3>
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<img alt="Elle Fanning and Peter Dinklage in I Think We’re Alone Now" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/EMXoY5KM4hhmzNuasppnKPB1Y5Q=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/10086835/38711962201_1025b1bf8e_o.jpg">
<cite>Sundance Institute</cite>
<figcaption>Elle Fanning and Peter Dinklage in<em> I Think We’re Alone Now.</em>
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<p id="jdpFP0"><em>I Think We’re Alone Now </em>is a post-apocalyptic drama about the last man on earth (Peter Dinklage) and the girl who finds him (Elle Fanning). Directed and shot by Reed Morano (<em>The Handmaid’s Tale</em>), it falls somewhere between a relationship drama and an exploration of what it would be like to be completely<strong> </strong>alone in the world.</p>
<p id="tofajO">Rendered in beautiful landscapes and sensitive detail by Morano, and with two exceptionally strong performances from Dinklage and Fanning, the movie doesn’t so much tell you that they’re growing to care for one another as let you bear witness to their developing relationship as it happens. And when it takes an unexpected turn midway through, it becomes an intriguing (if a bit clunky) contemplation of what makes us human.</p>
<p id="7XEZOR">I Think We’re Alone Now <em>is awaiting distribution.</em></p>
<h3 id="j08OXW"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt7689906/"><em>Monsters and Men</em></a></h3>
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<img alt="Anthony Ramos and John David Washington in Monsters and Men" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/MRMOW5-2mROFgbHyxzRndjUovK4=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/10107095/38670426091_a393af3bb5_k.jpg">
<cite>Alystyre Julian/Sundance Institute</cite>
<figcaption>Anthony Ramos and John David Washington in <em>Monsters and Men.</em>
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<p id="7e16Wu">Triptych films can be hard to pull off — you need a strong central idea around which each of the three stories can revolve, and your audience needs to feel as if all three stories are connected in some way without getting frustrated by the brevity of each story. (<em>Moonlight</em> and <em>Certain Women</em> are two recent stellar examples.) <em>Monsters and Men</em> is a terrific triptych with a painful central event: a police shooting of a black man. </p>
<p id="TKaos0">Each of the film’s three segments revolves around a different character, and the shooting touches each of their lives in different ways. One man (Anthony Ramos) witnessed it; one is a black cop (John David Washington) who’s struggling to figure out how he should feel about it; and one is a rising baseball star (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) who feels a tug toward activism as a result of it. Director Reinaldo Marcus Green seems equally interested in making a visually beautiful film and making a film with a social conscience, and his lead actors turn in sensitive, strong performances that explore how a whole community can be affected by a single devastating event. </p>
<p id="IGYA20">Monsters and Men <em>will be distributed by Neon.</em></p>
<h3 id="Z0AM7k"><a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/1/22/16918208/sundance-sorry-to-bother-you-review-boots-riley"><em>Sorry to Bother You</em></a></h3>
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<img alt="Lakeith Stanfield appears in&nbsp;Sorry to Bother You&nbsp;by Boots Riley, an official selection of the U.S. Dramatic Competition at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ch_RBKsdSpAKQUArF6KEugfrpuM=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/10041951/sorrytobother.jpg">
<cite>Doug Emmett/Sundance Institute</cite>
<figcaption>Lakeith Stanfield in <em>Sorry to Bother You.</em>
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<p id="nEQCA2">Careening from office comedy to something like horror, <em>Sorry to Bother You</em> is a weird and funny and unsettling debut feature from rapper Boots Riley. It’s a bonkers satirical comedy starring Lakeith Stanfield, who plays an Oakland native in desperate need of a job; ultimately, he winds up at a telemarketing firm, where he finds success by using his “white voice.” </p>
<aside id="BdrFIg"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Sorry to Bother You is a bananas satirical comedy about code-switching and exploitative capitalism","url":"https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/1/22/16918208/sundance-sorry-to-bother-you-review-boots-riley"}]}'></div></aside><p id="YH8U78">To say the movie is playing with a lot of ideas is an understatement. It’s a live-wire comedy with a social conscience — a commentary on race, labor, and American capitalism (also starring Tessa Thompson and Armie Hammer) that veers in so many directions that it’s best to just strap in and let it take you where it wants you to go. It’s about exploitation and profit, it’s<strong> </strong>about the fetishization of black bodies and the indignities of code-switching, and it’s about giving up your dignity and trying to find love, all in a vaguely dystopian magical realist packaging. </p>
<p id="hHwCDO">Sorry to Bother You <em>will be distributed by Annapurna Pictures.</em></p>
<h3 id="PNRgwn"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt7784604/"><em>Hereditary</em></a></h3>
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<img alt="Hereditary" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/-6wWKgyTlBDo6drEzEOtzlZ67O0=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/10107099/hereditary.jpg">
<cite>A24</cite>
<figcaption><em>Hereditary.</em></figcaption>
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<p id="wfct1d"><em>Hereditary</em> is one of the creepiest and most terrifying horror films I’ve seen at Sundance since <em>The Witch </em>in 2015, with which it shares a fixation on the supernatural. But that’s more or less where the similarities end. </p>
<p id="3g06cC">With Toni Collette in an unforgettable, no-holds-barred leading role, <em>Hereditary</em> is best when it leans on uncanny, unsettling images (like a home rendered at first as a dollhouse, or a frozen, terrifying expression on a face) to make it feel like icy fingers are at your back. Even when it runs off the rails, it’s a hard film to shake, and as with recent<strong> </strong>films like <em>It Comes at Night </em>and <em>Green Room</em>, it’s destined to be the hit of the art-house horror circuit this year.</p>
<p id="1q98SG">Hereditary <em>will be released by A24 on June 8, 2018.</em></p>
<h3 id="LMzpr7"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt7242142/"><em>Blindspotting</em></a></h3>
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<img alt="Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal in Blindspotting" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/gXnQsXd9nGOE9ri28cXBYK_c3Bk=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/10107107/38613675816_d0699a7f2c_o.jpg">
<cite>Sundance Institute</cite>
<figcaption>Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal in <em>Blindspotting.</em>
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<p id="cCI1ti"><em>Blindspotting</em> was Sundance’s opening-night selection for 2018, and it was in many ways the ideal choice. Starring <em>Hamilton</em> alums Daveed Diggs and Jasmine Cephas Jones alongside Rafael Casal, the film feels shaky at times, but the authenticity and passion of its characters are unmistakable. </p>
<p id="nFmMmV">First-time director Carlos López Estrada works from an often very funny screenplay by Diggs and Casal to tell a story about two Oakland natives navigating their gentrifying hometown, neighborhood violence, police brutality, probation, and ordinary life. The movie takes some bold chances, and it succeeds enough to make it worth watching. (And yes, Diggs raps.)</p>
<p id="3EqgXk">Blindspotting <em>will be distributed by Lionsgate.</em></p>
https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/1/29/16939404/9-best-movies-sundance-2018Alissa Wilkinson