FILM
ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT Dispatch from the 2024 Sundance Film Festival BY MICHAEL J. CASEY
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— felt somewhat light, even incomplete. Or maybe it was sheer coincidence in my picks. It can be hard to tell which titles in a 140-plus slate of features and shorts will be talked about for years to come and which will vanish into the cinematic Dreya Castillo, Luciana Elisa Quinonez and René Pérez Joglar in In the Summers. Courtesy: Sundance ether. Still, there were those gems in comparison to the loud and eyeResidente — In the Summers follows one comes to Sundance to find. Top catching headlines documentaries like two daughters, Violeta and Eva, and among them, In the Summers, which Love Machina and Eternal You are their relationship with their somewhat won the U.S. Grand Jury Prize in the bound to invoke. Both are about artifiestranged father, Vincente (Joglar), Dramatic Competition. cial intelligence, and both discuss the who lives miles away in Las Cruces, Written and directed by Alessandra possibility of using generative A.I. to New Mexico. Lacorazza and anchored by an excelovercome mortality. Your body may die, Lacorazza sets her narrative over lent performance by René Pérez Joglar but your mind will live on forever. four summers spanning 15 years, — also known as the musician Sounds lofty, sure, but Love Machina which necessitates three different pairs (directed by Peter Sillen) and Eternal of actors to play the siblings (each pairYou (directed by Hans Block and Moritz ing as good as the previous) but works Riesewieck) are convinced that this sciwonders against Joglar, who plays the ence fiction will soon be science fact — father in all four sections. As Violeta if it isn’t already. That raises a whole and Eva grow and become completely mess of questions, each one poked at different people, Vincente remains with glee by the directors of their more or less the same, just with more gray hairs in his beard and lines around respective docs. Unfortunately, that’s also where they his eyes. The weight of missed opporstop. Eternal You shares more of the tunities is evident. darker aspects of where A.I. might lead, There’s a strong whiff of autobiography to In the Summers, which gives the but Block and Riesewieck are as light on answers as Sillen is in Love otherwise quiet movie a profundity that Machina. would be hard to manufacture otherAnd that seemed to be the overarchwise. The same is true for India ing theme of Sundance 2024: provocaDonaldson’s Good One, which follows Daniel Grao, Guido Grao and Melina Matthews in The Masterpiece. Courtesy: Sundance tion without resolution. You can feel it in 17-year-old Sam (Lily Collias) on a Eternal You and you can feel it in Good backpacking trip through Upstate New One. You can feel it in Power (Yance York with her father (James Le Gros) Ford’s documentary about policing in and his friend (Danny McCarthy). the U.S.), Between the Temples The two middle-aged men bring (Nathan Silver’s dramedy about a humor to Good One’s script, in addition young cantor and his much older bat to regret and a shroud of tension that mitzvah student) and you can really feel Sam navigates deftly — though not it in Àlex Lora Cercós’ The without lingering questions. Masterpiece, which won the Short Film Sundance is known for launching the careers of independent filmmakers, and Grand Jury Prize. Then again, that might be where we there is little doubt that once In the are these days. We know we have a Summers and Good One hit theaters problem, and we know what that proband streaming services, Lacorazza and lem is. Solving it, well, that’s still beyond Donaldson will get the attention they our grasp. deserve — even if that attention pales Lily Collias in Good One. Courtesy: Sundance f all the film fests hit hard these past four years, none took it on the chin quite like the Sundance Film Festival. First, there was the planned switch from in-person to virtual in 2021. Then, an eleventh-hour scuttle yielded the same for 2022. The 2023 festival looked like the new normal — a hybrid of in-person and virtual screenings — but then came dual strikes from the Screen Actors Guild and the Writers Guild of America, hampering the 2024 movies in development and production. That might begin to explain why so many of the entries I saw at the 40th Sundance Film Festival — which wrapped on Jan. 28 in Park City, Utah
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