2024 Sundance Film Festival reviews
Tendaberry
Tendaberry follows the life of Dakota after the love of her life goes home to Ukraine to take care of his sick father — just months before Russia invades the country. With no way of knowing where he is or if he’s alive, Dakota is forced to come to terms with her new reality.
The constant brutality and equally comforting aspects of the city she calls home serve as the backdrop to Dakota’s life as she works, finds new friends, rediscovers old ones and eventually reconnects with her mother and roots.
One can only assume the name hails from the song written by Laura Nyro, “New York Tendaberry.” Nyro said, “Tendaberry is my own word, it’s an essence, it’s not death … it’s birth and it’s very tender, very fragile, very strong, very true. It’s a berry, a tendaberry.”
Depicted through handheld camera work, film and home footage, “Tendaberry” is a beautiful portrait of a young woman rediscovering herself in the underbelly of New York City and learning to come to terms with the inevitable experiences of loss, heartbreak and struggle.
Hit Man
Gary Johnson is a philosophy professor and a bachelor. He teaches boring lectures by day and goes home alone to a boring house at night. His only company are cats, Id and Ego. By happenstance, he discovers his hidden talents as a fake hit man and moonlights as such for the New Orleans police department.
While undercover, he meets an unexpected client and ends up in an intricately weaved web he must work his way out of.
With wit and humor, the true story of Gary Johnson is portrayed by Glen Powell as he lives a double life — one plain and simple, another risky, exciting and performative. While undoubtedly hilarious, the film also captures more serious themes of one’s identity, personality and the willingness or ability to change.
Rob Peace
Rob Peace is a man at war — with himself.
Hailing from Newark, New Jersey, Peace grew up in a rough area and is the child of an incarcerated man. He is a brilliant academic, and between fostering his passion for molecular biophysics and biochemistry research at boarding school and later on at Yale, he schemes at ways to get his father released from prison. While at college, Peace is at the forefront of marijuana sales for students and accumulates enough money to help his father.
Based on the biography by Jeff Hobbs and directed by Chiwetel Ejiofor, “Rob Peace” is a heart-wrenching depiction of being at odds with who you’re expected to be, who you want to be and the balance between the two.
The preview provided on festival.sundance.org reads, “Detailing Peace’s dual rise within the ranks of Yale and the Newark drug trade, Rob Peace explores the double bind between being true to one’s dreams and faithful to one’s roots, exposing the contradictions in the American dream for young Black men.”
My Old Ass
To celebrate her 18th birthday, Elliott Labrant goes on a mushroom-induced “trip” with her two best friends. During her hallucination, she is visited by her older self, who gives her a few pieces of advice, one of which is to avoid one person and more specifically, to not fall in love with them. “My Old Ass,” written and directed by Megan Park, answers the age-old question of “If you could visit your younger self, what piece of advice would you give them?” As Elliott goes forward preparing to leave for college and trying to follow the guidance of her older self, she learns alot, and the audience is faced with alot of emotions.
Seeing Elliott work to build her relationships with her family caused me to look back at when I left home for the first time and relive all the feelings, including joy and pain, that went along with that. Throughout the film, Elliott, and the audience along with her, learns that it’s OK to be young and dumb and make mistakes, as long as you’re happy living in the moment. Though I had to endure some secondhand embarrassment from some of Elliott’s actions, I was also filled with nostalgia and wistfulness. I enjoyed my fair share of laughs as well. For me, this film perfectly captured what it looks like to be a young girl emerging into adulthood. I left the theater eager to watch it all over again.
War Game
What if another insurrection similar to Jan. 6, 2021 happened? What if it escalated with members of the National Guard as part of the insurgents? These are the questions “War Game” answers. The movie follows a simulation put on by the organization Vet Voice. The simulation included high ranking officials from the last five presidential administrations playing the roles of the president and others who would be in the situation room in a scenario like this. As those officials sat around the table discussing their next moves, there was also a “red cell unit” acting as the insurgents and working against the U.S. government. Time is of the essence as those around the table only have six hours, and the anxiety throughout the film ensues as the problem gets worse and there doesn’t seem to be a clear answer. The stakes rise as time passes, and the question of whether the president will enact the Insurrection Act looms over the whole film.
Watching the movie, I felt great frustration because I felt like the focus was more on what the insurgents were doing than the government officials. This made it seem as though the government wasn’t really doing anything. Still, the movie does a great job of capturing the severity of the issue. This unscripted movie gets one thinking about the state of our country and had me seriously considering the threat of civil war in the U.S.
Union
Chris Smalls and a group of other workers at an Amazon distribution center in Staten Island who worked together to create their own union are the subjects of the documentary “Union.” It won the festival’s U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for the Art of Change.
The film, directed by Brett Story and Stephen Maing, shows the ups and downs throughout the group’s efforts to create the Amazon Labor Union, independent of any help or support from national organizations. It also shows the effort made by Amazon to stop the group. The union was officially created in 2022, despite pushback from the company. The film shows raw, unfiltered and unpolished moments of the group and their efforts, including moments filmed by workers on their phones. The phone videos are used to show what was happening inside the distribution center and what the company was doing to fight against the union.
A constant theme throughout the whole film is the perseverance of those fighting for this union everyday for months on end. The movie shared a message of hope — a hope that the underdog can win. When seeing this ragtag group of individuals stand up against a huge corporation such as Amazon and see success against all odds, one cannot help but feel inspired. The rawness of the film is amplified by the fact that it doesn’t just show the successes but many of the group’s failures as well.
Ponyboi
In a world where cowboy meets thriller, “Ponyboi” is the best of all things queer and crime. This piece of cinema follows a young intersex sex worker called Ponyboi from the hovels of New Jersey who finds himself caught in the middle of love, drugs and a mob. We meet Angel, who is Ponyboi’s work bestie, and Vinny, Angel’s baby daddy, drug dealer and prostitution business owner. Ponyboi also has a chance encounter with an older gentleman, who to me symbolizes his rough past with his country father. The gentleman ends up tipping his hat to Ponyboi and disappearing into the clouds. This signifies Ponyboi leaving behind his messy past life and working on mending his future. Each of these people presents new paths and challenges for Ponyboi to face and ultimately overcome to help heal his inner child.
This film encompassed the internal battle that intersex people might have when faced with the world telling them to choose and pick a side. It has sprinkles of crime, passion and family added into the mix to make this film powerful but also entertaining. “Ponyboi” is sure to give you whiplash, with the changing themes and unexpected emotions, but in the best ways possible.
The Mother of All Lies
Set in Casablanca, “The Mother of All Lies” is a film inside a film meant to show just how important photographs can be not for just you, but many generations to follow. This movie is filmed almost as a video diary for Asmae ElMoudir, the granddaughter of Zahra, who doesn’t allow photographs to be taken of her or anyone else in the family. Confused and wanting answers, ElMoudir sets out to find the truth behind this strange rule by making replica dolls and cardboard houses to represent their street in Morocco. Due to a riot that occurred in 1981, ElMoudir suspects it has something to do with her grandmother’s resentment towards savoring memories through photos.
Throughout the film, we see this paper town slowly take shape, while all of Zahra’s family peels away the thick layers of guilt and sorrow that built up over the years. This cinematic story gets the audience thinking back on their own personal voyage and how our memories are as precious as gold.