A new year means a new Sundance Film Festival, and a fresh crop of promising original features that could go on to become awards season darlings in a few months. It might be hard to top last year’s festival where Dìdi, A Different Man, and I Saw the TV Glow all made strong showings. But with films like Atropia, Bubble & Squeak, and Didn’t Die on the roster, this year’s Sundance might just do the trick.
Naturally, The Verge is going to be taking in as much of Sundance as we can and posting bite-sized reviews of everything we see. We’ll also be posting longer reviews and sharing trailers, and you can follow along here to keep up with all of the news out of the festival.
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By Design.It turns out Juliette Lewis makes a very good chair. In this surreal film her character Camille feels overlooked and ignored, until one day she finds the most beautiful designer chair, and the two somehow switch places. While Camille’s inanimate body becomes a strange source of fascination for her friends, she truly feels seen with her soul inside of the chair, which has become an obsession for pianist Olivier (Mamoudou Athie). The movie can drag in moments, particularly because of its lengthy narration, but its strange vision is weirdly charming and eventually pushes towards a surprisingly intense climax.
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Didn’t Die.
A zombie apocalypse isn’t enough to stop Vinita’s (Kiran Deol) podcast ambitions. She hosts the titular show despite the world coming to an end, and a planned live performance for episode 100 becomes a useful way to connect with survivors, who are largely isolated in this dystopic world. Didn’t Die starts out as mostly a comedy, with the scary bits serving as background, but when Vinita’s ex and a surprise baby get involved, it becomes a touching –and tragic – story of family and loss, one that ends on a heartwarming and hopeful note.
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The Legend of Ochi.
A gorgeous adventure in the mold of E.T., the movie has a lot of promise but is missing the spark to truly stand out. It takes place in an isolated mountain community, where ape-like creatures called ochi are hunted by farmers trying to keep their livestock safe. But when a young girl (Helena Zengel) finds an injured baby ochi, she sets off on a quest to return it to its family. The creature design is incredible, and there’s a lot of mystery to the post-apocalyptic seeming world. Ultimately, though, Ochi is a charming-yet-fairly-standard family-friendly adventure. (It hits theaters on April 25th.)