Though January is one of the slower months for movie releases, this year's Sundance Film Festival more than made up for this with screenings of some of the best and boldest films you'll be likely to see in 2024. Last week, I braved the perilous Park City cold and labyrinthian lines to find the ones that you should have on your film-watching radar.
A REAL PAIN
The second feature directed by Jesse Eisenberg to premiere at Sundance (after 2022's When You Finish Saving the World), A Real Pain is a much more assured and confident work that also boasts an outstanding performance from Succession's Kieran Culkin.
It follows the drastically different cousins David (Eisenberg) and Benji (Culkin) as they go on a tour through Poland to honor their late grandmother by finding her home. Giving this life is a magnificent Culkin, whose performance grabs hold of you right from the opening shot and doesn't let go until the mirroring closing image. With biting humor and reflective sadness, it is in his eyes that we get a portrait of a troubled man who is himself looking to be seen.
I SAW THE TV GLOW
With their flooring 2022 debut, We're All Going to the World's Fair (my second-best film of that year), writer/director Jane Schoenbrun set the bar high for themselves.
They've now done so once again.
In I Saw the TV Glow, Schoenbrun expands the scope of their vision without ever losing sight of their incisive ability to excavate the particulars of growing up, navigating identity and the way media shapes our lives. Specifically, the media in question is the fictional supernatural TV series The Pink Opaque that is a point of fascination for two young people — wonderfully played by Justice Smith (Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves) and Brigette Lundy-Paine (Bill & Ted Face the Music) — who are looking for an escape. When the show is canceled, they'll spend the rest of their lives searching for what it was that it meant and why it was that they were so moved by it in the first place.
Drawing some understandable comparisons to the work of David Lynch, it more feels like Schoenbrun has made their own Synecdoche, New York, one that remains a surreal and distinct work of art. It emerges as a stunning achievement whose striking visuals will linger in your mind. After experiencing such an evocative emotional epic that becomes hauntingly beautiful, you too will want to wind the tape back to play it again as soon as it ends.
LOVE LIES BLEEDING
In her second feature after 2019's searing Saint Maud, Rose Glass crafts a love story that is sweaty, sexy, sweet, and sadistic all at once. A darkly funny film, it is a thrilling experience in moments big and small.
Centering on the lonely Lou, played by a terrific Kristen Stewart, we see how her life is forever changed when the charismatic bodybuilder Jackie (played by a killer Katy O'Brian of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania) drifts into the small-town gym where she works. The two are instantly drawn to each other, resulting in the most romantic steroid-injecting scene you'll ever see. And that's just the beginning of this wild ride of a film.
The less that is known the better, but this is the premiere that got so much buzz that I almost wasn't able to get into the film's final packed press screening. It was easy to see why with Stewart and O'Brian proving to be as delightful to watch and Rose taking increasingly big swings before launching us to a towering new height in a mad yet mirthful climax.
YOUR MONSTER
Last but definitely not least is Caroline Lindy's charming feature debut Your Monster starring Melissa Barrera of Scream and Scream VI, who proves she's already moved beyond her controversial departure from that horror franchise.
Here she plays Laura, whose monster of a boyfriend broke up with her in the hospital after she went through surgery for cancer. She ends up finding an actual monster (Tommy Dewey) living in her childhood home while she recovers. As the two grow closer, Laura will have to determine what's next. Does she go back to her old life or embrace a new one with this monster? Both silly and sharp, it all works as we get swept up in a playful horror-comedy that builds to a real showstopper of an ending.
