All Of Deadline’s Reviews From The Festival So Far

It’s the last dance for Sundance in Park City as the indie-focused festival prepares to relocate to Boulder, Colorado, next year. It’s also the first fest to go on without its legendary Oscar-winning founder Robert Redford, who died in September.

The event’s 42nd edition kicked off January 22 and runs through Sunday, February 1, with a lineup that features 105 projects — including 90 features and seven TV episodes — screening in Park City, nearby Salt Lake City and online.

Below is a compilation of our reviews from the fest. Click on the movie’s title to read our full take.

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Section: Midnight
Director: Casper Kelly
Cast: Cristin Milioti, Delaney Quinn, Topher Grace, Keegan-Michael Key, Michael Shannon, Patton Oswalt
Deadline’s takeaway: Casper Kelly plays with form in ways that some might find exasperating, but there is always a method to his madness. An ingenious slasher movie with crowd-pleasing moments of gross-out comedy, it’s about what TV means to us — how much we invest in what’s clearly fake and not what it actually is. — DW

Section: Premieres
Director-screenwriter: Rachel Lambert
Cast: Chris Pine, Jenny Slate, Abby Ryder Fortson, Sam Waterston, Katey Sagal, Jessica Harper, Jeffrey DeMunn, Helene York
Deadline’s takeaway: It’s a story about love lost, love found again and the cost of both with the baggage from the past, the tentativeness of the present and the questions of a future.  Chris Pine is a fine actor not often given the chance to play this kind of reflective adult role, and it is perfect for him. — PH

Section: Family Matinee
Director: Jeffrey Walker
Cast: Taika Waititi, Penelope Wilton, Iona Bell, Mia Wasikowska, Blake Harrison, David Walliams, Richard Roxburgh, Robyn Nevin, Sidhant Anann, Matt Lucas
Deadline’s takeaway: Fing! flies firmly in the tradition of whimsical and beloved family movies like Paddington, Nanny McPhee, Stuart Little, Peter Rabbit and the offbeat Hunt For the Wilderpeople. Featuring a standout turn by Taika Waititi, the Australian-British production proves one of the festival’s unexpected delights. — PH

Section: Premieres
Director: Cathy Yan
Cast: Natalie Portman, Jenna Ortega, Sterling K. Brown, Zach Galifianakis, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Catherine Zeta-Jones
Deadline’s takeaway: The art world is easy to mock, and The Gallerist doesn’t really say very much that’s new. Natalie Portman, however, keeps our focus on the task in hand, and the film is fun while it lasts, with the female-skewed script offering food for thought about the male dominance of the art space while making serious points about value and self-worth. — DW

Section: U.S. Dramatic Competition
Director: Josef Kubota Wladyka
Cast: Rinko Kikuchi, Alberto Guerra, Alejandro Edda, YOU, Yoh Yoshida, Damián Alcázar
Deadline’s takeaway: Wladyka paints a beautiful picture of life and love, grief and closure, using dance as a universal language to express all of the above, with help from a talented ensemble of Japanese and Latin actors led by Rinko Kikuchi. — GG

Section: World Dramatic Competition
Director-screenwriter: Louis Paxton
Cast: Domhnall Gleeson, Gayle Rankin, Grant O’Rourke, Michelle Gomez, John Hannah
Deadline’s takeaway: Against the odds, and largely thanks to the core trio, The Incomer pulls together, finally addressing the story’s dark well of sadness and ending on an upbeat yet surprisingly mature and even emotional note that absolves the film for most — if not all — of its frequent forays into silliness. — DW

Section: Premieres
Director: Olivia Wilde
Cast: Seth Rogen, Olivia Wilde, Penélope Cruz, Edward Norton
Deadline’s takeaway: Coming off the polarizing reception to her last directorial outing Don’t Worry Darling, Olivia Wilde’s newest work more than makes up for any gripes with a film that explores the dynamics of sex and relationships with raw and endearing honesty, as a once-head-over-heels couple blows up their marriage in the course of one dinner and maybe attempts to repair it again. — GG

Section: Premieres
Director: Gregg Araki
Cast: Olivia Wilde, Cooper Hoffman, Mason Gooding, Chase Sui Wonders, Daveed Diggs, Charli XCX
Deadline’s takeaway: Forget the ball-gags, the dildos, and the vagina made of bubblegum, I Want Your Sex is surprisingly relatable at its core: Ever fallen in love with someone you shouldn’t have fallen in love with? — GG

Section: U.S. Dramatic Competition
Director-screenwriter: Beth de Araujo
Cast: Mason Reeves, Channing Tatum, Gemma Chan, Philip Ettinger, Syra McCarthy, Eleanore Pienta
Deadline’s takeaway: Josephine is a tough watch right from the beginning, when a rape is graphically presented onscreen and is witnessed by an 8-year-old girl. But it effectively offers a different POV on the human cost of rape and the frustration in the legal system and might help others who’ve endured childhood trauma. — PH

Section: Premieres
Director: Aidan Zamiri
Cast: Charli XCX, Rosanna Arquette, Kate Berlant, Jamie Demetriou, Hailey Gates, Alexander Skarsgård
Deadline’s takeaway: A time capsule of 2024, that brief moment of optimism in which the world was painted brat green, Charli XCX opted for this meta satire, as opposed to churning out another concert film into the world. What fans got instead of the oversaturated music doc genre the film so deliciously satirizes is a spiritual sequel to Spice World (1997) as a psychological thriller. — GG

Section: Midnight
Director-screenwriter: Natalie Erika James
Cast: Midori Francis, Danielle Macdonald, Madeleine Madden
Deadline’s takeaway: It feels like an appropriate metaphor when the main character in this graphic, overlong body horror pic for the Ozempic era performs surgery on herself in a giant dumpster. The filmmaker appears to be unpacking so much of her own emotional experience, she’s not seeing the garbage for the dumpster. — GG 

Section: Premieres
Director-screenwriter: Macon Blair
Cast: Dave Franco, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Mason Thames, Kiernan Shipka, Nicholas Braun, Peter Dinklage
Deadline’s takeaway: Macon Blair’s The Sh*theads always feels organic not matter how outlandish — not to mention scatological — the digressions become. It would be a stretch to interpret it as a biting political satire, but, like Adam McKay’s The Other Guys, there is a definitely strong and very intentional vein of social comment here. Also, the casting couldn’t be better. — DW