2021 Sundance Film Festival

 

After nearly a year-long hiatus both work (I've been busy in my day job as pastor of a fun / lively multilingual parish in SoCal and confronting quite head-on the homelessness crisis [1] [2] [3] here in our part of the county / country) and pandemic related, I've decided to put a toe in the water to see I could start writing my blog again.

First, I am very happy that a good number of the lovely if more obscure films that I've reviewed over the years have found their way to various streaming platforms [1] [2].  However, I'm most intrigued honestly by the door opened if perhaps only temporarily of being able to attend festivals like the the famed Sundance Film Festival virtually at home.  

At time of much suffering, being able to watch the films of the festival at home was a gift and one that I would honestly ask the movie industry to explore.  I had always liked the film festivals though lamented that many of their gems were almost impossible to find afterwards.  So I'm very happy to have the chance to both enjoy the films and to share my experiences of them here.

Among the Festival's showings I was able to see:

I was a Simple Man [2021] (written and directed by Christopher Makoto Yogi) a gentle personalist tale set in rural Hawaii about Masao Matsuyoshi (played in his youth, as an adult and as an elderly person by Kyle Kosaki, Tim Chiou and Steve Iwamoto respectively).  Born in Hawaii but with Japanese immigrant parents, he has a Chinese Hawaiian girl-friend named Grace (played by Constance Wu) who he marries over objections of his parents.  One would think that his life would be more or less set.  But then tragedy strikes and repeatedly: his parents and younger brother return to Japan just before the War starts and he never hears from them again.  His beautiful wife soon comes down with cancer and dies shortly afterwards, leaving him with children to raise, somewhat.  The film itself mostly plays out as he, now elderly, becomes ill and must prepare to meet the end of his life as well.  It's a gentle film about yes, a simple man, who nevertheless had a life of both simple pleasures and regrets.  -- 3 Stars  

How it Ends [2021] (written and directed by Zoe Lister-Jones and Daryl Wein) is an apocalyptic comedy conceived and filmed in Los Angeles during the summer of 2020 during the Coronavirus crisis: The story begins on the morning of the Last Day, an asteroid was going to hit and destroy the earth later that evening.  Presumably all that could be done, has been tried, and has failed.  All that was left to do was to prepare to die.  So the story follows "the last day" of Liza (played also by Zoe Lister-Jones) a late 20s early 30-something, Los Angeles residing computer programmer -- she had successfully created some random app a number of years back -- as she walks around the neighborhood, amusingly with "her younger self" (played by Cailee Spaeny who generally only she could see, but perhaps because it was "the last day" others began to see and interact with as well), while Liza tries to "set things right" with various people -- Liza's mom (played by Helen Hunt), dad (played by Bradley Whitford), her once BFF Ala (played by Olivia Wilde) and  heartthrob Sal (played by Logan Marshall-Green).  The scene in which Liza and Ala talk (and set things right) apparently after a long period of time is priceless / probably the best in the film.  Otherwise the film is simply a gentle film made under the trying circumstances of COVID. -- 2 1/2 Stars

In the Earth [2021] (written and directed by Ben Wheatley) is a COVID-recognizing horror film -- not directly about COVID-19 but certainly made in its context.  The film is about a rather desperate research experiment conducted in the forests of the English countryside in response to a fictionalized deadly pandemic where the increasingly mad scientists involved had made a link between the pandemic and the larger ecological crisis effecting the earth.  Basically "Nature had become mad as hell" and communicating through the interconnected root systems of trees had decided to fight back against a humanity that clearly did not respect it.  Much increasingly "mind blowing" ensues ;-) Yet as fun as the film's premise was, much more could have been done with it. That may have to wait for a larger budget and filming circumstances far less trying than those experienced in 2020. -- 2 Stars

The Pink Cloud (orig. A Nuvem Rosa) [2021] (written and directed by Iuli Gerbase) about a world-wide environmental crisis -- a deadly pink cloud appears driving everyone the world-over into their homes -- was actually conceived and filmed before the 2020-21 coronavirus pandemic.  Yet, the film predicts many of the problems (isolation / loneliness) and responses (use of videochats, social media) that we've come to rely on to get by during the COVID-19 crisis.  The film focuses on a 30-something couple Giovana (played by Renata de Lélis) and Yago (played by Eduardo Mendonça) who had just met / hooked-up the night before the deadly pink cloud had appeared.  Both had responsibilities outside, Giovana to her mother (somewhere), and to a younger sister (capable, of course, of communicating easily via social media), Yago to his aging father (with at least an in house caregiver) in the beginning stages of Alzheimers.  Yet now the two were stuck together "for the duration" of the crisis, and ... the crisis seems to extend ... .  Yes, the civil authorities come up with a simple if not particularly convincing mechanism of keeping everyone supplied with basic necessities -- food, water, electricity.  However, no one is able to go outside without facing quick, certain death.  So given the situation "what would you do? ..." -- 3 Stars

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