HECK YEAH BABY HERE WE GO AGAIN MAMMA MIA! I am not sick this year AND I am snowed in so I am VERY excited to watch a ton of these films. I decided to start BIG and go for the weirdo films first:
Midnight Short Film Program
(As a side note: I tried to go back to some past years via the links in my blog posts, and these links deprecate SUPER fast. My apologies for link rot, but hey that's the contemporary internet...)
The Worm dir. Tom Noakes
A young man’s strange belief sparks an intervention from his family.
This one hooked me (ba dum tsss) pretty firmly from the beginning, but the very last beat kind of left me adrift. It didn't feel particularly wide or specific, just... there. It felt like a lot of other Sundance films that I've seen that have great camera work and production value and Eh story. It worked, but it could have worked better.
Taga dir. Jill Marie Sachs
Vivi, a third-culture Filipina American, travels to the Philippines to reconnect with her roots but falls in with a group of Western eco-volunteers. When they scorn the customs of a remote mountain village, an ancient evil comes knocking.
I will admit, it was deeply obvious what was going to happen to these white eco-nerds from the jump, but it was still well done. Well paced, lit, acted, costumed, directed. Well done! I don't think it will stick with me too deeply, but a well made film is a well made film. One thing I did think worked well was the lead's performance. She was a nice perspective character that was well performed, even if her characterization leaned a bit stereotypical/stock at times.
Homemade Gatorade dir. Carter Amelia Davis
A woman embarks on a road trip to deliver her creamy homemade sports drink to a mysterious online buyer.
Nasty gross crunchy! It was soooo bitcrunched in a really excellent way. I was very impressed at how intentional every part of the uncomfortable and disjointed atmosphere felt throughout the ENTIRE film. It encapsulated the feeling of being online AND offline right now in a visceral way. A great watch when you are looking for deep care for craft while also being kind of skeezed out by what's happening onscreen.
UM dir. Nieto
The bird people have fallen into violent chaos and are prey to a disturbing phenomenon: Their eggs seem to be haunted by demonic faces. Their hatching appears to herald an imminent catastrophe.
Um is right. I think I spent most of this film trying to figure out what I wanted to say about this film, which to me isn't a great sign. I think it was fascinating in the same way seeing the inside of a tree that's half fallen over because it was struck by lightening is fascinating. Actually that's not true I think I'd find the tree more fascinating (I was just trying to think of something less morbid as an example). It's chaotic, it's wild, it's weird and violent and gruesome and fascinating.
¡PIKA! dir. Alex Fischman Cárdenas
A man wakes up with an unbearable itch. Anxious to find a cure, he embarks on a nightmarish odyssey in search of relief.
I will be so real with you. When we got to the finale of this film, my jaw actually dropped open. It wasn't even like I was *surprised* at what was happening (stop reading if you don't want spoilers), as the movie's editorial hand deftly built towards that conclusion, but seeing this man literally be sucked up into his mother's womb was still so viscerally shocking that my mouth stayed open for that entire sequence. This film had a solid hook and the way everything escalated wildly did make the ending not feel totally crazy. It's something I'll be thinking about a lot more, I can already tell, as I have a film that escalates in a similar way that's been brewing in the background for many years now.
A note on trends in Sundance shorts
I've started to notice a trend among Sundance shorts now that I've been watching them for several years. They often really like stories with excellent production values and are pretty okay with stock stories so long as they look and sound great. They don't even need the story to have much complexity - though that varies a lot - so long as it is told neatly. It's an interesting trend for one of the heavy hitters (to my mind anyway) of film festivals! I wonder if that analysis holds true of the feature and episodic programming as well.