Sundance 2024: OMHP’s Favorite Films
Welcome to the latest episode of One Moore Hollywood Podcast. Our hosts, Chris Moore, Katie Marpe, and Dennis De Nobile, are freshly back from Sundance and ready to fire off all their opinions about the movies they saw.
Despite a couple of disappointing films and one perplexing situation where a movie they had bought tickets for (Freaky Tales) was too full to let them in, our hosts had a solid time at Sundance 2024. Let’s dive in.
Movies To Look Out For
Among the films our hosts saw, several stood out.
Marpe's first viewing was Ghostlight, co-directed by Kelly O'Sullivan and Alex Thompson. A story about family and community, this was picked up for distribution at the festival by IFC Films. Marpe says you'll probably love it, so keep an eye out.
Moore and De Nobile saw and loved the English spring break drama How To Have Sex, a film that has already come out in England and recently been nominated for a BAFTA. Sundance was How To Have Sex’s US debut, and it hit select US theaters on February 2nd. So if you want to see it now, you might be able to.
The action-comedy Hit Man, written by Glen Powell and directed by Richard Linklater, was a major hit (see what I did there) with the crew, even though they were confused about why Sundance would include such a mainstream film in the festival lineup. Regardless, it's fun, big, exciting, and coming out on Netflix in June.
Thelma, a sweet and funny revenge story about getting old, was a festival favorite for Marpe and Moore. Acquired in a bidding war after the festival by Magnolia Pictures, Thelma is slated for wide theatrical release, with the timing TBD. According to Marpe and Moore, Thelma is a quintessential Sundance movie–small, heartwarming, and character-centered.
Marpe initially had conflicting feelings about A Different Man, which she saw alone. “It had a distinctive tone like nothing I'd ever seen. It was dark but edgy and cool and loud and grotesque. It was a jarring sensory experience,” she says. Centering on themes of representation and identity, this film and its story stayed with Marpe, and the more she thought about it, the higher her rating went. It now sits solidly at a 4.5 out of 5. "I think I loved it," she says, “I think the director, Aaron Schimberg, really accomplished what he was trying to accomplish with the story."
Marpe also saw Love Me, one of two Kristen Stewart films at the festival, a story about a buoy and a satellite that fall in love. While Moore has expressed much trepidation about this concept (staying far away from the screening at Sundance), Marpe stands by it. "I liked it! It's like an AI love story," she insists.
The festival prize winners were two coming-of-age films–Didi scored the Audience Award, and In the Summers landed The Grand Jury Prize. Neither of these films had yet to acquire distribution at the time of their wins. "This helped me understand that maybe these awards are to help bring attention to movies that don't have distribution yet," Marpe suggests.
Other favorites for our hosts included The American Society of Magical Negroes, Love Lies Bleeding (the other Kristen Stewart movie), Ponyboi, and Suncoast.
Some…Not Quite Favorites
While our hosts enjoyed many of the films they saw, a few didn't make the cut.
I Saw The TV Glow was, by far, Marpe and De Nobile's least favorite film of the festival. The upset they felt upon the first viewing has only been heightened by the positive reviews it's continued to get. Marpe's main issue with the movie was that it kept the audience in a perpetual state of expecting something to happen, but nothing ever did. "Whatever it was revealing, I missed," she says. "It was the cinema equivalent of jumping on a bicycle with no seat," De Nobile states.
Moore's reasoning for why this movie might be getting positive reviews comes down to what he describes as the nature of the film festival crowd in attendance. According to him, the audience at a film festival always wants to find something to love about the movies they see. However, Marpe and De Nobile are adamant that they must have missed something (if you, the reader, were at Sundance and have any insight into what people love about this movie, De Nobile and Marpe are all ears).
My Old Ass was another film that fell flat for De Nobile and Marpe. "I think Katie and I had the most Sundance experience–we woke up the next day and rewrote the entire movie and how we would have done it differently." The fact that this movie needed notes after completion, Moore says, can be partly tied to its not having a studio backing it. Had a studio been attached, more people would likely have been designated to solve plot and pacing problems.
Amazon disagreed with De Nobile and Marpe’s assessment, purchasing the film for a cool 15 million–a relatively small sum for them to get a cute movie featuring Aubrey Plaza.
Ultimately, our hosts agree that this was a good Sundance for them, chock full of exciting films and stories they can't wait to see out in the world. Keep your eyes peeled!
Listen to the entire episode here: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or iHeartRadio.
