by Alex Rudolph, Staff Writer

I watched five films through the Sundance Film Festival's website this year and truly enjoyed each of them. This was, big surprise, my hope going in. I was excited to realize three of my five selections had been their directors' feature-length debuts, and that one was the first documentary by an experienced narrative filmmaker. As much as I love settling in for a new project from an old favorite, it's just as special to get knocked on my ass by somebody I get to read about and keep tabs on as they begin what could/should be a fruitful career.

Gary Kramer wrote up The Watcher, one of my five, and it looks like he and I align pretty closely on our appreciation of that one. Here are the other four movies I watched in beautiful Park City, Utah from an aux cord hanging out of my old laptop.

Dual (dir. Riley Stearns)

This is the third feature from the director of Faults and The Art of Self-Defense, two dry, mean movies that I love. Stearns debuted at Sundance with a compact little short film called "The Cub" that functions like a Ramones song in an Eagles world.

Dual is about a world in which the dying are given the option to clone themselves for the benefit of grieving friends and family. Having an inoperable condition is almost framed as selfish in the movie's weird reality (we're watching characters who are ostensibly running around somewhere in America, but the film was shot in Finland and makes almost zero effort to hide it). Karen Gillan's Sarah gets cloned, beats her mystery illness and has to spend a year preparing to fight her clone to death. The law says clones and originals can't co-exist, which is especially rough as Sarah's husband and mother quickly cotton more to the clone than they had to Sarah herself. Aaron Paul plays the man hired to train Sarah for what promises to be a tense, televised bloodsport.

It's amazing, the way this felt unbearably tense-- not in a cliched, meaningless way, but actually unbearable, actually "if this keeps going, I'm going to have to turn this off"-- and then when it had ended, I wanted another half hour. And I don't actually want that. I just want to continue to feel present in this stiff, cold world and luxuriate in every detail. Because everything here is a choice. The fonts and user interfaces on the Internet Sarah scrolls through, the name of a porn she watches, the ad underneath that porn, the moments otherwise reserved characters are allowed to be sarcastic or outwardly pissed. It's a contrived movie, to the point that the sparseness of the scenes, surely at least somewhat a result of COVID safety regulations, feels like a choice. I wish everybody gave this much shit about their art. The end is a gut punch that quickly becomes easier to take with a few perfect jokes, which is so smart because it allows the film to both throw you for a loop and quickly snap you back into a headspace where you can deal with what Stearns and his crew are trying to say. It's about self-acceptance and compassion and at least a little bit about an affair and I would have watched it twice this week if that didn't mean spending $40 to rent a film I'll definitely buy outright.

2nd Chance (dir. Ramin Bahrani)

Guggenheim fellow Bahrani has made movies that feel real before (Man Push Cart, Chop Shop) but 2nd Chance is the first actual documentary in his catalog. He also made the recent adaptation of Fahrenheit 451 for HBO, which remains the only Michael Shannon movie I've been too bored to finish. I don't hold that against him, though-- he's a smart guy who made the mistake of casting Shannon and then making him play a normal guy who could live in the real world.

2nd Chance is the story of enterprising dumbass Richard Davis' body armor company of the same name. Davis is a liar and possible sociopath who failed upward until he ran a company so large and respected they were contracted to provide bulletproof vests to George W. Bush and American troops in Iraq. Davis holds every life his armor have saved close, ultimately directing a number of lower-rent Faces of Death-style anthology films, where he gets police officers to re-enact getting shot and killing their shooters. Bahrani has always been an empathetic director, and it's a joy to watch him call Davis on his bullshit while leaving schadenfreude behind long enough to sincerely vouch for the people that bullshit landed on. When this lands on a streaming service later this year or next, everybody will tweet about it at least twice.

The Mission (dir. Tania Anderson)

Another Finnish production about Americans, oddly enough, Anderson's documentary focuses on four young Mormon adults embarking on their mission trips. I had assumed getting assigned to Finland, where the standard of living probably makes the US look like the nightmare it is, would have been the lucky and preferred draw. I didn't realize the trip entailed learning fluent Finnish, living in a small dorm with your fellow missionaries and contacting family on a weekly basis (if that). These kids don't even know each others' first names.

The Mission is bleak but compassionate, which is the best kind of bleak and the only kind I can handle at this point. I think it's safe to describe Dual and 2nd Chance in those terms as well, which makes for a very on-the-nose introduction to 2022. The missionaries are all totally secure in their LDS faith, which puts them closer to contentment than I'll ever be, but I felt terrible for them as they got flipped off and sworn at by random passersby. The church sends them into two years of rejection, hostility and loneliness. Anderson, herself Finnish, was granted unprecedented access to that process, and one subject in particular, Elder Davis, fully opens up about his depression, suicidal thoughts and mental illness. I kept wanting to sit down with him. I wanted to call him by his first name.

Palm Trees & Power Lines (dir. Jamie Dack)

Jamie Dack's first film was the best thing I saw at a festival where, again, everything I bought a ticket for was at least "very good." Palm Trees & Power Lines follows a 34-year-old man, played by Jonathan Tucker, and the 17-year-old girl, played by newcomer Lily McInerny, who he grooms. I thought last year's Red Rocket was pretty special, but it's hard to compare that to what happens here. For one, there isn't any artifice in Dack's story. Sometimes, a movie dealing with such heavy subject matter will artificially decrease the distance between its characters by playing with POV or subjectivity. There's none of that here. Tucker plays a terrible, unredeemable person. The film constantly reminds you that McInerny's character is a kid, whether through the way she talks, the pinky swear she gives a friend, etc. She's a smart kid, written to be a full human being, but she's a kid. I related to her teen ennui and loneliness, but Palm Trees & Power Lines continually reminded me that, as a 32-year-old guy, I have more in common with the monster than I do the victim.

It's a horror film, whether anybody calls it that. Tucker drives a truck that's always framed like a tank, its engine always audible, and every time McInerny gets into the truck you become more aware of how inevitable certain plot developments are becoming. Gretchen Mol, playing McInerny's mom, has a great character. She cares, just not enough. None of what happens is her fault, but you don't like her much anyway. She's naive, but she isn't stopping the damage, and maybe when I watch this again in a few months, I'll be easier on her. Maybe I was just so repulsed by the Tucker character that I threw blame at anybody I could. I needed somebody to do something. McInerny is a great enough actor that I felt the way I imagine Dack wanted me to: I thought she had agency, but knew she had less than she thought.

I wish I had seen most of the year's Sundance films in theaters, but Palm Trees & Power Lines may have been too uncomfortable for that. Or maybe it would be more comfortable, because I'd be more aware of my surroundings and a stranger rustling through their popcorn bag would have kicked me out of the movie for a second and given me some respite. Watching it alone, on my TV, I was given the perfect level of "Ah, fuck," and when the movie ended and I was still alone, I knew I would remember the feeling forever.