Dispatches from the Sundance Film Festival are usually accompanied by descriptions of the looming mountains, snowy premieres and frantic bus shuttles.<\/b>
\nDispatches from the Sundance Film Festival are usually accompanied by descriptions of the looming mountains, snowy premieres and frantic bus shuttles. This year\u2019s Sundance, which played out entirely virtually due to the COVID-19 surge driven by the omicron variant, meant less evocative screening circumstances: Laptops, digital links and Zooms. But even in reduced form, the films were often hypnotic, thrilling and urgent. Here are 10 films that stood out to AP Film Writers Lindsey Bahr and Jake Coyle from their virtual Sundance, which wrapped Sunday. \u2014 \u201cFire of Love\u201d: Katia and Maurice Krafft were married French volcanologists who spent their lives documenting the world\u2019s volcanoes and died during one such expedition in Japan in 1991. Werner Herzog used them briefly in \u201cInto the Inferno,\u201d but the Kraffts and their stunning photographs and 16-millimeter films get the spotlight in Sara Dosa\u2019s \u201cFire of Love,\u201d a mesmerizing and almost mystical portrait of love and the extremes of the natural world to be released by National Geographic. With a synthy indie pop score (including Brian Eno and Air), Miranda July narration and experimental editing, it\u2019s like Mike Mills meets Terrence Malick meets Guy Maddin. \u2014 LB \u2014 \u201cDescendent\u201d: Margaret Brown\u2019s documentary concerns the discovery of the Clotilda, a schooner submerged in Alabama\u2019s Mobile River in 1860, considered to be the last known slave ship to bring enslaved Africans to the U.S. But Brown\u2019s film, which was acquired by Netflix and the Obamas\u2019 High Ground Productions, excavates far more than the Clotilda. In taking a wide lens to the descendants of the ship and the present-day circumstances of Africatown near Mobile, where many of the survivors settled, \u201cDescendant\u201d lyrically ruminates on the legacy of slavery in America, telescoping past and present like few films before it. \u2014 JC \u2014 \u201cCha Cha Real Smooth\u201d: On paper, this movie looks like something that came out of a round of Sundance mad-libs: Aimless college grad gets hired by local mothers to be a party starter on the local bar-mitzvah circuit and strikes up a friendship with a young single mom of an autistic teenage daughter. And yet Cooper Raiff\u2019s sophomore film, which he stars in alongside Dakota Johnson, is never what you expect. Sweet, funny and moving, this is a small, indie trope-defying gem that\u2019ll be on Apple TV+ this year. \u2014 LB \u2014 \u201cThe Exiles\u201d: Sundance\u2019s grand jury prize winner for documentary is a sometimes awkwardly balanced fusion of essentially two films that nevertheless makes for a profound examination of political dissent and missed opportunity for change. \u201cThe Exiles,\u201d which is directed by Ben Klein and Violet Columbus and executive produced by Steven Soderbergh, seems initially like a portrait of Christine Choy, the brash Oscar-nominated filmmaker and professor. Choy has more than enough personality to fill a character study, but she\u2019s a framing device here. \u201cThe Exiles\u201d leans on footage Choy shot in the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre with a handful of Chinese protesters in New York. Decades later, Choy and the filmmakers meet with those long-exiled dissidents again to tenderly and thoughtfully consider their sacrifice and unfinished battles for freedom. The binding tissue of \u201cThe Exiles\u201d is a firm, fiery belief that uncompromisingly outspoken is the only way to live. \u2014 JC \u2014 \u201cWe Need to Talk About Cosby\u201d: Bill Cosby\u2019s descent was fairly definitive. And yet even with his (brief) imprisonment and the wider cultural #MeToo reckoning, director W. Kamau Bell had a feeling that we had not yet fully processed what had happened to the man once known as America\u2019s Dad. And indeed the four-part docuseries \u201cWe Need to Talk About Cosby,\u201d rolling out on Showtime over the next three weekends, delivers on its title. Bell talks to survivors, colleagues and cultural commentators about Cosby\u2019s life, career, impact and misdeeds, in his own attempt to grapple with the downfall of someone he and many others once thought of as hero. It is an absolute must-see. \u2014 LB \u2014 \u201cEmily the Criminal\u201d: The burden of student loan debut is taken to darkly electrifying extremes in first-time writer-director John Patton Ford\u2019s taut neo-noir thriller. Most of all, it\u2019s a showcase for Aubrey Plaza, who plays a desperate young Los Angeles woman drawn into a criminal underworld through high-paying but dangerous scams (with a charming Theo Rossi) that slyly critique modern-day economic injustices. The always engrossing Plaza, also a producer on the film, has never been more potent. \u2014 JC \u2014 \u201cThe Princess\u201d: There are so, so many accounts of Diana\u2019s life, struggles, death and legacies (many recent and many excellent, too) that even the idea of another film just sounds exhausting. But \u201cThe Princess,\u201d coming to HBO this year, is something else entirely. Director Ed Perkins tells the story of her public life using only archival footage, including news broadcasts, man-on-the-street interviews, talk show segments, b-roll and outtakes. Looking at us looking at her is an immersive, moving and revelatory experience. \u2014 LB \u2014 \u201cNavalny \u201d: Daniel Roher\u2019s documentary of the imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is a riveting, occasionally farcical, often alarming portrait of a still-unspooling real-life geopolitical drama. The film, which HBO Max and CNN will release later this year, was both the documentary audience award winner and the overall audience winner at Sundance. That\u2019s a testament to Roher\u2019s film and to Navalny\u2019s audacious, entertaining manner. \u2014 JC \u2014 \u201cGood Luck to You, Leo Grande\u201d: Emma Thompson plays a somewhat repressed widow who hires a handsome sex worker (Daryl McCormack) in \u201cGood Luck to You, Leo Grande,\u201d a charming (and slightly blue) chamber piece about finding yourself later in life that Searchlight Pictures will release on Hulu. Sophie Hyde directs off a script from Katy Brand, that turns what could have been a cheap gimmick into a terrifically witty, sophisticated, adult comedy. \u2014 LB \u201cThe Janes\u201d: Unlawful, underground Chicago syndicates have long been the stuff of movies. But the HBO film \u201cThe Janes,\u201d directed by Tia Lessin and Emma Pildes, documents a lesser known chapter in 20th century American history, with overwhelming relevance to today. Lessin and Pildes\u2019 film chronicles the Jane Collective, a group of women who banded together in the late \u201860s and early \u201970s to offer illegal abortions to women who needed them, in the years before Roe v. Wade. In \u201cThe Janes,\u201d those women \u2014 now in their 60s and 70s \u2014 compelling tell their story, many of them for the first time on camera. A fictional drama about the collective, Phyllis Nagy\u2019s \u201cCall Jane,\u201d also debuted at Sundance. ___ Follow AP Film Writers Lindsey Bahr and Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http:\/\/twitter.com\/ldbahr and http:\/\/twitter.com\/jakecoyleAP Copyright \u00a9 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.<\/p>\n