The 2025 Sundance Film Festival will be wrapping up this weekend, although for those of us covering it virtually, we’ve gotten a bit of a late start. There have been quite a few themes with the movies at this year’s festival, including many films written and directed by actors starring in their own films, as well as weaker Sundancey movies produced by actors in the movie.
And yet, there have been quite a few exceptions, and in Part 1 in this recap, I’ll discuss some of the better films I’ve seen, mostly virtually, including three of the Audience Award winners, and then, in Part 2 I will focus on the movies that I didn’t like nearly as much.
ATROPIA
Directed by Hailey Gates
Hailey Gates’ Atropia was one of the in-demand movies to watch in the U.S. Narrative Competition, and it ended up paying off by winning the Jury Prize in that category. Atropia hasn’t been picked up for distribution, but hopefully that will change very soon.
Set in 2006 during the Bush era when troops were still stationed in Iraq, it establishes the idea of an enhanced war game in a fictitious country called Atropia that’s entirely built within a Fort Irwin location referred to by the millitary as “The Box.” Actors from the nearby Hollywood play villagers and insurgents with Alia Shawkat from “Arrested Development” as Rose, who takes her acting job quite seriously. Obviously, she’d rather be acting in movies but while on this job, she meets an actual soldier back from Iraq, played by Callum Turner, who is portraying an insurgent leader, and the two begin an illicit romance that continues once they’re taken as POWs.
Atropia opens like an actual Iraq war movie until we learn that this is actualy a simulation and learn more about how Atropia works, and we meet Rose, who is a lot like your typical Hollywood actor, very competitive and always looking for her next job. That’s actually a pretty good set-up for comedy with the added bonus of the meet-cute between Rose and her love interest.
There are other actors doing fun stuff like Jane Levy playing Nancy, an actor portraying an embedded journalist, while Chloe Sevigny also has a fun smaller role as the director of the program. Channing Tatum also makes a funny cameo as himself. Some of the humor is a bit scatalogical involving bodily functions, but there are other amusing bits like a private with an iPod strapped to his head who is forced to sing songs to entertain the troops.
Gates, an actress herself – maybe you remember her from a small role in Challengers – has created an effective comedy that’s just as much about Hollywood tropes as it is a comedy about war. In some ways, it reminded me of David O. Russell’s early film, Three Kings or Ben Stiller’s Tropical Thunder, even though obviously, this one never sets foot outside California, and it’s based on an actual military training base.
Atropia is a clever and satisfying comedy that mixes elements that might never normally be in the same movie. It’s a great showcase for the very funny and talented Ms. Shawkat to shine not just with the comedy but also with the more dramatic moments of the difficult romance she forms with Turner. This was a real standout of this year’s Sundance, like the quality of film we’ve seen in past years, and one well worthy of the jury prize. Who knew that a movie about such a serious subject could be so funny?
Rating: A-
ANDRÉ IS AN IDIOT
Directed by Tony Benna
If there’s one thing the Sundance Film Festival can always deliver with any certainty is that it offers some of the best documentaries each and every year. That’s particularly true with this offering from A24 that follows the journey of ad man André Ricciardi, as he faces the repercussions of colon cancer.
Directed by Tony Benna, the film’s title comes from the fact that André had been urged to get a colonoscopy but he reneged, so when he’s diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer, it’s too late to do anything except try to keep comfortable and get the needed treatment to keep him around as long as possible. Ricciardi is quite an eccentric character who speaks his mind and does everything just a little differently from anyone else, his charm really driving the film.
In some ways, the filmmaking reminded me of the late Morgan Spurlock in the way we follow Ricciardi’s journey, something he handles with wit. At one point, Ricciardi uses his advertising background to create a campaign to urge people to get colonoscopies, since the very thought of anything related to the colon and what’s involved tends to elicit snickers despite the seriousness of terminal cancer.
André is an Idiot won a number of prizes at Sundance, including the Audience Award in the U.S. Documentary Competition, as well as a jury award for its editing. This isn’t particularly surprising since it is an entertaining, crowd-pleasing film that probably would work well theatrically.
Rating: A-
RICKY
Directed by Rashad Frett
Stephan James from If Beale Street Could Talk plays Ricardo “Ricky” Smith, a 30-year-old trying to get his life back together after being incarcerated as a teenager and imprisoned for 15 years. Rasha Frett directs the film based on an earlier short and with a script he co-wrote with Lin Que Ayoung. It follows Ricardo as he interacts with various people in his neighborhood and tries to stay out of trouble despite being surrounded by it.
I was particularly interested in this one as someone who has had friends who were incarcerated and also as someone who was a fan of Sing Sing and always wondered what happened to that film’s characters once they were released. It’s something that few people may realize makes life outside prison even more difficult once released.
At first, it doesn’t seem like the best script, since there isn’t much story at first, but then a lot of stuff happens to Ricky, and that’s when things get more interesting. The hard truth is that whenever someone spends any amount of time in jail, it’s hard to return to any sort of normal life. Ricky is trying his best, but he’s still angry about losing half his life, and any attempts he make to find and keep a job and have any sort of romantic relationship is plagued by reality.
Frett, who comes from a background directing shorts, fills this feature-length version of Ricky with so many different characters from his immediate family to his childhood friend (Sean Nelson) who escaped imprisonment. All the time, Ricky tries to connect with a couple women, including Andrene Ward-Hammond as Cheryl, another former inmate he meets in a support group, but that also is quickly derailed. One of the stronger supporting performances comes from Cheryl Lee Ralph (Abbott Elementary) as Ricky’s parole officer, and she has some of the best scenes with James and others.
There are a lot of characters and a lot happens to Ricky that makes his quest to find a normal life more difficult. At times, the drama goes too far with too much conflict being piled on to Ricky’s already difficult life, but it always feels quite real. My biggest issue with the film is the shaky camerawork and choppy editing, both which tend to distract from the storytelling and the performances.
That aside, Frett brings an authenticity to the film that’s held down by Stephen James’ performance and a supporting cast that helps drive home the point that being out of prison can be just as hard as being inside, and happy pat endings are hard to come by.
Rating: B+
EAST OF WALL
Directed by Kate Beecroft
I’ve seen so many indie movies set in the world of horse ranching I’d need both hands and one foot to keep track of them all. There are many good ones for sure – Chloe Zhao’s The Rider literally put her on the map – but it feels like territory that’s been so well-covered that one wonders why this one needs to be seen.
This is the feature directorial debut from Kate Beecroft, and it’s hard to imagine that The Rider wasn’t the blueprint for making the film as it feels almost like a docudrama, mixing real people aka non-actors with fictionalized storytelling. It’s sometimes hard to determine which is which.
Tabatha Zimiga is an edgy and rebellious horse trainer covered in tattoos with one side of her head shaved. She’s been dealing with financial issues after the death of her husband and is trying to keep a group of equally troubled teens safe under her wing on her Badlands, South Dakota ranch.
It’s a film that you might find yourself enjoying more as it goes along, between the horseriding and the beautiful scenery, and eventually, better-known actors like Scoot McNairy and Jennifer Ehle show up in the film and begin interacting quite fluidly with the non-actors, which is an interesting take on the type of film we’ve seen at many festivals over the years.
Not all the interactions work or are particularly interesting, but as a whole, it’s a film about real people and life unlike some of the other films involving horses. One of the film’s strongest scenes involves a group of Tabitha’s older women friends discussing some of the trauma they’ve suffered, and Zimiga delivers a tearful monologue about how her husband died that further breaks down the wall of real life and dramatization.
East of Wall is one of this festival’s more pleasant surprises, firstly due to the real discovery that is Tabatha Zimiga, but also how Beecroft is able to take seemingly mundane things from real peoples’ lives and instill them with drama. Some might feel like it doesn’t add much to an overused oeuvre of low-budget indie films about horse people, but it’s a world that continues to offer interesting characters whom those of us cities don’t get to meet very much. It isn’t a shocker that this won the Audience Award in the Next category.
Rating: B+
TRAIN DREAMS
Directed by Clint Bentley
Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar, the filmmakers behind Sing Sing and Jockey, showed up at Sundance with a very different type of film, one that caught the eye of Netflix to become the second major acquisition of the festival. It’s based on the 2011 book by Denis Johnson, and it feels like a much bigger movie than we normally get at the festival.
Set in the early 20th Century, Joel Edgerton plays Robert Grainier, a day worker who travels around the country doing logging jobs and helping to build railroads and bridges, while dealing with things that life throw his way. After meeting Felicity Jones’ Gladys and the two of them settling down to have a life, he goes off to do another job, only to return as a wild fire destroys his home – a terrific setpiece but one that’s hard to watch in the shadow of the fires in L.A. From then on, Robert is plagued by the fact that his wife and young daughter seemed to die in that fire.
It’s hard not to think of the Oscar-nominated The Brutalist, not just due to the presence of Felicity Jones, but by the fact that it covers decades within the life of a fictitious character, and it very much feels like a literary piece based on a novel. Over the course of his life’s journey, Robert meets and interacts with a number of very different people, allowing the filmmakers to surround Edgerton with an impressive supporting cast, including William H. Macy, Oscar-nominee Kerry Condon, and reuniting with Clifton Collins Jr. from Jockey. Few of these other characters appear for more than a scene or two, since it’s always about Robert.
The film covers decades in Robert’s life, all of it narrated by a mystery narrator and ensconced in a gorgeous score by Bryce Dessner of the National, one of the most pleasant original scores I’ve heard in recent memory. The equally brilliant cinematography by Adolpho Veloso really brings so much to the film’s production values.
In many ways, Train Dreams is a much bigger film than we normally see at Sundance with more name stars, but it’s also a quiet and subdued film, sometimes to a fault. It seems like the type of film that really should be seen on the big screen, so hopefully Netflix will try to give it more of a theatrical release than some of their other offerings. Train Dreams is a gorgeous film that’s just a little too slow and talkie with minimal plot developments, yet ultimately, it’s still a very well-made film with minor awards potential.
Rating: B+
We’ll have Part 2 of this Sundance recap, as well as more reviews from other Cinema Daily US writers over the next couple days.