‘How It Ends’: The Film You Worried Covid Might Produce Is Here [Sundance Review]

A sun-flared and bong-addled tumble into a teenage Texan summer rife with bombshells and boyfriend problems, “Cusp,” from debut directors Parker Hill and Isabel Bethencourt is one of those fractal-style documentaries, in which any given sliver contains all the colors and contours of the whole.

Irene (Tessa Thompson) rarely passes for white. She fears for her safety too much to do so.

Female trauma’s been given a serious workout in cinema, liberally exercised in the fantasy genre of late.

What does dismantling the American carceral state look like? How can meaningful and radical police reform actually be enacted? After years of tireless work by activists, acting upon decades of injustice against the poor and People of Color, these issues of now part of mainstream political platforms.

Curious is the current emphasis on women’s trauma in American genre film—the way it’s discussed online, marketed, singled out in the headlines—as if trauma were not already deeply embedded in the historical fabric of horror movies. Of course, in a time when more women filmmakers than ever are being given the opportunity to tell their stories, the rise of feminist horror should come as no surprise, especially given the #MeToo phenomenon and efforts to destigmatize mental illness.

13-year-old Sammy Ko (Miya Cech) is a problem child. Prone to skipping class, smoking cigarettes, and mouthing off to her teachers, she’s the opposite of the meek model student Hollywood typically imagines when writing young Asian-American characters.

Literally opening, as the title implies, with “The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be Quiet,” Argentinian director Ana Katz’s melancholic rumination on the life of Sebastian (Daniel Katz, the filmmaker’s brother), a languishing writer turned migrant worker, is a visually stunning, but oftentimes opaque experiment. Filmed in lush black and white, with animated interludes used to portray the more devastating aspects of Sebastian’s life, Katz’s film unfurls as a series of vignettes.

Abuse leaves scars unseen but permanent in director Lyle Mitchell Corbine Jr.’s debut “Wild Indian,” a character study wrapped in larger observations on the generational effects of violence and religious guilt. In it, two men marked by a single crime lead distinctively dysfunctional lives.

In the aftermath of unprecedented change, it’s anyone’s guess where the planet will be by the conclusion of the 2020s. As the globe shifts into the second year of the oncoming decade, questions regarding the future of the species have arisen, specifically concerning the ever-increasing relationship between humanity and technology.

With her frayed blonde hair and moody coal-black eye makeup, rock band singer Marian (Alessandra Messa) doesn’t immediately appear to resemble her identical twin sister. Practically a Stepford wife with her demure manner and neat brown bob, Vivian (Ani Messa) lives with her loser husband (Jake Hoffman) in the same house the sisters grew up in.

Hauling two packages home under both arms, Leonor’s (Amalia Ulman) mother María (Ale Ulman) bursts through the door of their small apartment, proclaiming she will never return Amazon purchases for her again. Her daughter isn’t home.

To call a portrait documentary an “affectionate tribute” to its lesser-known subject, is usually redundant. That’s the whole point of adoring acknowledgment docs of this ilk— “shining a brighter spotlight” on [insert criminally undervalued subject here].

You are being watched. In the era of facial recognition, targeted advertising, and social media, the threat of an omnipresent eye on the average human has passed.

Something like a documentary “Inception” with a story inside of a tale that is itself part of a narrative, “Misha and the Wolves” boasts several layers, all of them fascinating. Concerned with notions of legacy, trauma, memory, and deceit, the documentary by director Sam Hobkinson juggles multiple stories, people, and time periods with seeming ease, weaving a fascinating, multi-faceted tale in a tight 85 minutes.

“Prime Time,” initially, opens with a beguiling premise. It’s New Year’s Eve in Poland, and the world is mere hours from the year 2000, a new millennium.

Rodney Ascher’s computer-haunted documentary “A Glitch in the Matrix” is not the most insightful recent examination of boredom-born foggy Internet delusions. That honor likely goes to Arthur Jones’ antic “Feels Good Man.” Still, Ascher’s appropriately discombobulating stew of queasiness, comedy, and terror seems well-cued to the subject matter, even while missing a certain editorial sharpness that might have brought some of its notions into greater clarity.

Sean Ellis’ “Eight for Silver” is one of those movies that starts off so well, that shows such promise, that its slow unraveling feels less like a disappointment than a betrayal. It’s a Gothic horror picture that seems to set itself up as ambitious and intelligent, only to succumb to the most tiresome tropes and lazy shortcuts of the genre’s lesser efforts.

Irene (Tessa Thompson) rarely passes for white. She fears for her safety too much to do so.

Marion Hill’s “Ma Belle, My Beauty” opens with the kind of aural ecstasy you’d expect from a romantic drama set in the South of France: a lazily looping guitar accompanying a breathy, enchanting vocal. The scene is set – and then it immediately collapses, as the vocalist tells her accompanist, “I hate this song, I’m sorry,” and escapes their rehearsal to take a bath.

Something like a documentary “Inception” with a story inside of a tale that is itself part of a narrative, “Misha and the Wolves” boasts several layers, all of them fascinating. Concerned with notions of legacy, trauma, memory, and deceit, the documentary by director Sam Hobkinson juggles multiple stories, people, and time periods with seeming ease, weaving a fascinating, multi-faceted tale in a tight 85 minutes.