‘Rob Peace’ Review: Chiwetel Ejiofor Renders A Grand Life As Middling Biopic [Sundance]

There’s a special type of frustration that comes with watching a film like Bruno Mourral’s “Kidnapping Inc.” It’s a frustration borne from a good place—you want the film to succeed—but around every corner, “Kidnapping Inc.” just can’t help but trip over itself. This is a film that showcases two really solid lead performances, highlights horrific injustice found in a country many people aren’t familiar with, and is shot in a way that makes its modest budget feel much bigger.

Perhaps the best compliment that you can give a narrative feature is to say that it feels like a documentary. Not to say the shot composition is uninspired and the subject dry, but it’s a way to spotlight just how you forget this is actually an actor reading written words, but instead, believe everything happening in front of you is real and true.

“Skywalkers: A Love Story” joins “Free Solo” in a film subgenre that can only be described as “F*ck That.” It’s an ultra-specific genre of documentary that showcases feats that are so incredibly dangerous that you not only shake your head in disbelief but actually get your heart beating harder as you hold your breath, imagining that if you don’t make a noise, then maybe these people won’t die right before your eyes.

By now, it should be evident that each passing year brings with it advancements in technology, landing anywhere on an imaginary graph containing the likes of the latest smartphone to a car that can brew a mean cup of coffee. One area that’s been hovering over the whole of humanity for far longer than a need for a house that dictates a grocery list is that of the afterlife; pondering what happens after each and every one of us shuffle off this mortal coil remains, quite possibly, an everlastingly unanswerable question, but for those left behind in the wake of a loved one’s passing, a more pressing matter would be the manner in which one deals with said loss, and how best to move on.

Despite the increased awareness of gender identities, there is one classification that has been around for over 100 years or 30 years (it’s debatable) that rarely enjoys the spotlight, intersex. An intersex person can be a broad definition for someone who is born without a number of different sexual characteristics.

There’s something magical that happens to most people around the age of 13. For many, that’s when you might have your first real romantic love.

Media representation of disabled people is challenging to get right — too saccharine, and you’re veering towards inspiration porn, too maudlin, and you’re implying that a disabled life might not be a life worth living. “Ibelin,” the newest documentary from “The Painter and the Thief” filmmaker Benjamin Ree, strikes a poignant balance, acknowledging the ways that physical disability can limit a life while showing how one complex man expanded his world nonetheless.

“Reinas,” the latest from director Klaudia Reynicke, is a quiet but vivid tale of summer days in Lima, Peru. The script, which Reynicke co-wrote with Diego Vega, depicts a family drama against a backdrop of political chaos.

Since helming the Academy Award-nominated “Winter’s Bone” in 2010, Debra Granik has enjoyed shifting between a further dabble into feature-length filmmaking (“Leave No Trace”) in addition to documentary work (“Stray Dog”), which, when coupled with her eclectic decades-strong filmography clearly showcases an overabundance of ability and flair for skillfully adapting to any subject that comes her way. Another comfortable entry on her resume exists in “Conbody VS Everybody, “a six-part docu-series with a concept unlike anything she’s tackled prior while continuing to demonstrate her knack for creating something compelling while also supremely relevant to this day and age.

A formally rigorous and free-associative dive into a decade’s worth of political fighting in the Congo, from roughly 1955 to 1965, Johan Grimonprez’s “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat” is a fascinating and sprawling historical overview. Eschewing the usual mix of contextual talking heads, the Belgian filmmaker and multimedia artist instead adopts its narrative approach from the jazz that flows freely throughout the film and helps frame the political struggles of the Congo.

It starts innocuously enough. “Krazy House,” the English-language debut of Dutch filmmakers Steffen Haars and Flip van der Kuil, launches with a ‘90s family sitcom parody that ribs their cheese and cringe.

China began loosening its one-child policy in 2015 until finally, in 2021, it abolished all restrictions on the number of children a family could have. Young Chinese filmmakers are beginning to grapple with the fallout of those prior decades in new fiction films that demonstrate how the Chinese family unit has been irreversibly transformed.

As one examines the abundance of cultures worldwide, to see the marginal way women continue to be treated on a global scale remains infuriating to take in during the era of #MeToo and the fact that seemingly little progress has been made even as our society makes its way into 2024. Though gains can undeniably be acknowledged on the political front and numerous other fields, it’s still apparent that an ocean exists in the way of real change, with “Black Box Diaries” a stunning example of the heavily outdated customs in which parts of our minuscule planet find themselves stuck and the women who suffer as a direct result.

The premise of the documentary “Will & Harper” is so simple that it almost seems presentational, self-serving, or stunt-y. The idea is, after 30 years of friendship, comedian Will Ferrell learns, through a personal email, that an old friend and former “Saturday Night Live” writer, then Adam Steele (yes, the dead name is used at first), is coming out as a trans woman.

Camila Cabello is continuing to expand her skills. The singer and actress stars in “Rob Peace,” a film directed by Chiwetel Ejiofor that’s premiering at Sundance Film Festival. Cabello stars as the girlfriend of the lead character and revealed she didn’t have to audition for the part.

“Ben Is Back” with Julia Roberts and “Beautiful Boy” starring Timothée Chalamet. A few years back at Sundance I saw the premiere of the awful “Four Good Days” starring Mila Kunis and Glenn Close.

Diego Ramos Bechara editor The role of a storyteller goes beyond simply bringing the words on a page to life. “We’ve been trained from a very young age and educated to think a certain way,” Giancarlo Esposito said.

The first of many misdirects of perspective occurs in the opening shot of “In a Violent Nature.” The film opens with off-screen voices in discussion as the camera fixes its glance on what appears like a slipshod frame of a tree branch in the forest. It’s an image that feels haphazardly put together, and combined with the disembodied dialogue, filmmaker Chris Nash primes the audience to perceive the scene as something akin to a DIY YouTube video.

Every so often, a film comes along that, as if out of nowhere, leaves an unexpected impression and a need to find a moment to take in all that was witnessed fully; it’s a phenomenon that can come from any genre, any type of project, any filmmaker or subject, from battles in a galaxy far, far away to the intricate life story of a media tycoon. Sometimes, the smallest forms of art end up being the most effective, with “Sugarcane” a perfect example of how to draw in an audience to the film’s powerful message with moments as shocking as any entry into the world of horror.

Camila Cabello is starring in her second movie and she didn’t even have to audition!