Movies That Will Take You Somewhere You Never Expected

Eric Kohn's Sundance 2024 Dispatch

Ahead of Sundance’s 40th anniversary, the festival invited more than 500 individuals from its extended community to vote on their favorite movies that played there over the years. The pool of voters was large enough for some fairly obvious consensus choices in the top 10 — a reasonable breakdown of the most memorable hit titles to come out of the festival, many of which launched filmmaking careers in the process, from “Blood Simple” to “Memento,” “Get Out,” “Reservoir Dogs,” and first-place finisher “Whiplash.” 

The list is well and good as a snapshot of Sundance’s potential to anoint new directing talent (though it’s a bit of a sausagefest and lacks any docs). However, such canonization falls off short of epitomizing the greatest value at the root of America’s most influential festival, as a necessary corrective to the homogenization of Hollywood storytelling. Sure, Sundance has become known for cozy and commercial crowdpleasers, but if that was the only service on offer, there would be far fewer screenings and a lot more skiing on the mountaintop. 

My own submitted ballot for the Sundance survey included “Doom Generation,” “Welcome to the Dollhouse,” and “The Comedy,” movies that jolted audiences away from the normalcy they have come to expect from conventional cinema. These days, such daring swings matter more than ever to justify a festival climate that must deliver something fresh to break through the noise. That’s what I’m always looking for anyway: Provocations or bust. Perfection is not progress. I’ll take the zany guerrilla antics of “Escape from Tomorrow” and the mystical rage-spiraling of “Mandy” over a cheery coming-of-age roadtrip any day, and I bet many of you would, too. 

That’s because the true of legacy of Sundance isn’t consensus at all. It’s the kind of noisemakers that disrupt the status quo and find their footing for that same reason. I go to Sundance in search of anger and attitude, something I’ve never seen before, and not easy wins. With that in mind, here are a few highlights from my 18th year at the festival.

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“Sasquatch Sunrise” 

David and Nathan Zellner’s wordless romp about a family of Bigfoots traipsing through the wilderness is both bawdy and poignant, sometimes at once (when a member of the clan claps her breasts and defecates on a road to bemoan the destructive impact of deforestation, you’ll see what I mean). Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keough are buried under mossy prosthetics that allow pure, imaginative performances to shine through, as the Zellners take a ludicrous premise and transcend it to create a sublime ode to the outdoors. They remain among the most innovative U.S. filmmakers on the scene.  

“I Saw the TV Glow”

Jane Schoenbrun’s sophomore feature about teens obsessed with a “Buffy”-like YA show to an extent that begins to dominate their lives is a beautiful and ominous rumination on how the ephemera of youth can take on deep, personal ramifications well beyond its original intent or value. This is haunting, mystical work about popular culture as a kind of magic act, and the terrifying realization of young adulthood when you realize that nostalgia is just a cruel trick of the mind.

“A Little Death”

Well, I just loved the divisive response to Jack Begert’s half-satire-half-dramedy debut, which starts out as a metaphysical character study about a whiny filmmaker (David Schwimmer, perfectly cast) struggling with studio notes about his male gaze until…something sudden happens, ending the quirky subjective perspective of Schwimmer’s character, and shifting focus altogether. The second half of “Little Death” centers on a group of damaged drug addicts attempting to make sense of their lives after a violent act. The sensitive, measured style of the second half operates as an inherent critique of the over-the-top gusto of the first. With a raucous spirit worthy of the Nouvelle Vague, this project turns against itself to make a point, and I can’t remember the last time I saw a movie bold enough to take such a leap.