In The Spotlight At Sundance |
These six films wowed OTTplay's critics from the prestigious line-up at the Sundance Film Festival this year. |
THE SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL is a touchstone for many of the movies that go on to earn the most critical acclaim through the year. It is here that the best works from filmmakers across the globe make their presence felt, here that documentaries vie with fiction features to wow an audience of cinephiles. But the packed programme can make it difficult to streamline which titles you should be keeping an eye out for, when they finally make it to streaming or the awards season discourse. OTTplay's critics picked six of the films they found most impactful from the festival's 2024 line-up. We're sure you'll want to bookmark these titles to add to your watchlist! |
|
| Handling The Undead Is The 'Zombie Film' We Need |
TO CALL Handling the Undead a zombie movie is a bit of a misnomer. If you are expecting to see hangry, bitey, lumbering corpses vulnerable to headshots and survivors scavenging for supplies once the apocalypse gets underway, this is not that kind of a movie. As the title puts it plainly, the focus here is on how one might cope with the return of the dead. The intention here is to truly grasp what it would mean if the immutable boundary between the living and the dead were not so watertight. The living here are spouses and parents, sons and daughters, all mourning the loss of a loved one. The undead here are a haunting embodiment of their unresolved grief. Read here. — PRAHLAD SRIHARI |
You Need To Get On Board With This Detective Mystery |
“HOW HAPPY ARE YOU?” — Arun Bhattarai and Dorottya Zurbó’s Agent of Happiness chases this question. The Sundance-screened documentary follows two government-appointed happiness surveyors who are tasked with meeting people and gauging their happiness. In Bhutan, the country where the filmmakers turn their gaze, the emotion is taken seriously enough to be measured and factored in the development. Happiness is treated as a national responsibility and touted as the national reputation — “Bhutan: Happiness is a place”. Stream critically acclaimed international films on the CinemaWorld platform, with an OTTplay Premium subscription. Despite the promise of quantifying, Agent of Happiness is almost philosophical in its pursuit. Bhattarai and Zurbó’ work, so precise that it feels orchestrated like fiction, does not reaffirm the nation’s belief that happiness can be calculated. Instead, it uses that as a scaffolding and unfolds as a charming reiteration of the elusive nature of happiness and the abiding need for it. The documentary tracks two government officers who go about their days making the assessment through a detailed questionnaire (queries range from do the respondents own livestock to whether they are afflicted with a general sense of worry). But it soon becomes clear that the focus is on one of them: the 40-something Amber who empathetically listens to people and estimates their happiness while waiting at the door. Continues here. — ISHITA SENGUPTA |
'A New Kind of Wilderness' Is A Modest Masterpiece |
IN Silje Evensmo Jacobsen’s A New Kind of Wilderness, the glorious uncertainty of documentary filmmaking marries the inglorious uncertainty of life. The first few minutes unfold like a cheery presentation for free and sustainable living. We see a multilingual family of six on a rural farm in a Norwegian forest. They grow their own food, drink water from trees, camp under the stars, and homeschool the kids. The voice-over belongs to Maria Vatne, ace photographer and freestyle matriarch — she speaks of their oneness with nature, and a genuine desire to limit their ecological footprint. The hippie-happy vibe is palpable. It’s 2014, the digitisation of Scandinavia is ripe. Their truth is stranger — and stronger — than fiction. This is the off-the-grid story Jacobsen sets out to follow; it’s an irresistible peg. Read the review. — RAHUL DESAI |
Growing Pains In India Donaldson's 'Good One' |
ABOUT AN HOUR into India Donaldson’s debut feature Good One, a boundary is crossed with a single line. The line is a loaded request, delivered facetiously and oh-so-casually during a late-night campfire chat, only so it can be easily dismissed as a joke if brought up later and held up to scrutiny. But there is no ambiguity about the meaning and untowardness of the request. For 17-year-old Sam (Lily Collias), this single line and its fallout — or lack thereof — come as a rude awakening. Before she is off to college, Sam has joined her father Chris (James Le Gros) and his long-time friend Matt (Danny McCarthy) on a backpacking trail in the Catskills. Though a sinking feeling lingers for most of the trip and the film has been building up to the aforementioned line, it still comes as a shock. Continue reading. — P.S. |
Jesse Eisenberg & Kieran Culkin Probe Trauma In 'A Real Pain' |
THERE IS A SCENE in A Real Pain where cousins David (Jesse Eisenberg) and Benji (Kieran Culkin) are travelling on a train through modern-day Poland — and Benji erupts into a sudden outburst. The cousins, both Jewish, have come to Poland for a heritage tour in honour of their late grandmother, a Holocaust survivor; but the fact that their Jewish tour group is riding in an air-conditioned first-class carriage when not so long ago their ancestors would have been packed into cattle cars to be shipped off to death camps, doesn’t sit right with Benji. As the cushion of historical distance between the painful past and the privileged present collapses, inner conflict gets the better of Benji, who chews the group out for not recognising the ironies of their un-persecuted lives. Moments later, the two cousins miss their stop and sneak onto another train without a ticket, only to find out they are again riding in first class. “We fucking earned it,” says Benji. “They owe us.” Read here. — P.S. |
Two Lost Souls Find Each Other In 'Between the Temples' |
OF ALL THE dive bars in all the places in all of upstate New York, a cantor and his primary school music teacher happen to walk into the same one. The cantor Ben (Jason Schwartzman) has been in a free fall ever since he lost his wife; the teacher Carla (Carol Kane), now retired, wishes to get her bat mitzvah as she never got one as a young woman. It takes a bit of convincing but Ben agrees to take her on as his student. With each lesson, the two learn from each other. As they forge a deeper connection, at once therapeutic and intimate, they become each other’s pick-me-up, finding something close to the kind of emotional stability that can make them whole again. Continues here. — P.S. |
|
|
This weekly newsletter compiles a list of the latest (and most important) reviews from OTTplay so you can figure what to watch or ditch over the weekend ahead. |
| Each week, our editors pick one long-form, writerly piece that they think it worthy of your attention, and dice it into easily digestible bits for you to mull over. |
| In which we invite a scholar of cinema, devotee of the moving image, to write a prose poem dedicated to their poison of choice. Expect to spend an
hour on this. |
|
|
Hindustan Media Ventures Limited,
Hindustan Times House, 18-20,
Second Floor, Kasturba Gandhi
Marg, New Delhi - 110 001, India |
|
|
If you need any guidance or support along the way, please send an email to ottplay@htmedialabs.com. We’re here to help! |
©️2021 OTTplay, HT Media Labs. All rights reserved. |
|
|
|
