Sundance review: 'Love Me' is an oddball dellight, a science-fiction take on robot love and the all-too-human glitches in the software

Can a grand visual experiment also be emotionally moving? In the case of “Love Me,” a swoon-worthy romance between pixels, yes, yes, a thousand times, yes.

The filmmaking team of Sam and Andy Zuchero start with the formation of the Earth, then fast-forward rapidly through to an indeterminate number of years from now — when humanity is extinct. (The brief loud blip of the Anthropocene epoch generates the movie’s first laugh.) When the ice breaks, it releases a “smart buoy” that seeks to communicate with a satellite circling the planet, offering to help any lifeform that approaches ‘the planet formerly known as Earth.” (The satellite also carries a variation of the plaque that was carried on Pioneer 10 and 11, showing what humans looked like.)

The buoy tries to signal the satellite, which at first isn’t interested because a buoy isn’t a lifeform. So the buoy, getting some access to the satellite’s memory banks of humanity’s collected knowledge, figures out how to lie, and claim to be a lifeform. The buoy uses as its model the vast amounts of social media posts it collects — and finds as its model a vapid Instagram influencer named Deja (played by Kristen Stewart), who posted constantly about her post-perfect romance with Liam (Steven Yeun).

Once they connect, the buoy, who takes the name Me, tries to turn itself and the satellite — called Iam — into computer-generated versions of Deja and Liam. They repeat the same “date night” Instagram post, wearing adult onesie pajamas, cooking quesadillas (from a Blue Apron box) and cuddling up with “Friends” reruns. But even as software just learning about human romance, they can’t shake the feeling that something’s phony about the whole thing.

The Zucheros deploy a delightfully manic visual vocabulary — with rapid-fire cutting of the two main characters as mechanical objects, computer avatars and fully lifelike human forms — that has echoes of “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” with stronger science-fiction elements. The romance between Me and Iam plays out a bit like the robot love of “Wall-E,” with more introspection and self-doubt.

The Zucheros’ visual wit is matched by strong performances by Stewart and Yeun, who gracefully capture the idea that computers who learned about relationships from humans would inevitably end up with relationships as screwed up as the ones humans have. “Love Me” in the end, is a sweet, intelligent story of a satellite, standing in front of a buoy, asking it to love it.  

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“Love Me”

★★★1/2

Screening in the U.S. Dramatic competition of the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. Not rated, but probably R for sexual situations and language. Running time: 92 minutes.

Screens again: Saturday, January 20, 9:30 a.m., Prospector Square Theatre, Park City; Sunday, January 21, Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center, Salt Lake City; Wednesday, January 24, 8:45 p.m., Redstone Cinemas 2, Park City; Friday, January 26, 7:45 p.m., Library Center Theatre, Park City. Also available online via the Sundance portal, Thursday-Sunday, January 25-28.

And so it begins: What to know going into the Sundance Film Festival

The 2024 Sundance Film Festival is underway. I’ll be heading up to Park City later today (Friday) to help cover the festival for The Salt Lake Tribune — and I’ll be posting reviews of movies I see up there in this space.

I’ve already written several stories for The Tribune. Here they are:

• How do you navigate Sundance? Here are the tips you need to know to get tickets, deal with parking, and the other aspects of attending.

• You want to see celebrities? I maintain a list of which celebrities are coming (and, in some cases, are already here).

• I talked to Utah’s favorite Sundance filmmakers — “Napoleon Dynamite” director Jared Hess and his co-writer/wife Jerusha Hess — about their breakout movie, 20 years after it premiered at Sundance. I also talked to them about what Jared’s directing now: The live-action adaptation of the video game “Minecraft.”

Sundance review: 'The Amazing Maurice,' adapting Terry Pratchett's children's story, is a funny attempt at a fractured fairytale

Loaded with clever animation and droll British wit, the animated “The Amazing Maurice” is a charming sendup of the fairytale genre that revels in the act of storytelling itself.

Adapted from the late Terry Pratchett’s “The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents,” part of Pratchett’s expansive “Discworld” series, the story starts with a talking cat, Maurice (voiced by Hugh Laurie). 

Maurice works a clever scam alongside a human, Keith (voiced by Himesh Patel), and a group of talking rats — where the rats “infest” a town, the cat urges the townsfolk to hire a piper, Keith, who lures the rats away while Maurice collects the money. Then they go to the next town and do the whole thing again.

The scam works until they reach the market town of Bad Blintz, which already has its problems: There are no rats visible, but something is stealing all the food. The town rat catchers seem to be doing too good a job, under the command of the mysterious Boss Man (voiced by David Thewlis), who has a dark secret up his sleeves.

It also doesn’t help that Maurice’s cover is blown when he’s found out by Malicia (voiced by Emilia Clarke), the daughter of the mayor (voiced by Hugh Bonneville). Malicia loves telling stories so much that she’s telling this one — she’s the narrator, and explains to the younger viewers such concepts as “framing device” and “backstory.” 

The plot boils down to whether the rats can solve the mystery and thwart Boss Man’s nefarious, and whether Maurice can overcome his cat instincts — to be selfish and run away from danger — to help his rat friends find their sanctuary, described by the wise rat called Dangerous Beans (voiced by David Tennant) as a place where animals and humans co-exist peacefully, without poisons or traps.

Directors Toby Genkel and Florian Westermann keep the pace lively, and mount some clever action set pieces that are exciting without being too violent. The screenplay, by “Shrek” and “Pirates of the Caribbean” co-writer Terry Rossio, captures a lot of Pratchett’s dry humor as the story deconstructs its tropes and rebuilds them in interesting ways — and gives “The Amazing Maurice” more bite than the average kids’ movie.

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‘The Amazing Maurice’

★★★

Playing in the Kids section of the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Opens in theaters on Friday, February 3, 2023. Rated PG for action/peril and some rude material. Running time: 92 minutes.

Sundance review: 'A Thousand and One' is a passionate debut for filmmaker A.V. Rockwell, and a showcase for star Teyana Taylor

Nearly overspilling with heartfelt emotion, writer-director A.V. Rockwell’s feature debut “A Thousand and One” is gut-wrenching drama of a woman’s desperation and a child’s blossoming against the odds.

The story starts in 1994, in New York City at the beginning of the Rudy Giuliani era. Inez (played by singer/actress Teyana Taylor) is just released from Riker’s Island, and eager to get her life back on track. Part of that involves getting 6-year-old Terry (played by Aaron Kingsley Adetola) out of foster care and setting up a home in Harlem. Inez plucks Terry without going through the proper legal channels — which includes obtaining a fake birth certificate and Social Security number, so Terry can enroll in school under a new name.

After a rough start, with Inez and Terry losing their tempers at each other, they find some temporary accommodations — first with Inez’s friend Kim (Terri Abney), whose mother (Delissa Reynolds) is none too happy about the situation, and later in a boarding house of sorts run by Miss Annie (played by Tony winner Adriane Lenox). Eventually, Inez finds an apartment that they can find home.

Not long after, Inez invites her man, Lucky (Will Catlett), also a recent resident at Riker’s, to be the third member of the household. It’s a rough beginning, as Lucky and Terry — who has always had questions about who or where his father is — slowly warm to each other.

The story jumps ahead to 2001, and later to 2005, with Aven Courtney and Josiah Cross playing Terry at 13 and 17, respectively. During this span, Rockwell depicts how Harlem is changing — first with Giuliani’s stop-and-frisk policing and later with Michael Bloomberg prodding the neighborhood toward gentrification — and, with it, both Terry’s and Inez’s futures are thrown into upheaval.

Rockwell — who directed a short (“Feathers”) that played Sundance in 2019 and made a Super Bowl ad with Serena Williams (for Bumble) — makes a ferociously assured debut as a feature director. She reassembles Harlem of the ‘90s and aughts with just a few brushstrokes, while keeping laser focus on the intense human story in the foreground. The pacing, the twisty plot, and the dialogue all point to a filmmaker with a strong voice and a sensitive ear.

“A Thousand and One” is also a showcase for Taylor, who’s also known as a singer, choreographer and music-video director who has worked with Beyonce, Kanye West and Missy Elliot, among others. (She also is the youngest-ever winner of “The Masked Singer.”) Taylor gives a stellar performance as Inez, who hustles to make money to give Terry a better life, and doesn’t back down when anyone challenges her on her mothering skills.

Together, Rockwell gives Taylor the platform from which she can shine as Inez, and Taylor gives Rockwell the spark to make her words sing. “A Thousand and One” is the sort of movie we’ll look back on, for both director and star, and say we saw them when they were just getting started.

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‘A Thousand and One’

★★★★

Playing in the U.S. Dramatic competition of the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Screening online on the Sundance Film Festival platform, through Sunday, Jan. 29, at 11:55 p.m. Also scheduled to be released in theaters on March 31, 2023. Not rated, but probably R for language and some sexual content. Running time: 117 minutes.

Sundance review: 'Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project' presents the legendary poet's life and her words beautifully

One would almost call “Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project” a conventional documentary — a tried-and-true mix of sit-down interviews, archival footage and filmed speeches of the movie’s subject — except that the subject, the poet and activist Nikki Giovanni, is as unconventional as one gets.

In the movie’s first soundbite Giovanni makes it clear she’s not going to make it easy on husband-and-wife directors Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson. “I don’t remember a lot of things, but a lot of things I don’t remember I don’t choose to remember,” Giovanni says. “I remember what’s important, and make up the rest.”

In a way, that’s freeing for the filmmakers, who don’t have to tether archival moments with things Giovanni says in the present about he past. Instead, the young Giovanni of the ‘60s and ‘70s can speak for herself through the archives, and the Giovanni of today — tempered at 79 now, but no less radical — can say what she wants to say.

The young Giovanni makes television appearances talking about revolution, “not as a reaction to whiteness,” but as “a further progression for Blackness.” The filmmakers strike gold with a 1971 conversation for British TV between Giovanni and the author James Baldwin, trading comments about whether America is still worth believing in for Black Americans. (Interestingly, their talk about Blackness remains potent and timely; the low-key sexism, demonstrated every time Baldwin calls Giovanni “sweetheart,” hasn’t aged as well.)

The Giovanni of today is shown in lecture halls, in the writing classes she teaches at Virginia Tech, and in her rather pleasant home life — she’s married to author Virginia Fowler, has a son, Thomas, from an earlier relationship, and now dotes on her teen granddaughter, Kia. Giovanni’s current fascination is with space travel, particularly the idea of going to Mars, a trip, she says, should be led by Black women, because they have smoothed over every alien situation from slavery to today.

What comes through most clearly in “Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project” are Giovanni’s words, in poetry and prose — heard both from Giovanni and narrator Taraji P. Henson. In those words, we hear a mind still focused on revolution, not rooted in violence but in love and curiosity.

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‘Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project’

★★★1/2

Playing in the U.S. Documentary competition of the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Screens again Sunday, noon, The Ray Theatre, Park City. Also screening online on the Sundance Film Festival platform, through Sunday, Jan. 29, at 11:59 p.m. Mountain time. Not rated, but probably PG-13 for language and descriptions of violence. Running time: 102 minutes.

Sundance review: 'Beyond Utopia' is a compelling documentary, paced like a thriller, about people struggling to escape North Korea

Living in North Korea, the documentary “Beyond Utopia” tells us often, is horrible — and getting out, as the courageous family at the center of the film shows us, is almost as difficult.

Director Madeleine Gavin introduces to Pastor Seungeun Kim, who operates a network of volunteers from his church in Seoul, to get North Koreans wanting to defect out of the country safely. That’s no small task, since anyone trying to get out of North Korea is branded a traitor to the “great leader” Kim Jong-Un, and faces torture, beatings and possibly execution.

Also, there’s no easy out of North Korea. Crossing directly into South Korea is practically impossible, thanks to the 2 million landmines along the border between the two Koreas. So North Koreans have to cross the Yalu River into China, then travel hundreds of miles to cross into Vietnam, then Laos, and finally into Thailand — the first non-Communist country on the route. The Chinese have heavy surveillance, lots of cops and military, and a policy of sending any North Korean defector back if caught. 

The movie follows Pastor Kim as he works the telephones, arranging with brokers to get people out of North Korea. We see this happen with two cases. In one, defector Soyeon Lee is making calls to get her 17-year-old son, Cheong, across the Yalu; in the other, the Ro family — an 80-year-old woman, her adult daughter and son-in-law, and the couple’s two little girls — is attempting the trek in vans, on foot through jungles, and over rivers.

The footage of the Ro family’s ordeal — much of it taken by the family on cellphone cameras — is breathtaking, as it shows us how one little slip can endanger everyone, including Pastor Kim, who joins the family on the last leg of the trip. (A title card at the beginning of the film stresses that there were no re-creations used.) 

Intercut with the footage of these rescues are interviews with defectors and other experts on North Korea. The most compelling is Hyeonseo Lee, who detailed her escape from South Korea in her memoir “The Girl With Seven Names.”

Gavin shows she’s familiar with the first rule of documentaries: If you have a good story, don’t get in the way. The directorial flourishes are minimal, and the bits of animation that illustrate what happens to people who run afoul of Kim Jong Un are an elegant way to show what can’t be filmed.

Ultimately, Gavin’s work in “Beyond Utopia” is exemplified by her editing, which turns the Ro family’s struggle into a chase thriller — one with a remarkably detailed historical backstory.

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‘Beyond Utopia’

★★★1/2

Playing in the U.S. Documentary competition of the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Screens again Sunday, Jan. 29, 9 a.m., Eccles Theatre, Park City. Also screening online on the Sundance Film Festival platform, through Sunday, Jan. 29, at 11:59 p.m. Mountain time. Not rated, but probably PG-13 for descriptions of torture, and children in peril. Running time: 116 minutes; in Korean, with subtitles.

Sundance review: 'The Persian Version' is a loving, exuberant tale of three generations of women, and the secret they keep from each other

Sometimes a movie takes a few minutes to settle down and find its groove — which is what happens with “The Persian Version,” writer-director Maryam Keshavarz’s warm-hearted and regularly hilarious look at a woman trying to reconcile conflicting cultures and a hard case of a mom.

“Obviously, I’ve had some issues with culture,” are the first words we hear from Leila (Layla Mohammadi) — after we see her entering a Halloween party in half a burqa with a neon-pink bikini under it. “Can you blame me? I come from two countries that used to be madly in love with each other.” Those countries are the United States and Iran, and needless to say, the breakup was epically bad.

Leila explains how her father took the family from Iran to America in the ‘60s, to be a doctor in Brooklyn, and stayed after the revolution back home. Leila was the youngest of nine children, and the only girl — and a constant disappointment to her mother (Niousha Noor). Part of that attitude comes from the fact that Leila is a lesbian, recently divorced because she wanted to pursue her filmmaking career rather than settle down and have kids.

When her father (Bijan Daneshmand) goes into the hospital for a long-awaited heart transplant, and all the brothers go to sit with him, Mom demands that Leila stay home and tend to her grandmother, Mamanjoon (Bella Warda). This turns out to be propitious, because Mamanjoon lets slip that Leila’s parents left Iran because of “the scandal.” Of course, Leila is dying to know what the scandal was — and whether it helps explain why her mother is the way she is.

Keshavarz, whose 2011 Iran-centered lesbian drama “Circumstance” won the Audience Award for U.S. Dramatic films at Sundance, returns with an exuberant, Technicolor celebration of family — as Leila learns her family’s hidden history and finds connections to her own chaotic life. Leila is often told, “You’re just like your mother,” and even though she denies it vociferously, even she can’t deny the parallels. The story is based on Keshavarz’s own family story, which gives the movie a lived-in authenticity.

Mohammadi is a stunning discovery, beautiful and sharp and wickedly funny, and she commands the movie. She’s nicely matched with Noor and Warda, representing three generations of fierce and loving women — embodying the family bonds that make “The Persian Version” so charming.

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‘The Persian Version’

★★★1/2

Playing in the U.S. Dramatic competition of the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Screens again Friday, Jan. 27, 2L15 p.m., The Ray Theatre, Park City. Not rated, but probably R for sexual content and language. Running time: 106 minutes. 

Sundance review: 'Sometimes I Think About Dying,' with Daisy Ridley, is a tender story of love and loneliness

A little magical realism — and a lot of Daisy Ridley — are enough to carry “Sometimes I Think About Dying,” a whimsical, if occasionally strained, look at love and loneliness.

Ridley plays Fran, who works in the office of the port authority of an Oregon coastal town. (The movie was filmed in Astoria, Oregon.) She lives a quiet existence, as if she’s trying to get through the day without anyone noticing she’s there.

Fran walks to her job, sits at a desk and taps away at her computer, then goes home and eats a microwaved patty topped with cottage cheese. That’s her favorite food, she tells her coworkers during an office introduction — though hers is the only food mention that doesn’t spark some kind of conversation with her coworkers.

Fran’s inner life is more exciting, or at least has better staging. As the title implies, she frequently thinks about her death — from such varied methods as hanging from a port crane or being pursued by a boa constrictor.

When one colleague, Carol (Marcia DeBonis), retires so she can take a long-awaited cruise, her job is filled by Robert (Dave Merheje), who has recently moved from Seattle. After a few days getting to know everyone, Robert does something unexpected: He asks Fran out to see a movie.

The contrasts between them are stark. Where Fran is quiet, Robert is chatty. Robert likes movies, and Fran is less interested in films. Fran is a riddle wrapped in an enigma, covered with a bulky sweater. 

The script — written by Stefanie Abel Horowitz, Keven Armento and Katy Wright-Mead — lives in the awkward silences between Fran and Robert, and the moments where Fran’s death-obsessed daydreams threaten to intrude on her waking life. Director Rachel Lambert leans a little hard into Wes Anderson-level whimsy in the early going, but settles down into a good groove as Fran and Robert start learning about each other.

Ridley and Merheje, once they find their vibe, have a nicely offbeat chemistry — which is what propels “Sometimes I Think About Dying” into something touching.

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‘Sometimes I Think About Dying’

★★★

Playing in the U.S. Dramatic competition of the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Screens again Friday, Jan. 27, 3:15 p.m., Eccles Theatre, Park City. Not rated, but probably PG-13 for some unsettling images and thematic elements. Running time: 93 minutes.

Sundance review: 'Fair Play' is a high-end trash wallow, hiding a thin plot behind some violent sex scenes

Except for one strong performance, there’s little to find appealing in “Fair Play,” a lurid exercise in corporate backstabbing that disguises its thin plot with extravagantly nasty sex scenes.

Emily (Phoebe Dynevor, from “Bridgerton”) and Luke (Alden Ehrenreich, from “Solo”) are young, prosperous and very much in love — so much so that Luke proposes to Emily in the most awkward way possible (after sex in a bathroom at a relative’s wedding). Aside from family, though, they can’t tell anyone, because they work at the same high-stress New York financial firm, where the employees aren’t supposed to fraternize.

It’s the sort of place where millions can be made or lost with a single decision, and analysts like Emily and Luke are taking apart the data and making pitches to their managers — called PM’s — to inform those decisions. When one PM implodes after a stock purchase gone wrong, the big boss, Campbell (Eddie Marsan), has to promote a new one. And, despite a rumor that Luke will be the new PM, instead Campbell gives the job to Emily.

At first, Luke is congratulatory and supportive. But it’s not long before the late nights, the confabs with Campbell, and the pressures of answering to Emily as his boss start to grind on Luke’s masculinity.

Writer-director Chloe Domont — whose work directing episodes of “Ballers” and “Billions” prepared her for such fragile manhood — seems to argue that love, like Wall Street, is a place where there are no winners without losers. Whether this is true or not, it’s a depressing way to think about life, and this movie wallows in that depression, turning its lead characters more repulsive by the minute.

It doesn’t help that the mismatch of the lead actors is even wider than that of their characters. Dynevor is a stellar actress, and she finds gradations of rage and desire that poor Ehrenreich can’t begin to achieve. In “Fair Play,” it’s an unfair comparison between them.

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‘Fair Play’

★★

Playing in the U.S. Dramatic competition of the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Screens again Thursday, Jan. 26, 8:35 p.m., The Ray Theatre, Park City. Not rated, but probably R for strong sexual content, nudity, strong violence, drug use and language. Running time: 113 minutes.

Sundance review: 'The Stroll' is a sympathetic first-person account of life as a Black trans woman sex worker in pre-gentrified New York

I believe in Roger Ebert’s maxim that “movies are a machine that creates empathy,” and I found myself feeling a lot of empathy for Black trans women sex workers after watching “The Stroll.”

This documentary focuses on the lives of Black trans women who for years made money in one of the few avenues open to them in the ‘80s and ‘90s: As sex workers in New York’s Meatpacking District. For many of them, it was the only place to go when family threw them out for their gender identity. 

It was a rough life, as described by co-director Kristen Lovell (who made the film with Zackary Drucker). Lovell lived the life on The Stroll, as the street was called then. Lovell gathers some of her friends from those days — many of them still friends today — to reminisce. 

If it wasn’t the johns threatening your or hurting you, it was the cops harassing or arresting them, or busting up the homeless encampments where they had to live. This increased when Rudy Giuliani became mayor, because of his policies to increase police crackdowns. As the years passed, the other threat to the life on The Stroll was gentrification, turning the rough-and-tumble Meatpacking District into “The High Line,” and pricing homeless trans people out of the market. 

There’s a poignant moment where one of Lovell’s friends recounts how she spent 14 years in prison, and came back to find her old stomping grounds were now a yuppie haven.

Much of “The Stroll” plays out like that: Oddly nostalgic for what was probably a tough time for these women — but understandable, because it was all they knew back then. The movie shows a New York that is no more, and a sisterhood forged in the flames of those hardships.

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’The Stroll’

★★★1/2

Playing in the U.S. Documentary competition of the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Screens again Tuesday, Jan. 24, 11:15 a.m., The Ray Theatre, Park City; Wednesday, Jan. 25, 10 p.m., Redstone Cinemas, Park City; Thursday, Jan. 26, 9 a.m., Park Avenue Theatre, Park City; Friday, Jan. 27, 3:45 p.m., Broadway Centre Cinemas, Salt Lake City. Also screening online on the Sundance Film Festival platform, starting Tuesday, Jan. 24. Not rated, but probably R for strong sexual content, nude images, drug use, discussions of violence, and language. Running time: 84 minutes.