Sundance Film Festival 2019 recap

It is that time of year again. The Sundance Film Festival has wrapped another year of exciting and intriguing new films that already have much of the cinema-loving community talking. The festival is held every year in Park City, Utah in late January. It is a week long and showcases some of the newest films coming to our screens in the near future.

One of the most talked about and controversial titles from this year's lineup is John Berlinger’s “Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile.”

The film centers around the ruthless and infamous serial killer Ted Bundy (Zac Efron) and the media circus that followed his trial. All of this is witnessed through the eyes of his partner Elisabeth Kloepfer (Lilly Collins). The film opened the festival with mixed reactions.

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“Pitch perfect here, delivering the best performance of his career thus far,” said Adam Chitwood of Collider News on Zac Efron’s portrayal of the serial murderer.

However, for the film overall, Chitwood adds how Lilly Collins’ character is used. “And while the film is told from her point of view, she does somewhat frustratingly drop out of the movie for a good while in the middle,” Chitwood said.

The big crowd pleaser for this year was Gurinder Chadha’s musical “Blinded by the Light”.

Based on the memoir by Sarfraz Manzoor, the film centers around a British-Pakistani teenager (Viveik Kalra) living in ‘80s London who goes on a journey of self-discovery when he discovers the music of Bruce Springsteen. Variety's Owen Gleiberman calls the film’s musical sequences “corny as hell but irresistible for that reason.” He further states that the film “has the courage of its own shameless teen rock-god sincerity.”

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One of the more under-the-radar films of this year is the debut from Britt Poulton and Dan Madison Savage, “Them that Follow”.

Set in the Appalachian wilds among a sect of Pentecostals, a young woman named Mara (Alice Englert) is faced with a faith-raddling choice while she navigates the hurdles of a love triangle with her secret childhood love Augie (Thomas Mann) and her father’s chosen prodigy Garrett (Lewis Pullman).

Leslie Felperin of The Hollywood Reporter says the film is “slow and then builds up a big ol’ crazy by the last half an hour, making for sometimes unintentionally risible results.”

Overall, this year’s Sundance Film Festival provided an electric bunch of new films to look forward to in the theater near you. For further coverage and film lists, check Sundance.org and other publications mentioned in this article.

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