Staying Fit
All eyes were on Michael J. Fox, 61, on opening night of the 2023 Sundance Film Festival (Jan. 19-29), the mecca of indie movies soon to hit your home screen or art-house cinema. The Parkinson’s patient/activist and Back to the Future star walked on the stage to a standing ovation, fielding questions about the achingly funny and tender documentary Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie, directed by Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth), a star auteur in his own right. Besides being an iconic actor, Fox is an important force for bettering America’s health (and his own): His foundation has raised $1.5 billion for Parkinson’s research.
Fox’s sure-to-be-a-hit documentary is one of a bumper crop of 2023 Sundance documentaries featuring star turns by beloved celebs over 50: Brooke Shields, Willie Nelson, poet Nikki Giovanni, young-adult-lit groundbreaker Judy Blume and modeling maverick Bethann Hardison. Once-famous feminist sexologist Shere Hite, who died in 2020 at 77, gets her belated due in the doc The Disappearance of Shere Hite, and I Am Everything shows how pioneering rocker Little Richard influenced just about everyone before his death in 2020 at age 87.
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Documentaries are often the standouts at film fests, but Sundance offered strong narrative features too: Julia Louis-Dreyfus does witty wonders as a devastated wife and writer in the comedy You Hurt My Feelings, and in Bad Behaviour, Jennifer Connelly gives a hell of a performance as a former child star who attends a not-so-silent retreat to better understand her place as mother and daughter.
Sundance is the marketplace where studios and streamers buy many of the prestige pictures you’ll see on-screen this year and in next year’s awards races. Four out of five 2023 Oscar-nominated feature documentaries came from Sundance, and the 2024 nominees may include this year’s Sundance U.S. Grand Jury Prize-winning entry Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project and World Grand Jury Prize-winning doc The Eternal Memory, by Maite Alberdi, whose film The Mole Agent, about an elder-abuse investigation, was a 2021 Oscar nominee.
The Eternal Memory is about a famous TV journalist with Alzheimer’s who created an “archive of memory” to document Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s crimes, then strove to build his own personal memory archive to preserve his inspiring bond with his wife of 25 years and leave his children with an enduring record of their lives. MTV Documentary Films snapped it up, with high hopes for the 2024 Oscars.
Here are 10 new Sundance Film Festival standouts with grownup star power to keep an eye out for as they head to theaters and streaming platforms near you.
Courtesy of Sundance Institute
Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie
Brilliantly edited, the documentary mixes footage of Fox’s movie and TV hits with audio excerpts from his best-selling memoirs. It cuts from the actor working with his physical therapist to him sitting down in a nicely lit room full of Emmys, cracking wise and smirking like Family Ties’ Alex P. Keaton. But it’s not all smiles: He describes his long struggle with alcohol and pills after his Parkinson’s diagnosis at age 29, and his 30 years without taking a drink. This may be his most important film, premiering this year on Apple TV+.
Jeong Park/Courtesy of Sundance Institute
You Hurt My Feelings
Veep and Seinfeld star Julia Louis-Dreyfus, 62, was already on a roll in Netflix’s 2022 race-teasing comedy You People. She reunited with Nicole Holofcener (her Enough Said writer-director) for a comedy that is spot-on about the untrustworthiness of the most doting of family members. After writing a successful memoir, Beth (Louis-Dreyfus) is having trouble finding a home for her first novel. When she overhears her husband saying he doesn’t like the book, having praised it repeatedly, she’s devastated — and unforgiving. The director and her star capture the truth of relationships, the lies told by well-intentioned loved ones and the absurd ways we can double down on bruised feelings. It will be released this year by A24, the studio that leads this year’s Oscar contest with 18 nominations, including best picture contender Everything Everywhere All at Once.
