PARK CITY, Utah\u00a0\u2014\u00a0<\/span>Sundance is where I get lost. My first trip to Park City I didn\u2019t know anything or anyone, and scored a bunk bed in a room of four women by cold-emailing an acquaintance of an acquaintance and blurting, \u201cI don\u2019t really mind who I sleep next to as long as they don\u2019t mind that my boyfriend says I snore.\u201d<\/p>\n That was 16 years ago and I have visceral memories of circling the town on a 2 a.m. shuttle hoping to recognize my stop. There was also the afternoon I took a shortcut through some trees and got stuck in snow up to my shins. (That\u2019s also when I learned that cheap boots dissolve under duress.) But just as vividly, I remember getting lost in that year\u2019s movies: breakthrough films by the Safdie brothers<\/a>, Luca Guadanigno<\/a> and Taika Waititi<\/a>, plus Jennifer Lawrence\u2019s star-making performance in \u201cWinter\u2019s Bone.\u201d<\/a> <\/p>\n It took time to master Park City, to learn the theater locations and make friends, one of whom broke his arm and laptop skidding on a patch of ice while another gave me the fuzzy red mittens I\u2019ve been wearing here for a decade. And I\u2019ve spent the last two Sundances readying to let this town go when the festival decamps for Boulder, Colo., in 2027. (At my second screening this year, I even lost the right mitten.) The Egyptian Theatre on Main Street isn\u2019t showing any new movies this year as the festival is already shutting down limb by limb, but it\u2019s where a colleague dragged a dozen of us critics to \u201cHereditary\u2019s\u201d<\/a> fourth not-so-full screening insisting we had to see it, and he as much as anyone put Ari Aster<\/a> on the map. (He\u2019s also now my editor \u2014 hi, Josh Rothkopf!)<\/p>\n God, I\u2019m going to miss this place. By God, let\u2019s go with indie provocateur Gregg Araki\u2019s<\/a> conception of him: Robert Redford, a titan who hatched an independent film festival from his head like he was Zeus and passed away this September.<\/p>\n \u201cHow did he ever come up with that concept?\u201d Araki asked onstage at what he tallied was his 11th Sundance premiere. \u201cThank you, Robert Redford. You are a god to me, you are immortal.\u201d The 20-something fan seated next to me felt the same way about Araki, hooting so much for his favorite filmmaker that he apologized.<\/p>\n Cooper Hoffman and Olivia Wilde in the movie \u201cI Want Your Sex.\u201d<\/p>\n (Lacey Terrell \/ Sundance Institute)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n Araki is here with the brash and splashy erotic comedy \u201cI Want Your Sex,\u201d<\/a> which stars Olivia Wilde<\/a> as a bondage-loving, anti-woke modern artist named Erika whose latest effort to shock is a giant vagina made of chewing gum. \u201cArt needs attention,\u201d she insists. So does Erika, ordering her much younger new assistant, Elliot (Cooper Hoffman<\/a>), into bed and into a public bathroom stall and into a set of frilly pink lingerie.<\/p>\n Erika\u2019s work isn\u2019t very good. But Wilde is fantastic. Her haughty line deliveries and imperious bone structure cut through the screen like a knife. (And you should see the get-ups that costumers Arianne Phillips<\/a> and Monica Chamberlain strap her into.) A murder mystery worms into the script that\u2019s too screwy to be taken seriously. But as Erika\u2019s mealy lover, Hoffman gets bossed around and humiliated and mostly digs his kinky misadventure. Me, too.<\/p>\n To be fair, art does need attention. Everyone at Sundance comes here to not just lose themselves giggling as Hoffman gets a spanking, but to find the next Araki, Aster or Safdie \u2014 and, if you\u2019re a distributor, snatch them up at a good price. It takes money to launch an indie movie to the masses and one of today\u2019s most daunting hurdles is that no one seems to have enough of it to market a niche sensation to an overwhelmed and distracted audience.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s time for a change,\u201d my rideshare driver said as we crept through traffic, explaining why she was running for state senate. She couldn\u2019t fathom why Utah hadn\u2019t put up more of a fight<\/a> to keep Sundance in town as it seemed to her that it had been a fiscal boon. I replied that I\u2019d heard rumors that Park City calculated there was more money in catering to the posh ski crowd than, say, film critics.<\/p>\n My Sundance has never been glamorous. I rarely have time to go to a party and when I do, it\u2019s standing around on a wet carpet in my socks hoping to eat a scoop of chili. The one exception was the year I was on a short film jury that included actor Keegan-Michael Key<\/a>, whom I ran into on Friday morning doing interviews for Casper Kelly\u2019s<\/a> colorful and quirky midnight movie \u201cBuddy,\u201d<\/a> which is like a very special spree-killer episode of \u201cBarney.\u201d<\/a> Key plays a giant orange unicorn who hosts a children\u2019s TV show and forces the kids to hug him or die. It\u2019s a tad thin compared with Kelly\u2019s other stunningly bizarro projects (\u201cToo Many Cooks,\u201d<\/a> \u201cAdult Swim Yule Log\u201d<\/a>) that always add another destabilizing twist. But you sense subterranean levels of weirdness that hint that he\u2019s already got ideas for a sequel.<\/p>\n Sundance is where starving artists level up. Just nine years ago, the documentary prankster John Wilson<\/a> was here crashing on a couch and shooting a snarky short called \u201cEscape From Park City\u201d<\/a> about his discomfort with its star-gazing and schmoozing. That trip tipped over a domino that, in a roundabout way, led to his brilliant HBO TV series, \u201cHow to With John Wilson,\u201d and now he\u2019s back to premiere his first full-length feature, \u201cThe History of Concrete.\u201d<\/a> (He said no one from the festival had yet to mention that short to his face.)<\/p>\n Essentially a long episode of his show, \u201cThe History of Concrete\u201d follows Wilson\u2019s zig-zagging curiosity about what\u2019s right under our feet, from an analysis of chewing gum patterns on the sidewalk to a pilgrimage to the shortest street in America. Despite concrete\u2019s omnipresence, he finds that it hasn\u2019t been around very long, and yet, to our peril it\u2019s already crumbling around us.<\/p>\n Along the way, Wilson takes Zoom meetings, unsuccessfully pitching this meta-doc to financiers, and, out of sardonic desperation, studying how to write a successful Hallmark movie. The overall idea is that our civic and artistic infrastructure is falling apart. Genius like his is the weeds wiggling through the cracks.<\/p>\n Charli XCX in the movie \u201cThe Moment.\u201d<\/p>\n (Sundance Institute)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n So many of this year\u2019s films are confronting the relationship between cash and creativity, like video director Aidan Zamiri\u2019s strobe-y and deliberately suffocating \u201cThe Moment,\u201d<\/a> which I\u2019ll be reviewing in full when it comes out next week. The party-hearty British pop star Charli XCX<\/a> plays an unflattering version of herself struggling to fend off a phalanx of producers, managers and record executives. Structurally, it\u2019s a mockumentary. Tonally, it\u2019s a horror movie about the death of an artist\u2019s soul. Alexander Skarsg\u00e5rd<\/a> is especially funny as a New Age-spouting concert documentary director who sucks up to the corporate overlords while breaking Charli\u2019s spirit a bit more in every scene. He\u2019s like Jigsaw<\/a> with a manbun: a villain who preaches self-empowerment while shattering her to pieces.<\/p>\n In real life, Charli sounds certain that her Brat summer is over. She\u2019s moved onto Park City winter, acting in two other films at the fest, including Araki\u2019s \u201cI Want Your Sex.\u201d But now that season is shifting, too. \u201cThis movie is about the end of an era \u2014 and this is the end of an era,\u201d she said, gesturing toward the Eccles audience.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Moment\u201d harmonizes well with Joanna Natasegara\u2019s \u201cThe Disciple,\u201d<\/a> which digs into the fraught backstory of the Wu-Tang Clan\u2019s<\/a> controversial seventh album, \u201cOnce Upon a Time in Shaolin.\u201d Only one copy exists, which was auctioned off in 2015 to the soon-to-be disgraced hedge fund founder and pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli<\/a>, who said he paid $2 million for it so he could impress his other rich friends. RZA<\/a> and Wu-affiliate Cilvaringz wanted to up the value of art by treating a rap album like the Mona Lisa. Instead, the internet accused them of selling out to the devil.<\/p>\n Natasegara\u2019s archival footage is head-spinning. I\u2019d watch a whole documentary just on the night of the album\u2019s listening party seen in the film, at which the RZA\u2019s mentor, a real-live Shaolin monk, wowed the attendees by hoisting his leg straight over his head. \u201cWhat a flex,\u201d one of the revelers jokes. The documentary skips over mentioning that in October 2016, Shkreli tweeted that he\u2019d leak the album if Donald Trump was elected president (he didn\u2019t), but does get into how just months later, Shkreli was sentenced to seven years in prison for securities fraud. The Wu-Tang record was seized by the government, which sold it to an NFT group for double the money.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/ca-times.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/5199ba0\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/3200x1800+0+0\/resize\/320x180!\/format\/webp\/quality\/75\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F56%2F65%2F062e86cb404eaf24fb2946cc07c0%2Fthe-moment-still-1.jpg)
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