Sundance Recap #6

Hooray! We've finally made it to my last movie recaps from Sundance 2025! Whew! This wasn't even one of my busier years, but it's still been crazy finding the time to recount everything. Now we've just got three more things to recap before I can share my Top Ten films from the festival.

THE LEGEND OF OCHI

In The Legend of Ochi, a young girl named Yuri (Helena Zengel) was raised by her father (Willem Dafoe) to fear mysterious creatures called the Ochi. One day when she finds a lost and wounded baby ochi in the woods, she's determined to reunite him with his family, no matter the danger she might face. In defiance of her father, she sets forth on an adventure that will change the way she views the world around her forever.

From a visual standpoint, The Legend of Ochi is a stunningly lush film full of beauty and wonder. Unfortunately, it suffers from some other issues that dull its magic. Instead of fully immersing us in the story’s lore from the get-go, we instead are given some clunky exposition that totally drags everything else down. While the creature design is admittedly adorable and endearing, the human characters are less memorable, with Willem Dafoe being the only one trying to breathe any life into things. For a kids' film, this definitely could have used more levity and depth to the characters to make this more than just a good-looking movie. The potential was here for a new children’s classic in the vein of ET, but sadly, it will be soon forgotten. RATING: 6/10

THE PERFECT NEIGHBOR

In the documentary The Perfect Neighbor, police body cam footage from a two-year period shows us the escalation between a Florida woman and her neighbors--and how it led to a tragic end. Susan Lorincz is the neighborhood Karen in a small Florida town, who constantly wants to speak with the manager over every little inconvenience--only in this case the manager is the police. She's a curmudgeonly lady who may have seen Gran Torino one too many times, as she can't stand any of the neighborhood kids coming near her yard. After years of the police failing to resolve her disputes in her eyes, she is emboldened by the "stand your ground" law to take matters into her own hands.

Comprised almost entirely of body cam footage and police interrogations, director Geeta Gandbhir chooses not to fall back on the standard tricks that other true crime documentaries thrive on (techniques which are discussed ad nauseum in fellow Sundance doc The Zodiac Killer Project). There are no cheesy re-enactments here, or tearful sit-down interviews with the people close to the case--just the actual footage of what went down. Because it's not quite so glossy, it really requires more attention to focus on some details that might seem mundane. But it doesn't take long before the viewer is sucked into this harrowing story and completely invested in what will happen at every turn. RATING: 8.5/10

HAL & HARPER

Siblings Hal & Harper are twenty-somethings who were forced to grow up a little too early, due to a rough childhood. The two reflect on their past and contemplate their futures, in the midst of all of their current hurdles. For the first time in my Sundance-watching career, I watched not just a TV show...but an entire season of said show. After watching Hal & Harper, I can't help but wish that it was a movie instead! Granted, I might have felt differently if I could have absorbed this over the same amount of time I would normally digest a show's season, rather than all in one sitting.

Hal & Harper requires a lot of reflection between episodes, which I didn't really have time to do. But even so, it doesn't really have the feel of a TV show, as it feels incredibly cinematic by nature. It felt more like watching a long uncut version of a film, as opposed to an episodic show. Yes, I'm harping (no pun intended), on this a lot...but mostly because I think I would have really loved this if some of the fat had been trimmed and it was a little more succinct with what it had to say. Still, there are so many good things here and I'd love to watch it again and spend a little more time reflecting on each episode the second time around. I loved Cooper's last Sundance film Cha Cha Real Smooth and here many of the same things I loved about that film are present here. The show has well-drawn characters and very fine performances from the actors who play them. Cooper takes less of the center stage here and defers the spotlight to his television sibling Harper (Lili Reinhart) who is absolutely wonderful in the role. Mark Ruffalo too does a really nice job here in a supporting role playing their father who still has a hard time letting go of the past. RATING: 7.5/10

Hooray! That's it for my recaps of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Be on the lookout soon for my Festival Wrap-up & Top Ten list.