There’s a unique energy in the air in Park City this year. It’s a bit harsh to call it somber, but something feels a little muted, which is understandable given how many attendees are coming from the fire-ravaged city of Los Angeles. I spotted a celebrity at her world premiere yesterday and she looked notably sad to me, and it crossed my mind that she may have lost everything in a fire. If that isn’t enough, there’s the political state of the world over the last week. Whereas the energy in 2017 was angry—there were marches, rallies, and cries of opposition—Trump 2.0 seems to have led to a bone-deep weariness from the artists and attendees seeing his first few days of activity in the sequel. And one wonders if the chatter about Sundance leaving Park City hasn’t impacted the mood. Could this be one the last editions of this world-famous festivals in the city of Utah? Of course, this is all backdrop to the films themselves, all that really matters in the moment, but I’ve always said that art doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s a conversation with the people in the audience, and the people here this year feel ground down by the world in early 2025.
If that exhaustion leads people to seek out escapism, then “Omaha” is not the right movie, even if it’s undeniably an early standout of this year’s festival. A brutal, tough watch, it’s a film that intertwines two common subjects of dramatic filmmaking: grief and poverty. We’ve seen so many films about either, but director Cole Webley’s work presents a heartbreaking story of how they can feed off each other. Imagine your whole world shattered by grief and then imagine how those emotions would be compounded by wondering how you’re going to feed your kids. All of these swirling, crushing feelings can be seen in every shot of John Magaro’s eyes. Without melodrama, he moves, speaks, and looks in this film like a man who is literally carrying extra weight in his body—the weight of worry, the weight of grief, the weight of what he plans to do.
“Omaha” opens with Magaro’s unnamed father waking his two children—Ella (the remarkable Molly Belle Wright) and Charlie (Wyatt Solis)—early one morning and basically fleeing their home before they get evicted. Where they’re going is left a mystery, but it’s not long before they end up in the Salt Flats of Utah on their way to the city that gives the film its title. Why are they headed there? Again, it’s not immediately clear, but one can tell that dad has almost no resources left. He forgoes food so his children can eat. He gives the family dog a fast-food burger because it’s cheaper than dog food. Magaro captures a man who has run out of options, pushed out into the world of the 2008 economic crisis with no more safety nets.
And yet there’s child-driven joy and beauty in the filmmaking here too. The very young Solis was allowed to improvise, and the incredibly talented young Wright and Magaro often follow his lead. Kids know when something’s wrong, but they also are still kids: wanting to play, getting Sour Patch Kids at a gas station, flying a kite on the flats. Director Cole Webley and writer Robert Machoian have made a film that hits you in the gut emotionally, but it’s not miserabilism, taking time to find the joy in childhood and beauty in the landscape of a country that sometimes leaves families like this behind. First-time D.P. Paul Meyers finds beauty in the heartland of the country, and composer Christopher Bear’s score is effective without ever being distracting.
Some will find elements of “Omaha” manipulative and I get that, but one person’s moving is another person’s manipulative. I was instantly lost in Magaro’s performance, watching this gifted actor capture the truth of his character’s predicament instead of the cliché of it. So when “Omaha” reaches its destination, the movie hit me like a truck. I could feel it in my soul. And even if it’s not the joyous escapism the world may be asking for in January 2025, the reminder that art can have that kind of power is essential to everything that’s going to come.
And then there’s “Bubble & Squeak.” After a couple of days of brutal emotion in my Sundance selections, I was eagerly anticipating a quirky comedy featuring a great ensemble cast that includes Himesh Patel, Sarah Goldberg, Matt Berry, Dave Franco, and Steven Yeun, who also produces. And “Bubble & Squeak” opens very promisingly … before getting stuck in a gear it will never leave before the first chapter has even concluded. So aggressively quirky that it pushes through to annoying, “Bubble & Squeak” became an experiment in experiencing a comedy with a hundreds of people and being able to hear a pin drop because of the lack of audible laughter. I certainly won’t forget the experience, even if I wish I could.
Patel and Goldberg play a newly married couple named Declan and Dolores, who are on their honeymoon in an unnamed country—although a late-film reveal that the closest city via train is Belgrade gives it a bit of location for anyone curious. In this country, cabbages are illegal. Yes, the food. There was a war that ravaged the country so completely that it cut off all food supplies other than cabbages, which led to so many meals of cabbage that people committed mass suicides. So the very sight of a cabbage produces horror. The fact that Dolores is smuggling cabbages into the country is a little bit of a problem.
After a very funny opening scene in which Yeun’s officer questions Declan and Dolores to set up the premise of “Bubble & Squeak,” our protagonists jump out the window, and so does the film. Berry gets a few laughs out of a Herzogian accent, but that’s literally it. Framed in 4:3, Evan Twohy’s film has an exaggerated satirical tone that initially recalled Roy Andersson (with a dash of Wes Anderson) to this viewer, but any sort of political or international commentary quickly dissipates under the deluge of roughly a hundred jokes about cabbages.
It becomes an increasingly dispiriting experience to watch talents like everyone involved in this movie struggle to find anything humorous to unpack, and then the film sinks even further with a final chapter and epilogue that reach for depth that the preceding hour has not earned. Everyone involved in this movie will emerge completely unscathed—they’re too talented not to—and will quickly move on to a better project. Probably one that allows cabbages.
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