Sundance doesn’t really start until you get to the third day. By that point, there isn’t any feeling around for what might be good. You’re hearing real buzz on the ground about the movie you must see before you leave this thin-air bubble. Sometimes, it’s merely hype. But at other points, you start watching the films you know you won’t shut up about for the rest of the year. There are two such films in this dispatch that positively fit the bill, and one of them that leads you to wonder what the hell happened.
In many ways, David Greaves’ inviting and historical documentary, “Once Upon a Time in Harlem,” is the stuff of legend. A vital reclamation of a precious history, the film was born from a night in 1972, when his father, William Greaves, invited the living titans of the Harlem Renaissance to Duke Ellington’s old flat for a four-hour party filled with fond memories, fierce debates, and copious alcohol. Though the elder Greaves, known for groundbreaking experimental works like “Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One,” considered the project imperative, he was unable to finish it during his lifetime. Instead, the younger Greaves, with further support from his daughter Liani, has taken and re-tooled the footage into a complete movie, re-animating a crucial lineage of thought.
The film begins with the arrival of the guests. Luminaries in the winter of their lives, like poet Arna Bontemps, painter Aaron Douglas, Countee Cullen’s widow Ida Mae Cullen, composer Eubie Blake, stream into the flat like a ticker tape parade. Before long, one of the film’s three cameras, one of which was operated by the younger Greaves, catches sight of photographer James Van Der Zee, who sits down at a piano. While he plays, a wave of his work appears on screen. At one point, Greaves even makes a split screen of the present-day Zee and a photo of his younger self. Greaves pulls this trick with many of the people his father sat down with for one-on-one interviews, granting a tangible window to each subject’s past and importance.
As the night wears on, each attendee, depending on their professional background, makes an argument in favor of the cultural, political, or female contributions to the Harlem Renaissance. They also recall their former friends, who played their parts, like Zora Neale Hurston or Augusta Savage. There are moments, especially when the elder Greaves appears on camera, that you feel how much reverence and joy the elder Greaves had filming this. After all, he grew up in Harlem, in the shadows of all these figures. Now, he’s in the same room.
Despite the filmmaker’s celebratory mood, as the evening wears on and greater amounts of alcohol is consumed, the tenor becomes spicy. Actor Leigh Whipper dismisses the importance of The Lafayette Players, who were a seminal Black theater troupe. Painter Romare Bearden takes aim across the room at historian Nathan Huggins by critiquing the thinker’s retrospective thoughts on the Harlem Renaissance. Everyone disagrees about Marcus Garvey’s ultimate legacy (was he truly serious about wanting Black folks to return back to Africa?).
The camera dips, pans, and zooms across the room, oftentimes catching sight of silent yet visibly disagreeable faces—we can absolutely tell which person doesn’t like the other—and those caught in the soft embrace of their memories. Most of all, we witness these legends grappling with what their legacy will be, especially with a younger militant generation who they feel are forgetting them. That angst, tension and candidness grants these towering figures a grounded vulnerability. And as they begin to leave this room, walking toward antiquity, we want to remain and revisit their presence—living with them in an intellectual fairytale whose occurrence remains incredible and whose existence feels like a miracle.
Olivia Colman appears in Wicker by Eleanor Wilson and Alex Huston Fischer, an official selection of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Lol Crawley.It would be overly basic to call Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson’s romantic fairytale “Wicker” a kind of comfort food. Nevertheless, here, there’s a sincere warmth and a charming earnestness I’ve come to miss in Hollywood comedies. Based on Ursula Wills-Jones’ short story “The Wicker Husband,” the film stars Olivia Colman as a lonely, unkempt Fisherwoman (the characters don’t have names outside of their professions/roles) who, after enduring taunts from local villagers accusing her of being a spinster, decides to pay the Basket Weaver (a witty Peter Dinklage) to make her a man. The Basket Weaver does as he’s paid, crafting a Wicker Husband (Alexander Skarsgård), as her ideal partner. The Wicker Husband’s loving and caring ways—how he lives for the Fisherman’s happiness and ahem her sexual pleasure—not only breaks her bed. His methods also upend the village’s antiquated traditions.
“Wicker” is a saucy little movie, featuring the kind of raunchy humor that isn’t demure enough to reach for a double entendre. The women villagers, whose names are wholly tied to their professions, demonstrating how limiting their defined roles are, flat out state their lustful desires for the Wicker Husband. Conversely, the men become self-conscious of their own inadequacies compared to him. And yet, no one is as deeply perturbed as the Tailor’s Wife (Elizabeth Debicki), who sees Fisherwoman’s happiness and freedom as a threat to her esteem amongst the townsfolk and as a reflection of the scant professional options offered to her as a married woman.
Fischer and Wilson further sweep us off our feet by pulling delightful performances from up and down the cast. Skarsgård locates and translates a softness that circumvents his frozen shape (the rendering of his patterned wicker body is splendid) into something on the edge of lively. Debicki works every inch of the prototypical fairytale villain with aplomb. Conversely, Colman is immeasurably sweet and human, allowing Fisherwoman’s insecurities to organically arise by brandishing the wounded expressions that’ve made her a relatable star. Every character here feels fully formed, and the look of their village environment is balanced between quaint and palpable. No note or emotion even borders on being forced, even when the ire of the Tailor’s Wife envelops the Fisherwoman.
“Wicker” is a highly rewatchable romance because it perceptively understands that it’s not enough to simply reverse engineer the narrative beats an audience expects and desires. Fischer and Wilson know that even the most fantastical must feel close and emotionally real. “Wicker,” thankfully, is as real as it gets.
Natalie Portman and Jenna Ortega appear in The Gallerist by Cathy Yan, an official selection of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by MRC II Distribution Company L.P.Let me be clear: Cathy Yan’s absurdist art world thriller “The Gallerist” is pretty dreadful. Similar to other works attempting to skewer the modern art universe, Yan’s observations are shallow and glib, causing one to wonder what happened to the perceptiveness that guided a filmmaker to making a work as impeccable as “Dead Pigs.”
Here, Natalie Portman is Polina Polinski, a gallery owner on the brink of losing her business if her latest exhibition, featuring the rising star Stella Burgess (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), isn’t a big hit. That fear fuels Polina to allow gauche art influencer Dalton Hardberry (Zach Galifianakis) to get a sneak preview of the show. Not only is he unimpressed, he also slams Polina’s tastes, reputation, and standing. When Dalton attempts to leave, he slips on a puddle formed by the gallery’s faulty AC and impales himself on Stella’s giant emasculator sculpture. Rather than listen to her frightened assistant Kiki (Jenna Ortega) by reporting herself to the police, Polina uses her knowledge of art history to manipulate Dalton’s limp impaled body into a considered composition (one of the few inspired creative decisions Yan makes). The piece is, of course, a viral sensation that invites hordes of influencers and an icy Marianne Gorman (Catherine Zeta-Jones), who, along with Polina and Kiki, decide that the only way they can get away with the crime is to sell the piece to the highest bidder.
The whole affair is supposed to be a madcap romp, especially when Charli xcx shows up as Dalton’s girlfriend, but instead it’s a nauseating 88-minute slog undone by its quirky camerawork and overcooked performances. To grant Yan some grace, she is aiming for a mood that’s as affected as the business side of the art world. This is also set in Miami. So some heightened performances and graceless aesthetics are to be expected. If one were being extremely forgiving, you could say Yan is grasping for camp. But she slips from stylish melodrama into crass nothingness, with each actor in this ill-conceived film giving what could be characterized as the worst performance of their career (Daniel Bruhl as a garishly rich collector and Sterling K. Brown as Polina’s bombastic ex-husband are having fun, I’ll give them that).
Once again, maybe one could chalk it up to the film’s intended silliness. Maybe we’re just meant to ride this vibe? But then Yan starts leaning on woozy oners that tilt and turn like the film is meant to capsize, we feel her losing a grip on what she actually wants to say. Yan also undercuts her characters too, such as making Stella wholly inarticulate about her art. And while many creatives might bumble when pushed to act as their own best salesperson, the flatness of Stella’s thoughts project her as a neophyte in the field and in her passion. Even Portman, who’s a bundle of craven expressions, can’t shoulder the load in a film that’s as smug as what it attempts to critique.
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