This article first appeared on the Obsessed by Kevin Fallon Substack. Click here to subscribe.
It’s an interesting way to start the day. Certainly, I haven’t experienced it before…at least not to my face.
I was walking into my first Saturday screening at the Sundance Film Festival, where I am alternating between tearing up over my frozen tushie, tearing up for my poor stomach over the shocking lack of food available, and tearing up over the movies I’m spending morning to night screening.
“S**theads?” the first volunteer I encountered at the theater’s security asked me. It was jarring to hear, but I nodded and was let through.
“S**theads?” “S**theads?” each volunteer I encountered said, staring me directly in the eyes as the word morphed from a question into more of a statement, a pronouncement: “You must be a s**thead.” Finally, I was helpfully offering it up, pointing at myself and the people following me: “S**theads.”
If nothing else, the comedy hot-ticket titled—you guessed it—“The S**theads” offered Sundance goers a running joke to break the ice with, as everyone seemed tickled-as-hell to be saying it out loud at every opportunity.
The movie also delivered some of the festival’s biggest laughs so far. It happened to kick off a movie-going schedule for me that was back-to-back comedies that really, truly had me cackling—which is not always guaranteed at an indie movie festival that sometimes over-obsesses with weepies and (groan) stories about self-discovery.
Here’s my rundown of them, including what I think is absolutely going to be my favorite movie of Sundance this year and perhaps even a 2027 Oscars player. Not every film festival movie is worth keeping tabs on as they’re released throughout the year. You’ll walk to seek these ones out.
The S**theads
No, the title is not officially asterisked, but I’m not trying to get Google dinged by fully cussing in my fledgling Substack.
In fact, nothing is filtered, self-conscious, or apologetic in the action romp, in which Dave Franco and O’Shea Jackson Jr. play desperate, down-on-their-luck men who take jobs at a shady company that specializes in transporting problem teens (one of many variants of titular s**theads in the movie) to rehab so their rich, disinterested parents don’t have to.
Davis (Jackson Jr.) takes the task seriously; he’s the kind of person who cares about doing a good job—and also really needs this job. Mark (Franco) is only doing it for the money. A pill-popping, authority-hating troublemaker, he is as degenerate as the kid they’re assigned to transport.
What follows is a Looney Tunes-esque series of calamities interrupting their journey, each providing a more raucous, uproarious comedy setpiece than the last. Davis’ gasket-popping exasperation, combined with Mark having to drop his d-bag shield as stakes get more intense, makes for escalating laughs. The mission plays like a video game, but as the pair beat more and more levels, patience wears thin: We’re really not at the final boss yet?
But the payoff, as it is any time you finally reach game over, is hilarious and great.
The History of Concrete
If you watched the HBO series How To With John Wilson, then you know Wilson, in his niche as comedy documentarian, is a singular genius.
In the series, he’d focus on seemingly benign questions he encounters in his New York City life: Why is there so much scaffolding? What’s the best way to split a bill? How do you most reliably track a package delivery?
A combination of his observant wit and meticulous research, set to a montage of footage of city life, transformed absurdist comedy—are we really paying all this attention to that silly question?—into poignant, hilarious commentary about what connects us.
The History of Concrete is essentially a feature-length version of one of Wilson’s How To episodes. There is concrete—and problems with it—everywhere, from the leaky cracks in the basement of his apartment building to the highway overpasses that are crumbling underneath the weight of the cars driving on them.
But in finding out the origin of our concrete dependence and the perils behind our reliance on it, he uncovers something remarkable about filmmaking: That as much fun as it is to escape to different worlds, maybe there is no greater film subject than the thing that we encounter every day—and no greater film characters than the ordinary everypeople who are impacted by them.
The Invite
Olivia Wilde got one of the heartiest, enthusiastic standing ovations I’ve seen at Sundance in the years that I’ve been coming here. It was for her latest directorial effort, The Invite, which she also stars in with Seth Rogen, Penelope Cruz, and Edward Norton.
The film essentially asks the question: What if we redid Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?...but somehow made it even more psychosexual?
Wilde and Rogen play a couple at a point in their marriage where one can’t even breathe in the direction of the other without uncorking some unrelated tirade of grievances. To his dismay, she has invited over their upstairs neighbors, Cruz and Norton, who Wilde wants to impress because they give off such chic vibes when they run into each other in the elevator—and who Rogen mostly just wants to confront because their loud, over-the-top late-night sex is not only rude, but ruining their sleep.
Set entirely in one apartment over a night of drinks, which kicks off with awkward vibes when Cruz and Norton overhear Wilde and Rogen arguing, the happy hour becomes a powder keg for every issue each couple has to sequentially explode.
The writing is remarkably funny, each uncomfortably resonant one-liner about the misery of coupledom pulling the pin so that another heartbreaking grenade about these couples’ lives can go off.
It all leads up to an outrageous twist (complimentary) that pivots the night in a wildly unexpected direction. With the four actors delivering performances ranking among their career-bests, The Invite is the movie I expect to show up in this year’s awards season.
