The 2019 Sundance Film Festival’s Best Movies and Performances, from Pete Davidson to Ocasio-Cortez

BEST FILM

The Farewell

During the last few minutes of The Farewell, an involuntary noise escaped from my body, like a goat bleating, or a small car honking. It was an intense, visceral emotional reaction to the climax of writer-director Lulu Wang’s Sundance debut, as deeply felt a family drama as I’ve ever seen. Based on her own experience, she tells the story of a Chinese-American family that returns to China on the occasion of the matriarch’s terminal illness. The catch: Following tradition, they’re not going to tell her she’s dying. The film stars Awkwafina in a revelatory dramatic performance as the conflicted granddaughter, and is centered on the tensions between identity, home, place, heritage, and guilt that all families face. That The Farewell kindles such explosive emotion is rooted in its authenticity. This is a deeply personal, specific story of a Chinese family, but its themes are unshakably universal. The word “gem” is thrown around a lot with indie films, but few are as polished as this one. – Kevin Fallon

BEST ACTRESS

Alfre Woodard, Clemency

In Clemency, Alfre Woodard plays Bernadine Williams, the warden of a prison forced to oversee two executions in a startlingly short period of time. She approaches the task with an administrative diligence—it is her job to make sure this duty, as prodigious as it may be, is completed with the utmost competence, especially given the high stakes. But especially when the inmate up next is one she develops a fondness and compassion for, she must grapple with the emotional toll—and just how much of that to reveal—of simply doing her job. It’s a complicated dichotomy, and Woodard portrays each flicker of Bernadine’s feelings about it with a transfixing subtlety. So much of her performance is in moments of stillness and quiet, yet the impact couldn’t be louder. Woodard is among the most prolific actresses we’re blessed to have, and Clemency may just be a career best. – Kevin Fallon

BEST ACTOR

Adam Driver, The Report

The procedural nature of Scott Z. Burns’ The Report doesn’t leave much room for showiness, and that’s exactly what makes Driver’s performance so impressive. The unapologetically wonkish thriller follows Senate investigator Daniel Jones’s years-long, methodical spelunking of the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation techniques” following 9/11, and the ways in which power was abused to cover up what amounted to ineffectual torture. The Spotlight-esque, refreshingly straightforward chronicling of Jones’s means much of Driver’s performance is at a simmer. But when that restraint finally does come to a boil in a handful of big final act scenes, you appreciate the impact of Driver’s quiet, determined performance even more. – Kevin Fallon

BEST DOCUMENTARY

Knock Down the House

No film has captured the urgency and vitality of this political moment better than Knock Down the House, Rachel Lears’ documentary trailing four female Democratic candidates fighting like hell to flip seats during the 2018 midterm elections. It certainly helps that all four women are not only great on camera, diffusing the tension with quotable quips, but also possessed of very personal reasons for why they’ve chosen to run for office, from losing a child due to our broken health care system to making a late father proud, raising the stakes considerably. The women are Amy Vilela, who ran in Nevada’s 4th District; Paula Jean Swearengin, who squared off against incumbent West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin; Cori Bush, who battled for a House seat in Missouri’s 1st District; and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, an ex-bartender from the Bronx who took on establishment leader Joe Crowley, the fourth most powerful Dem in Congress. Lears’ film elicited plenty of cheers and tears during its Sundance debut, as these four women laid their lives on the line for working-class Americans. Even the most hardened Ocasio-Cortez cynic will be won over by film’s end. – Marlow Stern

BREAKOUT STAR

Pete Davidson, Big Time Adolescence

On the heels of perhaps the funniest Saturday Night Live sketch of the year, wherein he and fellow comedian John Mulaney exposed the sheer lunacy of Clint Eastwood’s The Mule—threesomes and all—and a series of hilarious, self-reflective stand-up performances, Pete Davidson’s star continues to rise in this coming-of-age comedy about a 16-year-old who can’t seem to shed his 23-year-old weed-smoking, trouble-making surrogate big brother (and best mate). While the role isn’t that much of a stretch for Davidson, he exudes a certain movie-star confidence onscreen, rattling off funny one-liners with aplomb and carrying the film, which contracts whenever he isn’t onscreen. In doing so, he’s proven that, in his first big film performance, he has what it takes to be the next big thing in comedy. Judd Apatow saw it too, casting Davidson in his first directorial outing since 2014’s Trainwreck. – Marlow Stern

MOST TALKED-ABOUT MOVIE

Leaving Neverland

The horrifying, disturbing details of Michael Jackson’s alleged child sex abuse revealed in Leaving Neverland have made countless headlines in the days since the documentary’s Sundance premiere. But what makes Dan Reed’s four-hour film exceptional is its resistance to reducing the accounts of James Safechuck and Wade Robson to those grotesque details. The specifics of what Jackson is accused of are paramount to the impact of Leaving Neverland. But rather than re-litigate past trials and the broader conversation of Jackson’s legacy in relation to their accounts, Reed delves deep into Safechuck and Robson’s cases, getting to the core of how a family that claims to love their son could be so willfully ignorant as to allow this to happen, and then following the accusers into adulthood to chronicle the lasting impact of abuse and the cost of coming forward. It’s a carefully crafted work on an explosive subject matter, a crucial part of why the film should not be discounted. – Kevin Fallon