Vince Mancini’s Ranking Of The Best Movies He Saw At Sundance

After a long week of hurriedly stuffing my face with bad food between screenings, I’m finally back from Sundance. How was this year’s crop of films Well, it’s a little silly to generalize about so many films, especially when one couldn’t possibly see them all in the space of a week. But of the ones I did see, most were fine, a couple were less than fine, and two blew me away. Certainly, nothing was as bad as Assassination Nation last year, which is… good

Here’s the rundown:

1. Cold Case Hammarskjöld

Mads Brügger’s latest documentary is a bombshell, that’s the only way to describe it. I echo Mike Ryan in wondering why the findings in this movie aren’t front page news around the world. This was a two-hour film — which Mads actually apologized for before the film, and that’s all we’re really asking with long movies, to know that you really tried to make it shorter and couldn’t — where everyone in the audience stayed for the post-film Q&A. That’s unheard of. It’s possibly the only post-film Q&A that I was sorry to see end.

It was obvious as soon as the credits rolled that there’d be a rush to discredit Brügger, and the New York Times has already questioned whether Cold Case Hammarskjöld “revives dubious conspiracy theories,” or that it could lead people to be suspicious of doctors trying to fight AIDS in Africa. Which is certainly a fair concern, but also doesn’t refute the truth of what Brügger found. The author of that piece also quotes a Times review of Brügger’s last movie “questioning whether Brügger was trustworthy,” though the linked piece (a review) doesn’t offer any evidence of it.

In any case, it’s hard to have this debate without spoiling the movie. Needless to say, it’s worth seeing.

2. The Report

8. Top End Wedding

11. Velvet Buzzsaw

14. Native Son

15. Wounds