The two best films I saw at Sundance, and what will be two of the best films of 2025, couldn’t be more different, an invigorating reminder of the breadth of cinema at one of the most important film festivals in the world.
The image of the train in Clint Bentley’s magical “Train Dreams” is weighted with meaning. It keeps returning to our protagonist in his dreams, usually as a foreboding sign of misery to come or a sense of anxiety that’s tied to the death he’s seen in the construction of tracks across the country. It also has weighted symbolism, an image of both development and destruction at the same time. A train track is progress that not only often came with violent human death in its construction but required the cutting down of trees that stood on this earth for centuries. As the gorgeous narration by Will Patton also makes clear, a train track promises something different around every corner, often ties to history that long ago passed. All of this is the foundation for Bentley’s lyrical and luminous adaptation of the novella of the same name by Denis Johnson, a film that reached into my heart and soul. Early in the film, I could physically feel myself taking a deep breath, almost like centering in a meditation class. It’s a film you don’t just watch; you breathe it in.
Joel Edgerton does his best film work since “Loving” (and arguably ever) as Robert Grainier, an average man in the United States after the turn of the last century. He has a lovely wife named Gladys (Felicity Jones) and an adorable daughter named Katie, but finding work often takes him far from home for months at a time. Bentley’s film (co-written by Greg Kwedar of “Sing Sing” fame) is very purposefully episodic, almost like someone remembering some of the major and minor moments of their life as it nears its end. The first act alternates between encounters of Robert’s on a job and his too-brief times at home. On the rails, he meets memorable personalities like a demolition expert played by William H. Macy, a veteran played by John Diehl, a talker played by Paul Schneider, and more.
These scenes are both grounded and gorgeous at the same time, feeling tactile in their presentation but shot through with magic hour lighting and stunning framing courtesy of Bentley and D.P. Adolpho Veloso, who also shot the director’s “Jockey.” To say that “Train Dreams” is beautiful would be an understatement. The film has earned some comparisons to Malick, and it’s largely in that visual poetry that people associate with him. I’m not sure the film is truly Malickian in structure, but it does have a visual language of man’s relationship to the natural world that recalls work like “The New World” and “The Tree of Life.” In discussing its non-stop beauty, I said to a friend, “Lubezki would be proud.” And it helps to have all this natural wonder presented under a beautiful score by Bryce Dessner of The National.
“Train Dreams” is the story of an ordinary life, a man who would otherwise never be the subject of great fiction or art. Robert was a logger who suffered great love and loss in his life. He was luckier than some who died young; he was unluckier than some who died old. Edgerton is remarkable, using his subtly expressive face as another visual element in a film that plays like painting as much as prose.
Everyone involved is well-directed by Bentley to understand the assignment. Jones gives the film a much-needed warmth; Macy is engagingly funny; Kerry Condon appears late to add thematic depth to the final act. She says something like, “The dead tree has as much to give as the living one.” It’s a commentary on some of the final images of the film and the cycle of life from death into rebirth—a theme at a Sundance that was very much about loss and grief—but also about the very acts of logging that allowed train travel across this country. Men like Robert Grainier did that. And he’s more like you than you might expect.
A very different film but also one that works as an empathy machine unfolds in Eva Victor’s phenomenal “Sorry, Baby,” easily the best film I’ve seen from this year’s Sundance Dramatic Competition—last year too, and maybe the year before. This dramedy is a breathtaking tonal tightrope, a movie that blends hysterical comedy with deep trauma to present something that feels most of all true. It’s an announcement of a major talent in Victor, who wrote, directed, and stars in a film that had people gasping for air after its perfect conclusion. I don’t usually comment on audience response at Sundance because it can be a little exaggerated but the group behind me literally just kept saying variations on “That was SO good” through the entire credits, as if they were too speechless to say anything else. They weren’t wrong.
Victor plays Agnes, who we see at chronologically jumbled points in her life over the last few years. As the film opens in chapter titled “The Year with the Baby,” we meet her best friend Lydie (Naomi Ackie), who is coming to visit, and reveal that she is pregnant. Even opening with this chapter feels essential to what Victor is attempting to say with this wonderful film: Centering friendship instead of the trauma that we will learn shaped too much of Agnes’ life. The second chapter, which, again, takes place before the first is titled “The Year with the Bad Thing,” and it’s BAD, but Victor frames it so smartly, not only refusing to present it on film but refusing to allow it to define Agnes or the movie about her. Other chapters like “The Year with the Good Sandwich” fill in some of the formative events of Agnes’ twenties, introducing us to memorable characters played by Lucas Hedges and John Carroll Lynch along the way, both fantastic. Hedges, in particular, hasn’t been this good since he worked with Lonergan.
As someone who has been going to Sundance for 13 years now, I have seen a LOT of dramedies about people trying to define themselves after trauma, but “Sorry, Baby” stands apart by being true. It is consistently character-driven, refusing to succumb to clichés by being real to Agnes and those around her. Another thing about the typical “Sundance Movie” is that they often falter in the final act, the toughest thing for a young writer. Victor doesn’t just bring this one in for a solid landing, she’s crafted a final act that I hold dear to my heart. There are three scenes as “Sorry Baby” is wrapping up—one with Lynch’s part, one in a tub, and the final one in the film—that just build on each other in a manner that absolutely floored me. Nothing about “Sorry, Baby” feels forced or manufactured, to the degree that the performers drift away and you feel like you’re watching people you know and love. And a bit of yourself too.
