Sundance 2025 Opening Weekend Highlights 

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• The Perfect Neighbor

The Perfect Neighbor [U.S. Documentary]
There are any number of ways director Geeta Gandbhir could have told a documentary story about "Stand-your-ground" laws in general, or about the particular case she's exploring—but the way she did choose proves remarkable both in its structural ingenuity and in the way it adds power to the narrative. That story involves an incident in Florida's Marion County, in which Susan Lorincz shot her neighbor Ajike Owens through Lorincz's front door, claiming she feared for her life, and Gandbhir allows that case to unfold almost entirely through public records: police body-cam footage obtained from the many times Lorincz called sheriffs with complaints about neighborhood kids playing in a field (which was not Lorincz's property) adjacent to her home; recorded interviews with witnesses to the events; and ultimately, police interviews with Lorincz herself. The result is a remarkable portrait of the neighborhood "Karen" as a toxic, almost-certainly-racist presence in a multi-racial neighborhood, and one that never has to resort to melodrama to convey the potential consequences of laws that allow someone to argue their fear might be more important than someone else's life. There are emotionally devastating moments here, but perhaps nothing quite so disturbing as a fixed camera on Lorincz, caught in an obvious lie, trying to speak into existence the impossibility that she could be held accountable for her actions.

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• Twinless

Twinless [U.S. Dramatic]
I could toss out thematic buzzwords like "it's about loneliness and connection," and it's not even that those words don't apply—it's just that writer/director James Sweeney's movie is so gotdam fun and entertaining that I hesitate to muddy the waters. It's the tale of two men who meet in a bereavement support group for people who have lost twin siblings: Roman (Dylan O'Brien), a straight guy hanging around in Portland to settle his late brother's affairs; and Dennis (Sweeney), a gay man with plenty of issues of his own. Both central performances are terrific, with O'Brien pulling off the trickier task of capturing a guy who's a little bit dumb, a lot angry and still understandably sympathetic, while Sweeney evokes something more pathetic but never ridiculous. Mostly, though, it's smartly written from start to finish, full of hilarious one-liners, unexpected filmmaking choices and a brilliant sense for when the darkest possible humor is just right. Even when the general narrative arc becomes clear, there's still great stuff like evoking what it's like when Dennis becomes a third wheel after Roman gets a girlfriend (the wonderful Aisling Franciosi) through something as basic as who gets to sit in the front seat, and join the sing-along to identical-twin act Evan and Jaron's "Crazy for This Girl." Maybe I'll come around to thinking more about loneliness and connection and whatnot when I'm done giggling myself silly over the bits that keep popping into my head.

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• If I Had Legs I’d Kick You

If I Had Legs I'd Kick You [Premieres]
"Mommy is stretchable," says the disembodied voice of a young child, talking about her mother, Linda (Rose Byrne)—and writer/director Mary Bronstein's darkly comic psychodrama feels like an exploration of exactly how far she can stretch before she snaps. Linda's life is a whirlwind of colliding crises: dealing with her daughter's mysterious gastrointestinal illness without any help from her husband; living out of a hotel room after the roof of their apartment caves in; coping with the drama in the lives of her patients as a therapist. Linda's career provides a unique framework for a story that isn't necessarily groundbreaking in looking at the challenges of motherhood through the lens of horror, in that we can tell she understands intellectually all the coping mechanisms she should employ—"putting on your own oxygen mask first," avoiding self-blame, etc.—but still needs to self-medicate in order to function. Byrne's performance makes the most of all her skills, as both dramatic and comedic actor, finding the places where every parent falls short and taking them to pitches that often inspires cringes. But the neatest filmmaking trick involves the way Bronstein opts to portray Linda's daughter—or more specifically, not portray her, keeping the child's face hidden in such a way that captures how Linda's own problems make it impossible for her to see her daughter as a person, rather than just one more problem to be solved.