Eat the Rich, Even When Gamey

Class war is just another day at the country club in Rafael Manuel's visually witty, quietly devastating debut Filipiñana—my absolute fave from Sundance this year. At an exclusive golf course outside of Manila, the film unfolds in leisurely deadpan tableaux (some have cited Wes Anderson, but I'd suggest Jacques Tati or Roy Andersson in their precise choreography of space and power) as a newly hired "tee girl" (Jorrybell Agoto) experiences a sweltering day of microaggressions in servitude. Go for the lush artificial-paradise pastels and intricately framed whimsy, stay for the metaphoric meditation on the complexities and hierarchies of post-colonial Filipino identity. Later, we can discuss the audience's complicity over some Jollibee's.

A hysterically messy indie throwback to the raunchy R-rated studio comedies of the 2000s (Pineapple Express, The Hangover), Macon Blair's Idiots—originally titled The Shitheads—works best with a crowd. Down-on-their-luck schlubs Dave Franco and O'Shea Jackson Jr. are hired to transport a wealthy enfant terrible (Mason Thames) to rehab, the premise echoing Hal Ashby's The Last Detail if the prisoner were an unconscionable TikTok monster and the escorts were barely functional adults. In these bleak sociopolitical times, here's one for those mourning the loss of mid-budget laugh riots in the multiplex. (Although I think this NSFW trailer is more enticing than the one above.)

Is nonbinary Tokyo composer Hakushi Hasegawa's maximalist whirlwind "Honest Feeling Album" short-circuiting in real time, or is that my overstimulated brain? First gaining attention in Japan's netlabel scene as a teen, the now 27-year-old artist grew tired of the isolation of solo composition at a computer and formed a live band (HaHa and the Hairpins) for a wildly unclassifiable, hyperactive fusion of avant-jazz, deconstructed breakbeats, pitch-shifted J-pop and terrifying noise. Cute meets creepy in this thrillingly aggressive reminder that the most honest expressions are sometimes the ones that refuse to be easily explained.

I Love a Fake Happy Ending. Movies that give you the warm, fuzzy conclusion you crave and then snatch it away with a disquieting reveal—feed 'em to me! It's a provocation as old as cinema that forces you to ask: What were you hoping to see, and what does that say about you? Rafael Manuel uses it brilliantly in Filipiñana with a "false ending" (not a spoiler) that directly implicates us in the film's critique of inaction and complicity. The move echoes Funny Games auteur Michael Haneke, who built a career on pointing fingers at the viewer, forcing us to confront our own passive consumption of violence and suffering. Too often today, when a film challenges us, the response is to blame the work. "It didn't make sense... It was boring... I didn't get it." We've lost the patience to sit with things that refuse to hand us easy answers, and assume it's the art's fault, not our miscomprehension. "What is the film saying?" isn't the right question, but "what are we bringing to it?"