Celebrities came to Park City for the last time this weekend (assuming they don’t return to the slopes), including Dave Franco, Seth Rogen, O’Shea Jackson Jr.And Penelope Cruz. Three of the most anticipated films at Sundance 2026 were released in the first days of the festival. They are all, to varying degrees, worth a detour.
Macon Blair became one of the most unexpected winners of the Grand Jury Prize for his first film in 2017 »I no longer feel at home in this world“, but its follow-up, “The Toxic Avenger,” got lost in a distribution nightmare, making its latest dark comedy a bit of a comeback. It’s not in competition this year, but it’s back in its wheelhouse with “Assholes”, a Coen-esque comedy about colossal screw-ups getting stuck with a spoiled rich kid who doesn’t believe in consequences. “The Shitheads” gets a little too messy in the final act, but it’s still a smart film with an undercurrent of social commentary about how the bar for being considered valuable in this world can depend on the size of your legacy.
Davis (Jackson) is introduced as he is fired from his last job supervising troubled youths for taking them to see a very inappropriate movie. Totally adrift and questioning his faith, he gets a job working for a low-altitude transport operation. A quick shot later in the film of the back room reveals boxes of lobsters and two shirtless men doing drugs, so it looks like they’ll move anything for the right price. In this case, what they are being asked to move is one person: Sheridan Kimberley (Mason Thames “Black Phone” films), one of those ultra-rich teenagers whose parents left him with so much paid help that he became a sociopath. A viral personality for his Paul Brothers-style online persona, Kimberley is sent to a rehab center – what happens when rich people commit crimes – for lighting a fire to an unhoused man for the clicks.
Davis is accompanied on this road trip by another recently fired guy named Mark (Dave Franco), a serious drug user who just wants to get his money back, get high, and go home. Franco is excellent because he draws on an archetype that characterized many of his brother’s roles years ago, that of the barely lovable loser, a guy who isn’t entirely stupid in that he just doesn’t always make the right choices. In some of the film’s funniest beats, Sheridan almost immediately notices that Mark is the weaker of the two and starts fucking with him. Before you know it, drugs have been ingested and a stripper (Shipka) was sent to the motel room they share for the night. From there, things get much worse.
Blair’s storyline is not only consistently funny; he’s also subtly pointed about what he says about class and the truly vile people who are allowed to do whatever they want within it. Sure, Mark and Davis are what you might call losers, but why? They make mistakes. Maybe they’re not that bright. But they don’t ignite people for attention. They try to find their way instead of being carried away. And yet, he’s a truly horrible guy who has millions of followers. Ultimately, this is a film that makes you reconsider its title. Are these regular guys playing “Transporter”? Or could it be the millions of people who turn their attention-seeking behavior into cultural currency?
Someone who would be interested in all the big personalities of “Shitheads” if they were real people is the wonderful John Wilson, star of HBO’s critics’ darling “How to with John Wilson.” The offbeat documentarian is an underrated humanist, someone who is fascinated by people: what they do, what they feel, and how the two intersect. His last, “The history of concrete” might be dismissed as a 100 minute episode of his show, but don’t let that deter you from seeing it. Yes, this has a similar vibe as Wilson follows rabbit holes that somehow connect the Parthenon to Hallmark Movies to DMX, believe it or not. Wilson has a boundless interest in his subjects, and he has made a film that is ostensibly about concrete but becomes a study of what endures in society, what has cracks, and what needs to be fixed. It’s fantastic.
Wilson opens his film almost like a vlog, explaining how difficult it was to find a follow-up project for his hit series. As he explores his options, he attends a workshop during the 2023 strike on how to write a Hallmark movie of all things, where he learns the formulas behind the only cable network whose viewership is actually growing. His study of the Hallmark machine leads him to a cheesy romantic comedy that’s also somehow about affordable housing, which, coupled with his own New York residence’s problems regarding a cracked foundation, leads him to think about concrete: its use, its prevalence, and even its weaknesses. As you can imagine, selling your team and collaborators on a film about concrete is not easy.
Of course, as with all things John Wilson, it’s not just about concrete. While you’ll learn more about the gray stuff than you ever imagined, it’s essentially just a foundation (pun intended) for Wilson to meet people and discover what motivates and defines them. When a potential financier says he needs a musical element to ride the wave of blockbuster streaming documentaries about musicians, he stumbles upon a New York artist who fronts a local band called Nebulas. At one point, he finds himself on the set of a micro-budget short film that appears to be about real estate and murder. It always comes back to concrete, particularly how it’s used, but it’s a film about the people who work with concrete or make a living from it even more than the product itself. John Wilson’s projects are always more numerous than they seem. I hope he does a lot more.
Finally, there is Olivia WildeIt is “The invitation” a variation on Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf? as a deteriorating couple struggle at a dinner party with two guests they barely know. Wilde, also at Sundance as the star of “I want your sex“, opens his film with a quote from a legendary writer with a common last name. “One should always be in love,” wrote Oscar Wilde. “That is why one should never marry.” Obviously, the journey promises to be strewn with pitfalls.
The married couple here is music teacher Joe (Rogen) and his wife Angela (Wilde). After a long day, he comes home to find Angela panicked, preparing a dinner that she swears she told him about and which he denies knowledge of. Which means he didn’t receive any wine. She tells him that their upstairs neighbors, Pina (Cruz) and Hawk (Edward Norton) will be there in ten minutes. And don’t touch the cheese plate.
From the start of Rashida Jones and Will McCormack’s storyline, Joe is kind of a petulant brat, insisting that the dinner be canceled and refusing to support Angela’s plans. In a first act that seems too broad and too often overwritten, Wilde makes it clear that these people can barely stand each other, going through the motions of a dissolving marriage.
Naturally, dropping beautiful strangers into a tense dynamic can only lead to trouble. It doesn’t help that Pina and Hawk are essentially the polar opposites of their neighbors. Pina is a therapist; Angela seems to have difficulty accessing her own emotions, let alone those of others. Hawk is a firefighter who honestly cares about others; Joe suffers from debilitating back pain and borders on misanthropic. One of the things that annoys Joe is the loud sex Hawk and Pina have been having that keeps him up at night; it’s not surprising to learn late in the film that Joe and Angela haven’t made love in a very long time.
These opposing personalities bounce off each other in dialogues alternating between witty and overwritten. There are just a few too many beats in “The Invite” that feel like writers rather than people, though the film settles into a better rhythm as we learn more about these endless sources of witty one-liners.
It helps a lot to have such a talented quartet. Rogen takes the most frustrating character on the page – as funny as he can be in the context of the film, Joe is definitely a tough guy to be around – and does the heavy acting work of finding the broken humanity beneath his assholery. As he almost always does, Norton makes some smart and unexpected choices, especially at the end of one of the film’s best dramatic beats. Cruz is never bad and often great. And, of course, Wilde deserves credit for creating the right atmosphere as a director for her actors to find their characters.
My problems with “The Invite” are almost entirely on the screenwriting level. Something like this has to be believable, and it often feels more like an exercise in acting than a character study. It’s good, sure, and “The Invite” is certainly worth watching for its cast and funny moments, but when you’re striving to make a relationship comedy-drama like those of Edward Albee and Woody Allen that shaped the form, you’re hoping for something that ultimately isn’t so superficial.
