AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Looks like the weather in Park City, Utah, calls for stars. That's right. The Sundance Film Festival is underway. A-listers, studio execs, movie lovers - they're all gathered to screen movies folks like us hope we can see before too long. For a little taste, Hoai-Tran Bui joins us from Park City. She's entertainment editor for the culture site Inverse. Welcome.
HOAI-TRAN BUI: Hi, thanks for having me.
RASCOE: It seems kind of perfect that one of the first movies that you have seen was mostly shot in Utah, even though I guess it's called "Omaha."
BUI: Yeah, it's called Omaha because it's actually about the Nebraska safe-haven laws - laws in which parents can give up their infants at a hospital, fire station, without fear of prosecution. And Nebraska had a sort of loophole in their laws in which they didn't specify that the children that could be abandoned, basically, had to be infants, which led to many children that were not infants being abandoned. And that was something that kind of crept into the movie as it came about. It's a road trip movie with the dad and two of his kids, from Utah to Omaha, Nebraska, with the turmoil over whether he should abandon his kids or not.
RASCOE: Oh, wow. So what else can you share about what you've seen so far?
BUI: Yeah, so I've only seen a couple other movies. I've seen "Bubble & Squeak," which is a comedy from Evan Twohy that is about a American couple honeymooning in a unnamed country that has banned all cabbages, which is a big pain for them because the woman has actually smuggled 39 heads of cabbage in her pants, so it's...
RASCOE: (Laughter) OK.
BUI: ...A really absurd, very silly, black comedy. And I know that some people didn't quite like it as much as me, but I enjoyed this one.
RASCOE: What about some of the bad that you've seen? - 'cause that sounds good. Did you see anything that's not so great?
BUI: Yes, I was really anticipating this movie called "Rabbit Trap," which is this British folk horror movie starring Dev Patel. And it was a real slog that was totally all over the place and completely confusing with what it was trying to do and whether it was trying to be a horror movie, a whimsical fairy tale movie, and was a very sad waste of Dev Patel, who I usually really enjoy.
RASCOE: Sundance is so much about buzz. What movies or documentaries are getting that buzz, even if you've not screened them yet?
BUI: So the movie that I've heard the most buzz out of is "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You," which is Mary Bronstein's surreal portrait of motherhood starring Rose Byrne. Apparently, it's a career-best performance for Rose Byrne, and it's an incredible, uncomfortable watch that is just centered around this powerhouse performance. This one's getting, like, the most buzz out of Sundance so far. It might be the breakout film of the festival. I unfortunately missed the first screening, and the one that's coming up is at, like, 1 a.m. so I don't know if I'll be able to see it. But that one is one to look out for, and that's "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You."
RASCOE: Do you have any, like, final bit of advice for us or recommendations for us? Like, is there one movie that you want everyone to see coming out of Sundance?
BUI: Oh, the ones that I'm looking forward to the most still are "Kiss Of The Spider Woman" and "Opus." Those two movies are getting a lot of buzz. "Opus" just got a trailer released, and that stars Ayo Edebiri and John Malkovich.
RASCOE: That's Hoai-Tran Bui, entertainment editor for the culture site Inverse. Thank you so much for joining us.
BUI: Thank you for having me.
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