‘Sasquatch Sunset’ (2024)
David and Nathan Zellner churned out quirky, experimental indie works such as “Plastic Utopia” (1997) and “Goliath” (2008) and later veered into slightly more digestible alternative fare with “Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter” (2014), about a depressed Japanese office worker obsessed with the movie “Fargo” (1996) who searches for that film’s lost suitcase of cash. They opt for something more fantastic and scatological here as they embed us in a group of Sasquatch over the course of a calendar year. The film’s not far off from “The Dawn of Man” sequence in Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968); no human words are uttered, though there are plenty of human gestures. Amid the lush greenery of the Pacific Northwest we get to know our clan of cryptids; the brusque alpha male (co-director Nathan Zellner), the lone female (Riley Keough), the more demure junior male (Jesse Eisenberg) and an ostensibly adolescent ’squatch (Christophe Zajac-Denek). Early on we get a fairly gratuitous sex scene right out of “Clan of the Cave Bear” (1986), then there are bouts of masturbation and self-exploration of genitalia (yup, you get full-frontal bigfoot). As base as that may sound, the film unfurls more like a stock nature documentary until things move toward the comic and absurd: Employing a turtle withdrawn into its shell as something of a cellphone; or the alpha munching on what can best can be described as herbal hallucinogens and laying his desire for sex on a mountain lion, which does not go so well. It feels like “The Three Stooges” by way of Nat Geo, and near going over the top. There’s plenty of pissing and shitting too, especially when the clan discover a logging road running through their territory (it’s up to this point that it’s unclear if we’re in the Paleolithic or the present) and experience the need to mark it. As much as you could say it’s a “Beavis and Butt-Head” spin on the Pakuni from the 1970s Saturday morning TV staple “Land of the Lost,” there is vulnerability, fear, compassion, grief and a sense of community that registers onscreen. Well crafted (the costume, makeup and cinematography impress), “Sasquatch Sunset” is at turns weirdly touching and, as the title suggests, there is the heartbreak of witnessing what may be the last of a rare breed. (Tom Meek) At Landmark Kendall Square Cinema, 355 Binney St., Cambridge.
‘We Grown Now’ (2024)
For many, Cabrini-Green was an infamous Chicago public housing project known for being the object of major neglect by the city largely due to its majority Black population. But for others, it was home, and in “We Grown Now,” writer and director Minhal Baig aims to tell that side of the story. (It’s worth noting that Baig never lived there herself.) The narrative centers on two boys, Eric (Gian Knight Ramirez) and Malik (Blake Cameron James), who are best friends living in Cabrini-Green circa 1992 when a younger student at their elementary school is killed. The boy who dies in the film is inspired by Dantrell Davis, the real-life 7-year-old who was on his way to school with his mother when he was shot by a gang member taking aim at a rival and missing. In a way, the film ends up being about Dantrell’s death and the way Cabrini-Green changes in the aftermath: increased security, ID cards for everyone, middle-of-the-night police raids. Still, we get the boys’ home lives, up to seeing Malik moves away when his mother gets a new job. By going in too many directions, Baig’s ambitious scope loses focus – we jump from one subject to the next without delving fully into any. Ramirez and James make Eric and Malik compelling characters, and forge the kind of natural chemistry kids often have, but it never registers the way it could with a tighter focus. Baig and the film do a nice job of delivering the message that places are defined by their people, and Baig’s use of children’s innocence as a lens to explore that construct is smart; it’s just too bad the plot is too loose to do any of it justice. (Madeleine Aitken) At Landmark Kendall Square Cinema, 355 Binney St., Cambridge.
A stronger
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