The Big Sick finds director Michael Showalter and writer-star Kumail Nanjiani spinning Nanjiani’s real-life relationship with co-writer Emily Gordon (played by an incandescent Zoe Kazan) - including her brush with a life-threatening illness - into an infectious (no pun intended, I swear) cross-cultural crowd-pleaser. Slowly but surely, though, the movies started to matter. For a day or two, festivalgoers seemed dazed and anxious, and I heard more expletive-laced angst about Trumpelstiltskin than chatter about films seen or anticipated. JON FROSCH: One of the questions looming over Sundance 2017 was whether the movies could penetrate the pall cast by politics (i.e., the inauguration and Week 1 of the extremely alarming new presidency).
