Review: At Sundance's final blowout in Park City, killer unicorns and unraveling pop stars take the stage

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PARK CITY, Utah — Sundance is where I get lost.My first trip to Park City I didn’t know anything or anyone, and scored a bunk bed in a room of four women by cold-emailing an acquaintance of an acquaintance and blurting, “I don’t really mind who I sleep next to as long as they don’t mind that my boyfriend says I snore.”That was 16 years ago and I have visceral memories of circling the town on a 2 a.m.

shuttle hoping to recognize my stop.There was also the afternoon I took a shortcut through some trees and got stuck in snow up to my shins.

(That’s also when I learned that cheap boots dissolve under duress.) But just as vividly, I remember getting lost in that year’s movies: breakthrough films by the Safdie brothers, Luca Guadanigno and Taika Waititi, plus Jennifer Lawrence’s star-making performance in “Winter’s Bone.” It took time to master Park City, to learn the theater locations and make friends, one of whom broke his arm and laptop skidding on a patch of ice while another gave me the fuzzy red mittens I’ve been wearing here for a decade.And I’ve spent the last two Sundances readying to let this town go when the festival decamps for Boulder, Colo., in 2027.

(At my second screening this year, I even lost the right mitten.) The Egyptian Theatre on Main Street isn’t showing any new movies this year as the festival is already shutting down limb by limb, but it’s where a colleague dragged a dozen of us critics to “Hereditary’s” fourth not-so-full screening insisting we had to see it, and he as much as anyone put Ari Aster on the map.(He’s also now my editor — hi, Josh Rothkopf!)God, I’m going to miss this place.

By God, let’s go with indie provocateur Gregg Araki’s conception of him: Robert Redford, a titan who hatched an independent film festival from his head like he was Zeus and passed away this September.“How did he ever come...