Palm Springs

Max Barbakow’s film skips the discovery stage of the loop. Nyles has been inside a long time and knows the rules, so it opens on his boredom: the question is what to do in here, not how to get out. Roy, played by J. K. Simmons, is looped too and hunts Nyles through it. It screened at Sundance on 26 January 2020. The rights fee paid by Neon and Hulu was announced as 17,500,000.69 dollars, clearing the previous Sundance record by exactly 69 cents. The pandemic changed the release plan and the film opened on 10 July 2020, on Hulu and at drive in theatres at once. Andy Siara, who wrote it, met Barbakow at AFI in 2013; the idea came from a run of Southern California weddings and the script was rewritten over three years. Despite the title, filming happened around Los Angeles for the state credit. At the 78th Golden Globes it took two nominations, musical or comedy picture and Andy Samberg as actor, and won neither. A good fit if you like that the film centres the man already used to the loop rather than the newcomer, and opens on boredom instead of discovery. Not for you if the Sundance record has you expecting scale; the work turns on a small budget and one wedding venue.