Jack Begert's 'Junk' Lands on MUBI After Sundance Premiere

"Junk" Arrives on MUBI as Critics Praise Begert's Surprise Sundance Debut

Jack Begert's debut feature "Junk" begins streaming on MUBI on October 23, after earning a B+ grade from The Film Stage at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. The Aronofsky-produced drama, originally titled "Little Death" at its festival premiere, arrives as one of the more unpredictable directorial debuts of the year.

What is the film actually about?

The Film Stage review, headlined "Junk Review: Genre-Bending Addiction Drama That Packs a Poignant Punch," warns readers away from detailed plot summaries. The studio's official logline remains spare. The summary lists three elements:

• A middle-aged filmmaker on the verge of a breakthrough
• Two kids in search of a lost backpack
• A small dog a long way from home

These threads converge across the film's runtime. David Schwimmer leads the cast as Martin, the filmmaker at the story's center. The reviewer notes that Schwimmer "fully lean[s] into the self-pitying act he honed as Ross Geller," drawing on his "Friends" persona for darker comic effect.

Martin describes his own life to his therapist as "meaningless." He scripts an autobiographical project while dreading his fiancée Jess, played by Jena Malone. He dreams nightly about a woman in a barn.

The two teenagers are Karla and AJ, played by Talia Ryder and Dominic Fike. The Film Stage describes them as "two druggies caught up in the absurd underbelly of L.A.," though Ryder and Fike also anchor the film's tender moments with performances the review calls "fantastic." Sante Bentivoglio makes his feature-film debut in a supporting role, opposite Karl Glusman, last seen in the thriller "Watcher."

How does the film treat addiction and satire?

The Film Stage frames "Junk" as a film "mostly about human fragility and drugs." The review draws an explicit comparison to Darren Aronofsky's "Black Swan." Martin's descent mirrors Nina Sayers's unraveling. He loses himself in obsession, with the barn woman, with his movie, and with his relevance in popular culture.

Karla and AJ sing their own "Requiem for a Dream," the review writes. Yet Begert distinguishes his approach from Aronofsky's darker filmography through "delicacy and humor." Martin functions as the unwitting protagonist of a satire on cancel culture. The film skewers filmmakers who "measure diversity by quantity, not quality," and the broader paranoia of the privileged.

Editor Jake Torchin receives particular praise for the film's kinetic rhythm. The cutting between Martin's hallucinatory sequences and the teenagers' grounded reality runs so rapidly that the result resembles "a stop-motion panic attack." "He and Begert have created a perfect representation of what it looks like inside the brain of a person with incurable neuroses," the review observes.

What does the streaming release change for the film?

The October 23 MUBI premiere widens "Junk" beyond festival programmers and trade press. Until now, the film has played primarily to Sundance audiences and a small circle of viewers. The B+ grade from The Film Stage places it among the more favorably reviewed debuts of the festival class.

The reviewer reserves his highest praise for Begert's tonal balance, noting that the director "strikes a neat balance between esoteric inscrutability and blunt messaging." The script by Begert and Dani Goffstein earns the single word "wonderfully unique." Ryder and Fike deliver "fantastic performances."

The most pointed observation, however, concerns the film's ending. The bravest choice in "Junk," the reviewer concludes, lies in the filmmakers' decision to "forgo nihilism for hope." For a first-time director working under Aronofsky's shadow, that choice marks Begert as a writer-director to follow as his debut reaches a broader audience through streaming.