In Sundance, or pretty much in any film festival where movies are rapidly and uninterruptedly consumed without a moment to breathe, there is a constant feeling of guilt or worry that you are at the wrong place, seeing the wrong film or doing the wrong thing. Should you socialize a bit more and finally attend one of the parties you’ve RSVP’ed to? Or take an afternoon nap so you can last through that midnight flick? What about the movie you’ll miss during that afternoon nap? A piece I read on Indiewire (written by Sydney Levine) during last year’s Sundance explained this really well: “The problem with the top festivals is that no matter what you are doing, you feel you should be doing something else.” Indeed, this is exactly how one races through the first few days of Sundance, as no one really knows a great deal about most of the films until some kind of buzz starts to build on the ground. And that usually happens at the top of the week in Sundance, so you can reshuffle your schedule and make wiser decisions. From Monday through Thursday am (when I was scheduled to be picked up by an airport shuttle for my return trip), I managed to fit in 14 movies (bringing my total Sundance viewings to 29), and luckily, only a pair of them ended up being disappointments (which is something to celebrate). Among the 14, I need to especially mention the sleeper hit Land Ho! (co-directed by Martha Stephens and Aaron Katz), that the buzz coming out of Sundance (which is now heading into its final weekend with a total tally of fourteen acquisitions) appears to be zeroing in on.
Screened under the festival’s NEXT section, Land Ho! stars Paul Eenhoorn (who was in last year’s NEXT Audience Award winner, Chad Hartigan’s This Is Martin Bonner), and the newcomer Earl Lynn Nelson in a road trip/bromance story in the tradition of Sideways (Alexander Payne), and even The Trip (Michael Winterbottom). Based on the good word I’ve heard, and following its acquisition by Sony Pictures Classics, I decided to check out Land Ho! on Wednesday night at the Egyptian, with the attendance of the cast (you’ll love them, I promise), directors and the producing team. The film played incredibly well, and I can already see this little flick becoming an instant mainstream hit once in distribution later this year. It is especially noteworthy that Land Ho! is not only accessible by a wide range of audience with its light-hearted humor, but it also caters well to an audience over a certain age, that continues to be underserved in theaters year after year. The humor of Land Ho! is slightly on the ‘crass’ side, but charmingly and delightfully so. As a matter of fact, the only worry I have regarding the future of Land Ho! is its potential to be misunderstood by some and its style of humor generating undeserved backlash. With this minor note in mind, I found Land Ho! to be remarkably warm, insightful regarding the psychology of aging, and inside and out loveable.
Written and directed by Gillian Robespierre, Obvious Child (already scooped up by A24) ended up being another festival hit and a personal favorite. It is a witty, clever and a loudly feminist romantic comedy (I know, ‘feminist’ and ‘romantic comedy’ are two phrases that usually don’t belong together, but this is an exception), and a refreshing antidote to movies like Knocked Up in its approach to abortion as a desirable choice made by an independent woman. Obvious Child is Robespierre’s feature debut, and she has certainly launched herself as a female voice to watch during this year’s festival. I don’t want to use the ‘O’ word this early on, however this is the kind of film I would love to see scoring a screenplay nomination at the Oscars next year. Unlikely (given the agenda and subject matter), but a girl can dream.
Apart from these two personal favorites, here are a few highs and lows of my final few days of Sundance. A movie that most loved but I was mixed on was David Zellner’s Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter, starring Babel’s Rinko Kikuchi as the titular character who is obsessed with Coen Brothers’ Fargo, and believes that the suitcase full of money buried under snow is real and waiting to be discovered. The film is loosely based on the heartbreaking true story of a depressed and lonely Japanese office worker who traveled to Minnesota in 2001 to find the buried money (as she believed Fargo to be a true story), and froze to death near Detroit Lakes. I say it’s ‘loosely’ based on a true story, as there seem to be conflicting accounts of her real motivations to come to Minnesota. Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter is a harrowing film; yet, not one that is entirely made with the kind of care the story and its clearly vulnerable character deserves. Knowing that Kumiko’s journey is one ridiculous pursuit, the audience often responded to her poor and delusional decisions with uncomfortable laughs at the expense of the character. In a way, the kind of dark humor that works wonders for Fargo works against Zellner’s film here. What we were supposed to find humorous simply upset me, knowing how it all really ended.
Kate Barker-Froyland’s Song One was apparently a disappointment for most, but it was a pure delight for me. The film stars (and is pretty much made for) Anne Hathaway, playing a young anthropologist (Franny), whose research in Morocco gets interrupted with the news of her brother Henry’s (Ben Rosenfield) accident that puts him in a coma. Having been on unspeaking terms with her aspiring musician brother for the last few months, Franny tries to get to know him through his music, desperately tries to wake him up through sounds she records and plays, and starts a relationship with Henry’s favorite musician James Forester (Johnny Flynn) in the meantime. With a stellar soundtrack by Jenny Lewis and Johnathan Rice, Song One is a delicate film that romances a certain Brooklyn music scene through an incredible chemistry between the leads. A coincidence during a party I attended (for The One I Love) late Tuesday night (after I walked out of Gareth Evans’ pointless sequel Raid 2 when someone in the audience had a mild medical emergency, temporarily bringing the lights on at the Eccles) introduced me to Anne Hathaway, who then kindly introduced me to the film’s director Kate Barker-Froyland. “I had the idea of these three characters several years ago,” Froyland said to me, when I asked how she conceived the project. “I pictured them living in three completely different worlds, and imagined music as the arc of the story that brought them together. I worked with our composers for over a year, and we talked about Henry’s back story and how the music would fit in the big picture a lot. It was a great process,” she added.
Joe Swanberg’s outlined-yet-unscripted family comedy Happy Christmas is one of those rare movies that everyone seems to agree on. Starring Melanie Lynskey (rocking her beautiful New Zealand accent), Anna Kendrick (who’s in two Sundance films this year, Life After Beth being the second one), Joe Swanberg, Lena Dunham and Joe Swanberg's incredible baby boy Jude (who pretty much steals the whole film and became the hottest celebrity of Sundance overnight), Happy Christmas understands complex dynamics between family members, fairly assesses the tough life-balance choices new mothers have to make, is sympathetic toward struggling 20-somethings and never lets improvisation come at the expense of creative control.
Other impressive films I was able to check out in my final couple of days were Charlie McDowell’s eerie comedy The One I Love starring an excellent Mark Duplass and Elizabeth Moss (also in Alex Ross Perry’s Listen Up Philip this year), Michael Winterbottom’s The Trip To Italy, Jim Mickle’s thriller Cold In July as a confident follow-up to his horror flick We Are What We Are (one of last year’s ‘Park City At Midnight’ movies), Jeff Baena’s Life After Beth and Gregg Araki’s suspenseful White Bird In A Blizzard, starring a memorable Shailene Woodley as a teenager who copes with the mysterious disappearance of her mother (Eva Green) and owns up to her impulses and desires in the meantime. It’s safe to say that all these titles played to mixed reactions in multiple screenings, however there is an undeniable amount to admire in each.
On my last day of Sundance, I attended the Press & Filmmaker reception on Main Street, and had the good fortune of briefly talking to director Steve James, who was very touched by and grateful for Life Itself’s warm reception at Sundance. Then I caught up with Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Eugene Hernandez about his festival favorites as well as his thoughts on Lars Von Trier’s Nymphomaniac Part 1 (which ended up being this year’s secret screening title that I had briefly speculated about in my previous dispatch). I was unfortunately shut out of the secret screening due to some poor strategy on my end, however what I heard from Eugene - that many felt unfulfilled after the screening as it was Part 1 only (technically half of a movie you wanted to see the rest of immediately)-made me feel a bit better. That, and also, knowing one can’t possibly see it all.
While I don’t think this year’s Sundance had a breakout hit on par with Little Miss Sunshine or Beasts of the Southern Wild; I found it to be a very strong year overall, with titles that moved and challenged audiences. On a personal note, I was especially pleased with the diversity and breadth of strong female characters I have seen on screen (despite the earlier complaints by many that there weren’t as many female directors this year, as compared to the last). That alone makes me look forward to the rest of 2014.
Before I end my Sundance coverage, here’s an updated list of Sundance titles that have been acquired to date. I wonder if these acquisitions satisfy Manohla Dargis' 'call for restraint', which she asked of the distributors at the start of Sundance in her New York Times piece.
CNN Films and Lionsgate
Dinosaur 13
Pivot and Univision (TV Rights)
Cesar’s Last Fast
Magnolia and Paramount
Happy Christmas
Solution Entertainment (International)
Infinitely Polar Bear
Sony Pictures Classics
Whiplash
Land Ho!
A24
Laggies
Obvious Child
Focus Features
Wish I Was Here
Fox Searchlight
I Origins
Calvary
IFC Films
God’s Pocket
Radius-TWC
The One I Love
Well Go USA
Dead Snow: Red vs. Dead
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