Indiewire polls critics on the best 50 films so far this year

2013 is almost halfway over, though it's doubtful that half of the year's best films so far have released--they'll be coming along in the last three months of 2013. Still, in the name of a check-in, Indiewire polled movie critics about their favorite movies so far this year. The list allows some lesser-known films to shine--but it also lets some more questionable fare rise to the top. I've seen half of the films in the top ten, and a smattering from the rest of the pack. My top ten, however would be much different than IndieWire's aggregate.

In general, the Indiewire-selected critics are daring, opting for polarizing or mixed-review films. The exception is the number-one pick, Before Midnight, which boasts both a strong box-office and critical response that back up it overwhelming lead, with a score of 458 to second-place Upstream Color's 330. I couldn't get through the screener of Upstream Color, so I'm not among the film's supporters. Like the third-place pick, Spring Breakers, both films had very polarized reactions. The glacial pace of Leviathan, the number-seven pick, made me a bit lukewarm on the documentary. I don't think I've ever seen so many critics walk out on a screening, so its high placement surprises me. Further down in the top ten, The Place Beyond the Pines and Side Effects were both films I can get behind. Pines was ambitious but flawed, while Side Effects was the kind of tight genre thriller that should win over the Takens of the world.

Within the top ten, my two favorites are Frances Ha (#4) and Mud (#6), which both delivered beyond my expectations. But my other favorites of the year barely make rank. The Act of Killing (#35) still hasn't had its theatrical release, which means the jaw-dropping documentary may not have been seen by many critics yet. But The Bling Ring (#44) and Twenty Feet from Stardom (#45) also deserve higher placement, as does The East (#50).

Indiewire Top Ten:
1. Before Midnight
2. Upstream Color
3. Spring Breakers
4. Frances Ha
5. Stories We Tell
6. Mud
7. Leviathan
8. The Place Beyond the Pines
9. Side Effects
10. Like Someone In Love

'Fast & Furious 6,' 'Hangover III' and 'Epic' race for Memorial Day audiences

Last year on Memorial Day, the only major player was Men in Black 3. This year, three wide releases are competing for audiences. That could mean more people show up to the movies, but it also means there will be some cannibalization between films.

The Hangover Part III and Fast & Furious 6 have a somewhat overlapping audience: young males. The Hangover Part III (3,555 theatres) opened yesterday to try to get a jump-start on the weekend, and also because it's the weaker film. Tracking only 22% positive on Rotten Tomatoes, this "unstylish action
flick with comic asides" (as described by our Michael Sauter) is not faring well with critics. More importantly, many viewers were disappointed by The Hangover Part II. If people already feel as if they've been burned by the franchise, it's unlikely they'll turn out again. In a way, though, it seems this comedy can't win. The sequel was criticized for being too similar to the first film, yet Sauter faults the three-quel because it "changes up the franchise formula—and not in a good way." It seems like these sequels just can't win, so Warner Bros. is making a good decision to make this the (alleged) end to the franchise.

Fast & Furious 6 (3,658 theatres) is the franchise that keeps on giving. It seems like viewers have had more faith in the franchise than the studio, because screenwriters have to keep resurrecting characters they prematurely gave the boot. In this movie, it means placing a character in Japan to fill in a plot hole from a previous sequel, according to critic Daniel Eagan. Like 74% of Rotten Tomatoes critics, he enjoyed the "long, loud and expensive" movie, which "delivers
what series fans want, although not quite as quickly or cleverly as
before." Fast & Furious 6 will be the fastest out of the gate this weekend, and its four-day total could easily top $100 million.

The first animated film in over two months, Epic (3,882 theatres) should be seeing kids and their parents lining up for an outing. Yet there's a feeling among forecasters that this animated feature will have a tepid reception, especially if parents are savvy enough to realize there are plenty of other animated features in the pipeline for this summer, including Monsters University, Despicable Me 2, Turbo, Planes, and The Smurfs 2. Our critic, Frank Lovece, had the opposite reaction, calling Epic "one of the best features so far from Blue
Sky Studios," and the movie itself full of "thematic richness."

It's rare for an indie romance to turn into a trilogy. But that's the case with Before Midnight (5 theatres), which picks up on the romance between Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, this time while the duo is in Greece . Also in the mix this weekend is the latest from documentarian and workhorse Alex Gibney, We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks (4 theatres), which Eagan dubbed "brilliant but maddening."

After the four-day weekend, we'll be back on Tuesday to assess the impact of this jam-packed weekend.

Sundance 2013: Acquisition deals soar despite the emptying Park City

The 2013 Sundance Film Festival, which is now on its 7th day, might be quieting down as the industry crowd starts heading back to the real world that exists outside the streets of Park City, yet from a sales standpoint, the noise remains steady as this year’s festival plays host to some of the most high-profile distribution deals in its recent history. As I was making my way to The Marc on Monday morning to attend the 8:30am screening of Richard Linklater’s Before Midnight (which is officially one of this year’s hottest titles, and surprisingly STILL without a distribution home) I was catching up with the latest tweets from prominent press, most of which were talking about Ryan Coogler’s Fruitvale, a tearjerker of a US Dramatic Competition title that has had three screenings in the previous two days and sold to The Weinstein Company for over $2M. My latest opportunity to catch this unforeseen hit (which instantly became the only film that mattered to press on Twitter) was later that afternoon at a Press & Industry screening, which unfortunately clashed with my plans to see Shane Carruth’s Upstream Color (his first feature since Primer in 2004), which I was enthusiastically told to definitely not miss by a friend from the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Having scored that hot ticket, I didn’t reshuffle my schedule to fit in Fruitvale, but also learned quite quickly that in Sundance, the wind might change direction at any given moment and one should be prepared for last minute change of plans.

Fruitvale was one of the first major deals that continued breaking in the news later on. I am including the distribution deals I am so far aware of at the bottom of this post, but noteworthy ones are The Way, Way Back from writer/directors Nat Faxon and Jim Rash which was sold to Fox Searchlight for almost $10M –a rather large sum for Sundance- according to a Deadline report; Jerusha Hess’ Austenland and John Krokidas’ Kill Your Darlings, both of which Sony Pictures Classics has bought; Jordan Vogt-Roberts’ Toy’s House that CBS Films closed the deal on; James Ponsoldt’s The Spectacular Now (one of my favorites of this year among the 21 movies I saw through Tuesday) which went to A24 and Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s directorial debut Don Jon’s Addiction that Relativity Media grabbed.
As important as it is to keep one’s finger on the pulse and to take every Harvey Weinstein spotting seriously (side note: I saw him leaving the Holiday Village Cinemas around 7pm on Monday), one should also trust his/her own instincts around which films to give priority to. I have already talked about the majority of what I saw during the initial days of the festival (check out both the day 1 recap and the weekend recap), so here is an account of everything I was able to catch on Monday and Tuesday, before my inevitable return trip hit earlier today.

Linklater’s Before Midnight somehow and miraculously not only lived up to my unrealistically high expectations, but also exceeded them. Eight years after the trilogy’s second installment Before Sunset, the creative collaboration of Linklater, Delpy and Hawke once again results in an extraordinary, dialogue-driven film which zooms into a couple’s intimate, frank conversations while reminding the viewers about the big world which they embrace and need to exist in. The magic of this trilogy –with its latest installment being the best of the three- is in its ability to make the viewer a fly on the wall. This kind of honesty in film, conveyed through long takes, tightly written dialogues with just enough breathing room and all-around grounded performances, is a rarity and a direct product of a visibly evolved partnership and strong trust between Linklater, Delpy and Hawke (which Linklater talked about in length during the post-screening Q&A), and I for one would like to see at least a Best Original Screenplay nomination awarded to Before Midnight in the next year’s awards season. After this festival highlight, I continued to conquer my screening schedule with Carruth’s Upstream Color, a deeply experimental and abstract work of art –or rather, artifact- on human paranoia of control, captivity and animalism (well, this is one of the million ways one can look at it) that certainly got a lot of respect from me without inspiring much desire to wrestle with its many layers. Lynn Shelton’s Touchy-Feely and Jill Soloway’s Afternoon Delight, both of which are Dramatic competition titles I saw in the second half of Monday, marked one of the highs and lows in this year’s festival for me, respectively. With Rosemarie DeWitt’s character as a massage therapist at its center, Touchy-Feely, an honest account of a family whose members dwell on the verge of potentially life-changing transitions, is a deceptively small film that finds its balance through its increasingly empowered characters, bringing Shelton’s subtle genius to life. On the other hand, Soloway’s Afternoon Delight failed to shine (at least for me) with its confusing tonal clashes, forced humor and dark twists, as well as its overtly self-important attitude toward its minor ambitions.

On my final day at Sundance, I started with two of the crowd-pleasing titles of the Dramatic Competition. Adapted from a novel by Tim Tharp, James Ponsoldt’s The Spectacular Now is a refreshing, beautifully-written film about a pair of high-school seniors, that is completely free of the disingenuous millennial snark and quirkiness that I started growing tired of in movies depicting this particular demographic. Both Miles Teller and Shailene Woodley are likely to go far in these roles (their characters are so honest that they instantly get under your skin), and the same can be said about the film’s director Ponsoldt as well as its writers Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber. Jordan Vogt-Roberts’ Toy’s House on the other hand, a hilarious comedy about a group of teens whose lives are turned into practical nightmares by the adults who surround them, provides a very different angle on a similar demographic. I personally would have preferred the comedic silliness to be tempered slightly, yet I still enjoyed this unique entry with all of its oddball characters.

The second half of the day, I fit in Sean Ellis’ World Cinema Dramatic Competition title Metro Manila, a poignant, slightly heavy-handed yet competently shot film about a family struggling to rise above the poverty line in a Philippine metropolis. And I concluded Tuesday's screenings with Greg Barker’s documentary (in US Competition) Manhunt: The Search For Osama Bin Laden (to premiere on HBO in May 2013), which made for a great way to bring Sundance to a personal end and transition back to the current film conversation which is still pre-occupied with the torture controversy around Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty. Through archival footage and interviews conducted with long-time CIA analysts, director Greg Barker pulls off a responsible documentary that not only shines a light on the process of a two-decade-long manhunt (which started long before 9/11), but also challenges the approach to “war on terror”, which in his and his subjects’ opinions is currently trapped in a vicious cycle with no end in sight due to the inability and unwillingness of the public to understand the underlying reasons behind terror. In attendance during the post-screening Q&A –in addition to director Barker- were three of the film’s subjects: ex-CIA Operatives Cynthia Storer, Nada Bakos and Marty Martin, who received an enthusiastic standing ovation from the crowd. In response to my question about what each of them think regarding the controversy around the other Bin Laden movie currently in theaters, the CIA trio emphasized the complexity of the process in which a lot of techniques have helped with putting the pieces of the puzzle together. Then Marty Martin jumped in with an additional comment: “I can tell you that the film’s portrayal of Jennifer Matthews was completely inaccurate. She was a very serious woman in real life”, referring to the character played by Jennifer Ehle in Bigelow’s movie.

Following a very fun karaoke party hosted by Cavu Pictures (another Sundance lesson learned: karaoke is a popular form of late-night entertainment) where several of the filmmakers, Slamdance staff and a few prominent film critics were in attendance, it was time to call it a night, and call it a Sundance for now...at least until the news of the next distribution deal broke.

2013 SUNDANCE ACQUISITIONS TO-DATE

Relativity Media

Don Jon’s Addiction (Joseph Gordon-Levitt)

Fox Searchlight

The Way, Way Back (Nat Faxon, Jim Rash)

Sony Pictures
Classics

Austenland (Jerusha Hess)

Kill Your Darlings (John Krokidas)

CBS Films

Toy’s House (Jordan Vogt-Roberts)

Weinstein Company

Fruitvale (Ryan Coogler)

Radius-TWC

Concussion (Stacie Passon)

Twenty Feet From Stardom (Morgan Neville)

Lovelace (Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman)

Inequality For All (Jacob Kornbluth)

A24

The Spectacular Now (James Ponsoldt)

IFC Films

The Look Of Love (Michael Winterbottom)

The Summit (Nick Ryan)

Sundance Selects

Dirty Wars (Richard Rowley)

HBO Films

Pussy Riot – A Punk Prayer (Mike Lerner, Maxim Pozdorovkin)

Magnolia Pictures

Blackfish (Gabriela Cowperthwaite)

Prince Avalanche (David Gordon Green)

Showtime Networks

History of the Eagles (Alison Ellwood)

eOne Distribution

We Are What We Are (Jim Mickle)

Sundance 2013 weekend recap: Looking for the next breakthrough film

The first weekend of the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, which
usually makes up the busiest days of its entire run, has come to an end
with most of the highly anticipated titles having been screened at least once
for film lovers and industry hopefuls who are searching for the next
breakthrough film no one has seen coming. Indeed here in Sundance, it is rarely
a movie with star attachments that takes the industry by storm in the
competition categories. On the contrary, it’s usually a small film from a
newbie. If you look at the ticketing page of the festival for advice on how to
navigate your way through sold out shows, you’ll notice these words of wisdom:
“Be adventurous with last-minute film
choices! Last year’s Grand Jury Prize winner Beasts of the Southern Wild had
200 empty seats at its first screening.” While there hasn’t necessarily been a showstopper such as Beasts of the Southern Wild yet (not
including the big premieres, here), a few titles managed to stir up some debate
and get the attention of the crowd temporarily stationed in Park City. Among
these, none of them received as consistently great reactions as Randy Moore’s Escape From Tomorrow, a title I was able
to see late yesterday night as part of the festival’s NEXT section dedicated to
finding bold and innovative works. The film follows a family of four on the
last day of their trip to Disneyland, which starts with the father Jim (Roy
Abramsohn) losing his job over a phone call he receives from his boss. Hiding
the news from his wife and young children, Jim’s final day at the theme park
takes a surreal detour, turning the “happiest place on earth” into a David
Lynch-esque nightmare for the family. Shot in black and white with a crisp,
classic look that hints a taste of the French New Wave, Escape From Tomorrow is an effective and disturbing look at our
contemporary tastes and willingness to embrace the mass-produced, coating our
individualism to make each of us one of the same. Director Moore is a newcomer,
and thus, it’s a mystery to everyone -including myself- how he managed to shoot
a feature length narrative film in Disneyland completely on the sly. Yes, he
had no permits; just a dedicated cast and crew who agreed to walk around with
cameras, posing to be tourists. “We almost get caught once”, said Moore during
the post screening Q&A, also noting that their shot list was much longer
than their script, with every single move and location intricately planned and
learned on paper.  Cinetic is
representing the film for potential distribution deals; and since it’s safe to
say that Disney is soon going to file a lawsuit against the filmmaker (and he
is aware of that), it is hard to predict if a theatrical future is in the cards
for Escape From Tomorrow. One can
only hope.

Other titles I was able to fit in from the NEXT section were
Shaka King’s Newlyweeds, whose mild
humor, buried within a script as cloudy and directionless as its subjects,
failed to impress; and Chad Hartigan’s This
Is Martin Bonner, a film that effectively depicts the loneliness of its
characters with the kind of sensitivity and humanity one would expect from Mike
Leigh. It was refreshing to see this film which speaks to mature audiences.

Over at the US Dramatic Competition, many buzz-worthy titles
had their initial shots at becoming the next big prizewinner as the entire crop
has been screened at least once. I have so far seen (apart from Cherien Dabis’ May In The Summer which I already talked
about in my Day 1 recap), John Krokidas’ Kill Your Darlings,
David Lowery’s Ain’t Them Bodies
Saints, and Francesca Gregorini’s Emanuel and The Truth About Fishes (with
a few more coming up tomorrow and Tuesday); and among these, David Lowery’s
title easily stands out with its slowburning, lyrical Texan tale of love torn apart by
crime. Blending a western look with Malick-esque storytelling, Lowery’s
handle on the joyless lives of his characters (with pitch-perfect performances
by Casey Affleck, Rooney Mara and Ben Foster) impresses and bruises. It’s the
kind of movie that will attract a lot of admiration, yet perhaps not
enthusiasm. Krokidas’ Kill Your Darlings,
which tells a story of murder in the early college years of American poet Allen
Ginsberg, is stylish in bringing back a period to life, and once again features
phenomenal performances by the entire cast (including Ben Foster, once again);
yet the film goes slightly off the rails in its 3^rd act, which can
simply be salvageable through re-editing. Lastly, Francesca Gregorini’s Emanuel And The Truth About Fishes tells
a surreal, quiet story of coping, longing, letting in and letting go. Emanuel,
a sharp yet mysterious teen living with her dad and stepmother (in an initially
stagnant, yet increasingly keen performance by Kaya Scodelario) forms a bond
with the cool next door neighbor Linda (Jessica Biel) and the turn of events
brings her closer to understanding loss. Despite the gorgeous cinematography
and the interesting nuances in the film which constructs Linda’s story as the
antithesis of Emanuel’s, this title is unlikely to resonate in this category. I
am still planning on seeing Shane Carruth’s Upstream
Color, Jordan Vogt-Roberts’ Toy’s
House and Lynn Shelton’s Touchy Feely;
however based on the early reviews and instant Twitter reactions of critics
attending the festival, it is safe to say that Toy’s House has a real shot at being the winner of this category.

In the US Documentary Competition, I wouldn’t be
exaggerating if I said almost all titles here are creating the kind of buzz
that makes them look like potential winners. Documentaries have been enjoying a
fruitful theatrical run in 2012 continuing the trend of the previous few years,
and this year’s Sundance titles suggest that we can continue to expect
greatness from non-fiction storytellers. I have managed to fit in Martha Shane
and Lana Wilson’s After Tiller, and
Morgan Neville’s Twenty Feet From Stardom
(see my Day 1 recap) into my schedule so far –and it’s worth
mentioning not all titles have been screened in this category yet- but based on
what I’m so far hearing, the competition might be between these two. I am
personally a big fan of both titles, but would be especially pleased if After Tiller, a vital, inevitable
documentary for which “brave” doesn’t come close to being a sufficient
definition, wins this category. Following 4 doctors who perform late term/3^rd
trimester abortions in the US, After
Tiller gives voice to those who stand in the extreme end of an already
controversial topic. Given the political dimension of the story, and the
expected hate it will attract, all screenings of this doc (which the doctors
themselves attended as well), were tightly monitored by a security staff. I am
still looking forward to seeing Greg Barker's Manhunt: The Search For Osama Bin
Laden and Zachary Heinzerling’s Cutie and
The Boxer. 

Lastly, the Premieres –which are usually the most star-studded
entries of the festival- made for a colorful few days here in Park City. Park
Chan-Wook’s Stoker, which favored
style over substance in what happened to be the festival’s biggest
disappointment for me, widely divided audience reactions. In The East, Zal Batmanglij’s second
collaboration with the beautiful Brit Marling and his follow up to the
masterful Sound Of My Voice, tension
and mystery were tightly managed to the advantage of this highly entertaining film’s
pace. Among the titles I haven’t yet seen,
sex –as Robert Redford mentioned during the opening press conference- seems to
be a recurring theme in films such as Don
Jon’s Addiction (Joseph Gordon Levitt’s directorial debut), Anne Fontaine’s
Two Mothers, and Drake Doremus’ Breathe In. I look forward to catching
more of these titles before I depart on Wednesday. When one looks at the last weekend, it is easy to see that
none of the titles have been generating as much buzz as Richard Linklater’s Before Midnight, his third and final
(perhaps?) installment of the trilogy, which started out with Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. It had its first screening earlier tonight and many
critics on Twitter have already declared it a masterpiece. I am seeing it
tomorrow morning at 8:30 am and it won’t be easy, especially after tonight’s
Fox Searchlight party that was still in full swing as I was heading back to my
condo at well after midnight.