20 Films to Look Forward to at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival

It's that time of year. Winter is in the air and everybody is freaking out about the Oscars. In approximately six short weeks, the Sundance Film Festival (January 22-February 1) will be upon us. It's always a good time for movie fans, because even if we're not among the lucky few attending the fest, scuttlebutt alerts us as to some of the indie films to keep an eye out for over the coming year. The entire festival lineup can be a bit of a monster to sort though, so here are 20 select films that look particularly intriguing or have already been accruing buzz from other fests on the circuit.

Narrative

'71

'71

Director: Yann Demange

Cast: Jack O'Connell, Paul Anderson, Richard Dormer, Sean Harris, Barry Keoghan, Martin McCann

Official Synopsis: ‘71 takes place over a single night in the life of a young British soldier accidentally abandoned by his unit following a riot on the streets of Belfast in 1971. Unable to tell friend from foe, he must survive the night alone and find his way to safety. 

Brooklyn

Director: John Crowley

Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Domhnall Gleeson, Emory Cohen, Julie Walters, Jim Broadbent

Official Synopsis: 1950s Ireland: Eilis must confront a terrible dilemma — a heartbreaking choice between two men and two countries, between duty and true love.

Digging for Fire 

Director: Joe Swanberg 

Cast: Jake Johnson, Rosemarie Dewitt, Orlando Bloom, Brie Larson, Sam Rockwell, Anna Kendrick

Official Synopsis: The discovery of a bone and a gun sends a husband and wife on separate adventures over the course of a weekend.

99 Homes

99 Homes

Director: Ramin Bahrani

Cast: Andrew Garfield, Michael Shannon, Laura Dern, Tim Guinee, Cullen Moss, J.D. Evermore

Official Synopsis: A father struggles to get back the home that his family was evicted from by working for the greedy real-estate broker who's the source of his frustration.

Eden 

Director: Mia Hansen-Løve

Cast: Félix de Givry, Pauline Etienne, Greta Gerwig, Brady Corbet, Arsinee Khanjian, Vincent Macaigne

Official Synopsis: Mia Hansen-Løve's electronic-dance-music epic follows the rise and fall of a DJ (based on her brother, Sven, a contemporary of Daft Punk) who gets into the rave scene in 1994 and spends the next 20 years navigating the French club scene. 

 

End of the Tour 

Director: James Ponsoldt

Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Jason Segel, Anna Chlumsky, Joan Cusack, Mamie Gummer, Ron Livingston

Official Synopsis: This story of the five-day 1996 interview between Rolling Stone reporter David Lipsky and acclaimed novelist David Foster Wallace explores the tenuous yet intense relationship that develops between journalist and subject. The two men bob and weave, sharing laughs and also concealing and revealing their hidden vulnerabilities. 

Mistress America 

Director: Noah Baumbach

Cast: Greta Gerwig, Lola Kirke

Official Synopsis: Tracy, a lonely college freshman in New York, is rescued from her solitude by her soon-to-be stepsister Brooke, an adventurous gal about town who entangles her in alluringly mad schemes. Mistress America is a comedy about dream-chasing, score-settling, makeshift families, and cat-stealing.

 

Sleeping With Other People 

Director: Leslye Headland

Cast: Jason Sudeikis, Alison Brie, Adam Scott, Amanda Peet, Jason Mantzoukas, Natasha Lyonne

Official Synopsis: Jake and Lainey impulsively lose their virginity to each other in college. When their paths cross twelve years later in NYC, they realize they both have become serial cheaters. Bonding over their chronic infidelity, they form a platonic friendship to support each other in their quests for healthy romantic relationships.

Wild Tales

Wild Tales 

Director: Damián Szifrón

Cast: Ricardo Darín, Julieta Zyberberg, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Darío Grandinetti, Erica Rivas, Oscar Martínez

Official Synopsis: Inequality, injustice, and the demands of the world cause stress and depression for many people. Some of them, however, explode. This is a movie about those people. Vulnerable in the face of an unpredictable reality, the characters of Wild Tales cross the thin line dividing civilization and barbarism.

The Bronze

Director: Bryan Buckley

Cast: Melissa Rauch, Gary Cole, Thomas Middleditch, Sebastian Stan, Haley Lu Richardson, Cecily Strong

Official Synopsis: In 2004, Hope Ann Greggory became an American hero after winning the bronze medal for the women's gymnastics team. Today, she's still living in her small hometown, washed-up and embittered. Stuck in the past, Hope must reassess her life when a promising young gymnast threatens her local celebrity status.

Slow West

Director: John Maclean

Cast: Michael Fassbender, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Rory McCann, Ben Mendelsohn, Brooke Williams, Caren Pistorius

Official Synopsis: Set at the end of the nineteenth century, 16-year-old Jay Cavendish journeys across the American frontier in search of the woman he loves. He is joined by Silas, a mysterious traveler, and hotly pursued by an outlaw along the way.

Stockholm, Pennsylvania 

Director: Nikole Beckwith

Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Cynthia Nixon, Jason Isaacs, David Warshofsky

Official Synopsis: A young woman is returned home to her biological parents after living with her abductor for 17 years. 

Strangerland

Director: Kim Farrant

Cast: Nicole Kidman, Joseph Fiennes, Hugo Weaving, Lisa Flanagan, Meyne Wyatt, Maddison Brown

Official Synopsis: When Catherine and Matthew Parker's two teenage kids disappear into the remote Australian desert, the couple's relationship is pushed to the brink as they confront the mystery of their children's fate.

Z for Zachariah

Z for Zachariah

Director: Craig Zobel

Cast: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Margot Robbie, Chris Pine

Official Synopsis: In a post-apocalyptic world, a young woman who believes she is the last human on Earth meets a dying scientist searching for survivors. Their relationship becomes tenuous when another survivor appears. As the two men compete for the woman's affection, their primal urges begin to reveal their true nature.

Documentary

3½ MINUTES

Director: Marc Silver

Official Synopsis: On November 23, 2012, unarmed 17-year-old Jordan Russell Davis was shot at a Jacksonville gas station by Michael David Dunn. 3½ MINUTES explores the aftermath of Jordan's tragic death, the latent and often unseen effects of racism, and the contradictions of the American criminal justice system.

Finders Keepers

Director: Bryan Cranberry, Clay Tweel

Official Synopsis: Recovering addict and amputee John Wood finds himself in a stranger-than-fiction battle to reclaim his mummified leg from Southern entrepreneur Shannon Whisnant, who found it in a grill he bought at an auction and believes it to therefore be his rightful property. 

Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief

Director: Alex Gibney

Official Synopsis: Going Clear intimately profiles eight former members of the Church of Scientology, shining a light on how they attract true believers and the things they do in the name of religion.

The Hunting Ground

Director: Kirby Dick

Official Synopsis: From the makers of The Invisible War comes a startling exposé of rape crimes on U.S. campuses, their institutional cover-ups, and brutal social toll. Weaving together verite footage and first-person testimonies, the film follows survivors as they pursue their education and justice — despite harsh retaliation, harassment, and pushback.

Prophet's Prey 

Director: Amy Berg

Official Synopsis: When Warren Jeffs rose to prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, he bridged the gap between sister wives and ecclesiastically justified rape, befuddling the moral compass of his entire congregation.

 

Racing Extinction 

Director: Louie Psihoyos

Official Synopsis: Academy Award-winner Louie Psihoyos (The Cove) assembles a unique team to show the world never-before-seen images that expose issues surrounding endangered species and mass extinction. Whether infiltrating notorious black markets or exploring humans' effect on the environment, Racing Extinction will change the way you see the world.

You can see the rest of the program on Sundance's website.

'Mockingjay - Part 1' Handily Defeats the Competition on a Humdrum Weekend

No surprises here--on a weekend devoid of any new wide releases, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 held onto the number one spot for the third straight week. Its weekend gross of $21.6 million brings it up to $257.7 million domestically; by the end of its run, it could be the second- or first-highest grossing movie of 2014. (The title is currently held by Guardians of the Galaxy, with its sweet $332.2 million.) The rest of the top five is Penguins of Madagascar ($11.1 million), Horrible Bosses 2 ($8.6 million), Big Hero 6 ($8.1 million) and Interstellar ($8 million)--almost the exact same as last weekend, only Horrible Bosses 2 and Big Hero 6 swapped places.

As for new releases, the biggest was low-budget horror flick The Pyramid, which opened in 589 theatres, just shy of the 600 needed to qualify it as a national release. Its poor buzz and low marketing yielded the expected result--it earned only $1.35 million, landing it in spot number nine.

Nightcrawler, The Homesman, The Babadook, Keep On Keepin' On and Boyhood (yup, still keepin' on) saw upticks in their box office as a result of added theatres, while The Theory of Everything added 24 theatres and saw its box office drop nearly 47%. That's not awful, though--it's already earned a healthy $13.6 million in its five-week run. The Imitation Game added four theatres and dropped only 16% percent in its second week, for a not-too-shabby per-theatre average of $50,250.

Reese Witherspoon's Wild opened in 21 theatres, where it earned $630,000 for an average take of $30,000. It will add about 80 theatres next weekend before expanding to national release on Christmas Day, when it will be up against a crop that includes Unbroken, Into the Woods, American Sniper (limited), The Interview and Big Eyes.

The only other new release to ping at the box office was Talya Lavie's Israeli military comedy Zero Motivation, which earned $9,700 on a single screen.

A Brief History of Movies Being Leaked Onto the Internet

It's been a wild month for Sony. First, hackers calling themselves the GOP (Guardians of Peace) shut down their offices and threatened them with blackmail. Then, as a probable result of the hacking, at least five Sony movies were leaked onto the web, all of them either still in theatres (Fury, downloaded by over 888,000 unique IP addresses in the last week) or not yet released (Annie, Mr. Turner, Still Alice, To Write Love on Her Arms). A bunch of sensitive employee information was also leaked, probably at least in part because Sony kept thousands of passwords in a folder labelled "password." Oof. Now the scuttlebutt is that North Korea might be involved somehow, possibly in retaliation to upcoming Sony comedy The Interview, in which a pair of schmucks try to assassinate Kim Jung Un. Oh... kay.  Who's going to make a movie about this?

Sony, on behalf of Film Journal International, I would like to offer my condolences. Have a happy holiday, guys. If it's any consolation, this isn't the first time pirates have gotten their hands on major movies before their release dates. This new quintet of pirated pictures joins the august (or not so august) company of...

Talya Lavie discusses her award-winning Israeli army comedy ‘Zero Motivation'

Talya Lavie

If there is such a thing called the academic film calendar, December is when our collective focus starts shifting from seeking cinematic gems to checking the year’s prominent must-sees off our lists. Awards season gets louder, year-end lists start popping up and comparably modest releases of December face the challenge of battling with the excessive noise around. Talya Lavie’s infinitely original and wickedly funny Zero Motivation, which quietly opened at NYC’s Film Forum for a limited run on Wednesday (to expand its run in select states/theaters through early 2015), is one of those smaller releases that requires some well-deserved attention before you make your year-end lists. Winner of 6 Israeli Academy Awards (nominated for 12 in total) as well as double accolades from the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival (Best Narrative Feature and Nora Ephron Prize), Zero Motivation is as confident a debut as I’ve come across in recent years from a young writer/director, noticeably ripe with a vision. 

Set in an Israeli military base, the quick-witted Zero Motivation tells the story of a group of young female soldiers (many of them blessed with a deadpan sense of humor) tasked with mundane, paper-pushing, behind-the-scenes duties; surviving their day-to-day boredom. As Lavie dials up the tension in the office, plagued by monotony and jealousy (and even a cleverly-played ghost story), she unveils the film’s many universal themes, as everyday as friendship and love; and as complex as feminism. In the midst of a season that is (yet again) taken over by stories of distinguished males (a handful of exceptions aside), the must-see Zero Motivation thankfully emerges as an antidote.

I had the great pleasure of chatting with writer/director Talya Lavie about the film’s themes, her artistic inspirations and gender representation in film industry. Read our conversation below.

How did you land on this story? I know both women and men spend time in military in Israel, so I am wondering if anything in the movie is based on your own experiences.

The film is not autobiographical, but it is very personal. When I was writing the script, I was talking to many girls who were just released from the army, and they were soldiers at that time. In building the story and its language, I was very inspired by them; so it’s a mix. And of course, there is a lot of instinctual imagination here as well.

You touch upon so many different themes. Friendship, love, betrayal, jealousy, gender… How did you enter the film? Which layer did you first want to tackle?

I think it was the friendship. I was very intrigued by the idea of finding your identity as a young woman. I noticed that women’s friendships are very stormy love stories. Female friendship has elements of love affairs – they are very deep and interesting. And so that’s where I started, thinking, most of the time you identify yourself by who your friends are. 

What you’re saying is so true. When we take our friendships seriously, it really is like a romantic relationship.

Yes, that’s what I meant. Romantic relationship. With ups and downs and a lot of emotions. You get attached and jealous. In women’s friendships, even at young age, they think: “Oh you were my friend first, and you betrayed me with another girl.” There is nothing really romantic or sexual about it, but it’s very emotional.

You get into some gender politics in there too, especially with the character Zohar (Dana Igvy) who’s still a virgin and wants to lose her virginity. And there’s a scene where she almost gets raped.

Connecting this to your earlier question, there are a lot of themes in the script because I put inside a large scale of emotions that I had as a young woman. And you know, this girl wants to lose her virginity because to her, it’s a metaphor to enter real life as an adult. And her character in a way doesn’t want to become an adult. She wants to stay a kid and turn everything into a game. She wants to play computer games. She doesn’t want to enter the world as an adult but she knows she needs to. That’s kind of the story. She has many obstacles in her way, and I think I wanted to save her from having her first sexual experience with the wrong guy. And the character Irena (Tamara Klingon), the girl who stops him… It is hinted that she has history of violence in her own life. She is not a nice girl or friend. But in a way, she displays the friendliest act in the film.

As I’m sure you’re aware, in Hollywood or American cinema, films like Zero Motivation are not the norm. We don’t get a lot of movies around here with women’s stories. Why do you think there’s this issue here? 

I think this issue, lack of representation, is all over the world. It is very significant in Hollywood, but I think when it stops being like that in Hollywood, then it will stop in the rest of the world. So I think it all starts from there. And I think it is a problem all over the world, because there are fewer women than men in top positions. Also, I don’t think women necessarily have to make movies about women or female issues only. I think women should make films about whatever they want, and they can make films about men. Like, male directors made amazing films about female characters. 

How did you get your project funded?

It was first funded by the Israeli Film Fund. Then by a cable TV channel in Israeli called HOT. We also received some money from a fund in France. Also, Match Factory in Germany. That’s how we funded the film. It took a long time.

In recent years, there were many IDF (Israel Defense Forces) related films from Israel such as Beaufort, Waltz with Bashir, Lebanon. How do you see your film fit in that group?

IDF is a big part of our culture and society. And because of that, there are a lot of army-related films from Israel. I wanted to add this one to the mix, because I think it was important to also talk about the unimportant parts of IDF.

I noticed that you mostly steered clear of political talk in Zero Motivation. I think there is one scene where Rama (Shani Klein) mentions, “our men are dying out there.” But other than that, we don’t really hear about political unrest going on.

I think the film is political because it in a way shows Israeli society. Since IDF is a major element in our society, I tried to show this little office as the microcosm of Israeli society. And you can also see that the girls in the office are coming from different parts of the society, and they mix together there. The tension in Israeli society comes from politics. So, the tension, the violence, come from outside of the walls and enter into the room. That’s one thing.

Also, I wanted to be very true to the characters. One of the things that was most important to me was that the film had to feel authentic. Those girls in the office, they are not in front of anything. They are not involved in anything. Those political issues, they don’t come up in the story but there is also a permanent feeling of the world outside. You can see that when they’re told in the field “there’s a war outside, and you’re doing that? And you’re fighting over nothing?” That’s very much the Israeli experience. That there is something much bigger going on, and the rest of the issues are less important. That’s the way those characters live. When we were getting the film funded, people sometimes told me I should add more political elements to get European money. Every time I tried to do it, it felt very fake. And it felt like it was done to please someone else. It was not authentic.

I understand. I am really glad you stuck with your gut, because that authenticity really shows.

Thank you so much.

Some have compared your sensibilities to Lena Dunham. Wondering if you’ve seen those comparisons and what you thought. Do you follow her work?

Yes. And I even met her in Sundance Screenwriters Lab. She was there with a project; as a screenwriter to Ry Russo-Young. So I met her there. Then I went to the premiere of Tiny Furniture in Jerusalem. I think she is fantastic. I wrote this script before I knew her, but if you compare me to her, I would be very happy with it.

What are you working on next?

I am working on a script that I actually wrote when I was waiting on funds for Zero Motivation. It takes place in Brooklyn but it’s an Israeli film, about an Israeli musician trying to make it in New York City. I am still re-writing it.

'Mockingjay-Part 1' Set to Dominate On What Could Be the Slowest Weekend of the Year

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 might be a financial disappointment next to its older sister Catching Fire, but as it goes into what's sure to be its third weekend at number one, you can't deny it has staying power. Though it's not like there's a lot coming out to challenge it this weekend. The biggest release is horror flick The Pyramid, the directorial debut of Grégory Levasseur, co-writer of 2006's The Hills Have Eyes remake and a producer of the cinematic masterpiece that is Piranha 3D, which I bet you'd managed to forget about before I mentioned it. Sorry.

You might not have heard of The Pyramid, because distributor 20th Century Fox has done practically no marketing. They know, as does everyone else, that the weekend after Thanksgiving is traditionally one of the slowest of the year, and they're playing it safe. The top five will probably be the exact same as last weekend's top five (Mockingjay, Penguins of Madagascar, Big Hero 6, Interstellar, Horrible Bosses 2), just with decreased earnings all around. Predictions are that The Pyramid, opening in 589 theaters, will earn less than $5 million.

For limited releases, the critically well-received Wild, starring Reese Witherspoon as a woman who hikes across the Pacific Crest Trail, is opening in 21 theaters. It's directed by Jean-Marc Vallée, whose Dallas Buyers Club garnered an Oscar for Matthew McConaughey last year. The man works fast.

Among the films getting smaller releases, mostly in New York and/or Los Angeles only, are Tayla Lavie's Israeli military comedy Zero Motivation, which was rightly named Best Narrative Feature at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival; Comet, a romantic comedy/drama with a sci-fi twist (parallel universes!); Pioneer, a thriller about deep-sea diving from the director of Insomnia (no, not the Nolan remake, the original); Susanna Fogel's feisty and fresh female friendship film Life Partners; She's Beautiful When She's Angry, Mary Dore's documentary about the women's rights  movement of the '60s and '70s; and the Nicolas Cage CIA thriller Dying of the Light, which was the subject of some behind-the-scenes drama.

The Academy Announces Its 15-Film Documentary Short List

"To watch" lists at the ready--the Oscar short list for Best Documentary has been unveiled. Five of the following 15 films will hear their names (well, see their names on the Web--documentaries aren't "important" enough to be part of the televised announcement, sniff sniff) when the nominees are revealed on January 15th. And the almost-maybe winners are:

• Art and Craft (all links are to our reviews)
  
• The Case Against 8
• Citizen Koch
• CitizenFour
• Finding Vivian Maier
• The Internet's Own Boy
• Jodorowsky's Dune
• Keep On Keepin' On
• The Kill Team
• Last Days in Vietnam
• Life Itself
• The Overnighters
• The Salt of the Earth
• Tales of the Grim Sleeper
• Virunga

Anybody get a little emotional at the thought of Roger Ebert doc Life Itself winning an Oscar? No? Just me?

Most of these have come and gone from theaters pretty quickly, as is the way with documentaries, though Citizen Koch, about the rise of the Tea Party, and Virunga, about conservation efforts in the Congo, are available for streaming on Netflix. Wim Wenders' and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado's The Salt of the Earth, about nature photographer Sebastião Salgado, and crime doc Tales of the Grim Sleeper are hitting theaters in limited release on December 26th and March 27th, respectively.

Though I am, sadly, neither a psychic nor a time traveler, I'm going to hazard a guess that Laura Poitras' Citizenfour, about Edward Snowden, is a near-lock for a nomination--earlier this week the Gotham Independent Film Awards and New York Film Critics Circle Awards both named it the year's best doc.

'The Hunger Games' Gobbles Up Thanksgiving Weekend

Audiences hungry for a movie on Thanksgiving weekend opted for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 over new releases Penguins of Madagascar and Horrible Bosses 2, both of which underperformed with $25.8 million ($35 million over the five-day weekend) and $15.7 million ($23 million for five-day), respectively. Compare that with Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted's opening weekend haul of $60.3 million and Horrible Bosses' $28.3 million.

With Thanksgiving weekend's $56.8 million gross, Mockingjay - Part 1 has earned $225.6 million so far. Matching its predecessor Catching Fire's domestic gross of $424.6 million is looking pretty well unlikely by this point. Or, put another way, the odds are not in its favor.

Big Hero 6 and Interstellar both hung onto their top five spots, the latter's box office actually increasing 3% from last weekend, even though it lost 350 theaters.

Coming out on top of a small crop of limited releases was Alan Turing biopic The Imitation Game, which took in $482,000 in four theaters in New York and Los Angeles, for a per-theater average of $120,500. That's the year's second-best per-theater debut, after Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel ($202,792). The Theory of Everything likewise had a good weekend, expanding from 140 theaters to 802 and seeing its box office jump more than 230% as a result.

Also making modest waves among new limited releases were Chinese rom-com Women Who Flirt ($80,000), the documentary Antarctica: A Year on Ice ($32,000), horror film The Babadook ($27,000), and swimming doc Touch the Wall ($6,200).