Sundance Film Festival a hot market for pickups

By Sarah Sluis

Recently, all the talk has been about how slow the indie film market has been. Well, that stops with Sundance 2011. This year there has been pickup after pickup. Indie film lovers, it's time to get excited, because many of these movies will hit theatres this year.

The Details: The Weinstein Co. picked up this spiraling-out-of-control comedy, in which a couple's battle with raccoons in their home escalates, threatening their marriage and also leading to "extortion, organ donation, and murder." Elizabeth Banks, Tobey Maguire, and Laura Linney star. One of my biggest gripes is comedies that aren't funny, so if this film charmed the Sundance crowd I'm willing to bet it will give me some chuckles. Also, doesn't the dark comedy kind of sound like Election, in which Matthew Broderick's attempt to sabotage Reese Witherspoon's class president campaign ends up sabotaging everything in his own life?

Another Earth: Fox Searchlight was the recepient of this drama, which centers on a young woman who's looking up at the stars (another planet) and crashes into another car, killing a man's family. She's imprisoned, but later seeks redemption and contacts the surviving patriarch of the family. The storyline doesn't really sum up well, and sounds rather morbid in summary, but its "standing ovations" at Sundance mean this film will be one to watch (while keeping your eye on the road!).

Homework: Fox Searchlight is definitely releasing this high school comedy this year. It's about a boy who doesn't do his homework all through high school, and the girl who loves him (Emma Roberts). What more can you say, but hope that this follows in the footsteps of zeitgeist-y movies like Mean Girls and last year's well-regarded Easy A, starring Emma Stone.

Like Crazy: This romance, which will release through Paramount, has been described as a lighter version of Blue Valentine, one of my favorite moves from 2010. A girl and boy fall in love, but she violates her visa and is trapped in England, leading to a series of just-misses and just-in-times. Star Felicity Jones has received praise along the lines of "the next Carey Mulligan," and Winter's Bone Oscar nominee Jennifer Lawrence and Anton Yelchin also star.

Of these four films, The Details and Homework look most like they're treading a familiar path, albeit with a fresh look at a story whose outline is somewhat familiar. Like Crazy has a little bit of a Crash/Babel feel to it by bringing visas and politics into the story (though this is hardly the kind of immigrant that inspires political debate, much like the Canadian book editor who overstayed her visa in The Proposal). Another Earth tackles mourning, not one of my favorite movie subjects, but after comparing the film to loss-of-a-child drama Rabbit Hole, critic Kirk Honeycutt also calls this movie "science fiction at its best." With young casts, and off-the-beaten-path plots, this year's Sundance pickups have me eagerly waiting for their release dates.