Sundance Wrap Up: Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, Best of Enemies, plus 5 Takeaways from festival's 2015 Edition.

The 2015 Sundance Film Festival runs through Sunday –with major awards still to be handed out- but Wednesday marked the final day of my Sundance, bringing my festival tally to 26 movies seen throughout 6.5 glorious days. I unfortunately missed a couple of films I was hoping to catch up with: James C. Strouse’s People, Places, Things, playing in the US Dramatic Competition category, Kirby Dick’s The Hunting Ground; a groundbreaking and fittingly noisemaking documentary (playing as part of Doc Premieres) about the rape epidemic on college campuses, as well as Noah Baumbach’s latest collaboration with his muse Greta Gerwig, Mistress America, which played to great reviews in the festival’s Spotlight section. But one can’t see it all, and it’s always good leaving something to look forward to in the future.

On my final day, I made a point of catching up with a few documentaries; a segment of the festival I admittedly pushed to the sidelines for a few days. Among them is Bobcat Goldthwait’s Call Me Lucky, a powerful portrait of the sharp-tongued comedian Barry Crimmins. Having survived sexual abuse at a young age, Crimmins turned his childhood trauma into essential activism in support of children both suffering and in danger of similar sexual abuse; especially in the wake of unmonitored online chat-rooms that enabled criminal activity around child porn while profiting companies such as AOL during the mid 90s. Welcome To Leith, from directors Michael Beach Nichols and Christopher K. Walker, proved to be just as frightening as Rodney Ascher’s Nightmare, in recounting a small town’s singular stand against white supremacists and Neo-Nazis (led by Craig Cobb) trying to take over the land and government of the town. Welcome to Leith, eerily spotlighting challenging questions rooted in freedom of speech for all, is uncomfortable and shocking to watch and proved to be one of this year’s essentials. The final US Documentary Competition title I caught up with was Best of Enemies, from directors Morgan Neville (Academy Award winning director of Twenty Feet from Stardom) and Robert Gordon, on the debates of Conservative William F. Buckley and Democrat Gore Vidal that skyrocketed ABC’s ratings in 1968 and launched political punditry on TV. Balancing both sides with a crackerjack sense of pace, the immensely entertaining Best Of Enemies (bought by Magnolia and Participant Media) is not only one of my favorite films of this year, but also a timely film that prescribes mutual understanding for both sides of the debate, in the (almost) eve of a presidential election.

Probably the biggest film to report back on from my Wednesday schedule is Alfonso Gomez-Rejon’s Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. A strong contender to win the Audience Award in the Dramatic Competition category in a couple of days, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is a teenage weepie in the tradition of The Fault in Our Stars; and a celebration and romancing of cinematic love forming at a young age (everyone has their own analogies here, but it made me think of Garth Jennings' Son of Rambow somehow.) Adapted from Jesse Andrews’ novel by Andrews himself, the story is about Greg Gaines (the “Me” of the title, played by Thomas Mann), a high-school student and a fan of European Cinema along with his best friend Earl (RJ Cyler). Forced by his mother to hang out with Rachel (Olivia Cooke), a school friend who’s just been diagnosed with cancer, Greg unexpectedly forms a real friendship with her and decides to make a movie for her with Earl’s help (side note here that the duo often re-title Criterion films with humor –for instance, Citizen Kane becomes Senior Citizen Cane- and make short pastiches of them.) As tough it is to hold your ground against a festival darling, I must admit Me and Earl and the Dying Girl didn’t have the same emotional impact on me, as it apparently did on many others. Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, to me, seemed a lot more interested in proving his knowledge of cinema with initially charming yet increasingly repetitive cinematic references -from Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, The Wrath of God (hint: study up your Herzog prior to seeing Gomez-Rejon’s film), to Hitchcock’s Vertigo, John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy and many others- than using these references in favor of the film’s narrative. It was all a bit too self-congratulatory in context, and quickly became trivial instead of inspirational. Yet, the bigger problem for me was the film having very little time for Earl (his name is IN the title after all), and even Rachel (as the “Dying Girl”) in building them as fully-fledged characters. Especially Earl was disposed of rather abruptly in the story, becoming (along with Rachel) not so much more than an instrument on Greg’s path of self-discovery (and eventual college application.) I don’t mean to sound heartless here, and I give the film a lot of credit for trying to tell the story of a true friendship (rather than romantically involving Greg and Rachel), yet this didn't add up to more than a quirky, textbook Sundance movie for me, about a male teenager finding his place in life. It will be talked about for sure, both positively and with anger –especially watch for potential think pieces on the unfortunate depiction of Earl- that some I have spoken to following Wednesday’s screening voiced.

With the festival almost behind us, there are many topics and trends that stood out. Here is my recap of the most prominent topics that took over the streets of Park City during the previous week.

1. Acquisitions galore!

Trades and online film outlets alike were rolling in ecstasy just a few days ago when incorrect news of a $12 Million sale (of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, to Fox Searchlight) spread like wildfire. The number was corrected, with almost two thirds of it shaved off, however the 2015 edition of the festival still played host to quite a number of grand sales; Anne Thompson said in an article that “The Sundance Market is starting to look like the old days” over at her blog at Thompson and Hollywood. Among the notable sales are John Crowley’s Brooklyn, which went to Fox Searchlight for $9 million, Dope, grabbed by Open Road and Sony for $7 Million, and The Bronze, scooped up by Relativity for $3 Million. A24, Magnolia, Fox Searchlight, Sony Pictures Classics all bought festival hits (with the first three closing on multiple deals). Check out Hollywood Reporter’s comprehensive guide to this year’s Sundance sales. 

2. Coming of Age: Still a favorite Sundance genre.

Yes, there is that title again. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. But it needs to be mentioned here, as it proved Sundance just loves watching children and teenagers come of age. Under this banner, notable festival favorites are Rick Famuyiwa’s Dope, Marielle Heller’s The Diary of a Teenage Girl, Robert Pulcini and Shari Springer Berman's Ten Thousand Saints and even Chloé Zhao’s quietly-played competition entry Songs My Brothers Taught Me as well as Matt Sobel's simmering Take Me to the River.

Marielle Heller (Source: Getty Images)

3. An exciting crop of female storytellers is emerging, with movies about women on the horizon.

In a recent interview with Variety, Sony Pictures Classics’ Tom Bernard and Michael Barker spoke of female voices of Sundance, having just grabbed the distribution rights to Marielle Heller’s The Diary of a Teenage Girl, which frankly explores female sexually –a topic that is rather poorly served in mainstream cinema. Bernard said “It’s the year of the woman,” and he is clearly on to something. From the opening night movie The Bronze, to titles like Brooklyn, The Diary of a Teenage Girl, The Witch, Unexpected, Advantageous and hot-button topic documentary The Hunting Ground, stories led by and/or made by women generated a considerable amount of the buzz on the ground, generating much hope for gender diversity in film for the years ahead.

Duplass Brothers.
Photo: Chelsea Lauren
(Getty Images for Sundance)

4. The blurring lines between Film & TV: also a Sundance topic.

It was voiced during the Day 1 press conference that the Sundance institute champions storytellers not only in writing feature-length projects, but also in creating episodic content. With a wealth of talent trying their hand on both film and TV, and innovative TV shows taking up the lion's share of the popular culture, it was only a matter of time that the Sundance Institute further blurred the line between two mediums. To perhaps no one’s surprise, Mark Duplass –a perennial Sundance kid, having executive producer credits on three of this year’s titles (The Bronze, Tangerine, The Overnight) and having brought the animated series Animals to the festival along with his brother Jay Duplass- has made a deal with Sundance in producing an independent TV series. “This is a brand new thing, it’s never been done before,” said Duplass (reported by USA Today), noting that he has always been interested in making television independently, using the same model as independent film.

5. There is this thing called “sex.” It’s going to be big.

I remember my first Sundance Film Festival in 2013, when Robert Redford referred to “sex” as a thematic element to pay attention to. And he was certainly on point with titles such as Hannah Fidel's A Teacher and Anne Fontaine's Adore (formerly titled Two Mothers) among others that year. After a relatively sterile 2014, we are in the presence of an even more sexually-charged Sundance this year, starting with the outrageous sex scene of the opening night film The Bronze that sent shock waves through the Eccles Theater to an instantly hilarious effect on Thursday night. From frank encounters and full frontals (with prosthetics) of The Overnight, freewheeling affairs of Sleeping with Other People and Knock, Knock, and the groundbreaking take on female sexuality of The Diary of a Teenage Girl, Sundance 2015 certainly dialed up the heat in the snowy mountains of Utah and set a high bar against the increasingly sterile Hollywood mainstream, threatening to make the upcoming 50 Shades of Grey look tame in comparison.

Heading into the week with Sundance Buzz: Dope, Brooklyn, Nightmare and others.

Oh, the festival exuberance that forces many to pull the information trigger too quickly. I have reported in my previous dispatch –after double-checking on several trades and online outlets - that the sale price for Me and Earl and the Dying Girl was $12 million. But in the last 24 hours, several outlets have now corrected this information. It sounds like the deal actually closed for a number around $4.7 million instead (Source: Slash Film) though other numbers that are close are also flying around. Thus, Little Miss Sunshine still maintains its record, being the most expensive acquisition of Sundance history, with a $10.5 million sale price.

This last couple of days, I have been playing catch up with titles that generated strong buzz throughout the festival’s first weekend. It’s tough to go into a movie with high expectations that only escalate with each passing day. On one hand, it’s an exhilarating feeling to have them preset for you. On the other, hype always comes with an element of caution. Therefore, I was very pleased to see that writer/director Rick Famuyiwa’s Dope (US Dramatic Competition) not only lived up to its hype, but also exceeded my high expectations. (Those who stand by the already-overused phrase “Dope is dope” are correct.) Dope, with a $7 million distribution deal from Open Road and Sony already under its belt (which I covered in my previous dispatch), has confidently established itself as one of this year’s true breakouts and at once became the kind of movie people hope to see when they make the effort to trek up to Sundance. Set in Los Angeles, Dope tells the story of a trio of misfit teenagers; geeks of their high school and easy targets of the street smart kids of their crime-filled neighborhood in Inglewood. The heart of this geek squad is the straight-A student Malcolm (Shameik Moore) who dares to dream big for his future. He wants nothing more than getting a college education from Harvard, despite constantly being discouraged by his environment and even his high school advisor. Working through his unusual personal statement, preparing for SATs and having scored a vital interview with an educational advisor in the process, Malcolm accidentally finds himself at a crossroads: his dreams vs. the corrupt world of drugs and gangsters that mean business, outlining a plot Malcolm and his geeky pals involuntarily get pushed into. The question is: will they be able to pull a complex ploy off and put it all behind? The pulsating and often electrifying Dope is a beautiful homage to the 90s (Rachel Morrison’s cinematography paints the film with a vibrant energy), and already drawing comparisons to Spike Lee’s cinema as well as Pulp Fiction for good reason. Filled with high-energy music (hint: Malcolm and his pals have a band) and tightly navigated set pieces, the ultimately uplifting Dope is a sure-bet crowd pleaser. In the film’s post-screening Q&A, the breakout actor Shameik Moore –who oozes with humble disbelief and pride, the kind of honest authenticity and excitement one hopes to witness in Sundance- talked about his audition when he sent his tape all the way from Atlanta. “You send in so many auditions,” he said. “And you stop believing that it will ever happen.” But it did happen for him. As I was leaving Prospector after the screening, I witnessed him sharing an embrace with a member of his team –possibly his manager- who said: “You are here. And no matter what happens from now on, I’m proud of you.”

Including Dope, I was able to see 8 films during Monday and Tuesday of the festival; the final two days of Sundance that unveil the remaining competition titles (with rest of the days through Sunday being encores.) Among them is the US Dramatic Competition title Results (by the Computer Chess director Andrew Bujalski), an offbeat comedy about two hardheaded gym workers/personal trainers (Guy Pearce and Cobie Smulders) and a new wealthy Client (Kevin Corrigan). Despite engaging performances and a promising concept, Results (bought by Magnolia at the top of the festival) seems to be one edit away from having a more coherent structure. The film’s 3rd act seems shaky with questionable cuts that hamper and muddy the story and its organic humor. Another effort I caught up with, Jennifer Phang’s truly original Advantageous (US Dramatic), is an elegant, minimalist sci-fi refreshingly revolving around the story of a mother-daughter while inventively tackling a chilling near-future hypothesis on racism, and capitalism’s insistence on dehumanization. Chloé Zhao’s Songs My Brothers Taught Me, which also competes in US Dramatic, is a mature, clear-eyed debut from a young director that tells a small coming of age story of a high-school student living in Pine Ridge Reservation, whose future plans get put on hold with his father’s unexpected death. Playing at the Midnight section, Eli Roth’s semi-campy, Fatal Attraction-meets-Misery-meets-Funny Games flick Knock Knock unsatisfactorily offers up cheap thrills and uncomfortable humor in a story about a wealthy LA man who finds himself as the subject of two attractive female intruders’ sex-filled game. Festival’s early buzz title The Witch (US Dramatic, directed by debuting name Robert Eggers) proved to be a truly creepy, intensely atmospheric tale of mythical witches in 1692’s New England, led by a superb performance by Anya Taylor Joy.

The Room 237 director Rodney Ascher’s Nightmare, another Midnight entry of the festival, will perhaps be the most memorable title of this year, for reasons that reach beyond the quality of filmmaking. Not only because its topic is stylishly presented through Ascher’s now signature command on details and imaginative reenactments of stories told by talking heads, but also because of the fact that Nightmare is truly one of those horror films that will ruin your sleep for many days to come (I’m talking with first hand experience here.) The subject Ascher takes on is “sleep paralysis”, a condition, or rather a phenomenon, in which one would experience a state of half asleep/half awake period with complete inability to speak, move or react. But that is not all. All those Ascher has interviewed explain a similar chain of signals and symptoms that start with a tingling sensation taking over their body, followed by shadowy figures appearing one by one and slowly approaching their bed, invading their personal and psychological space. And there is nothing you can do but stare in silence and terror, hoping it would end soon. In several instances, subjects swear to do things in their sleep before paralysis overtakes their body (in one instance, a New York man says he received a phone call from a devilish voice and smashed his cell phone.) And everyone describes their state of paralysis and being under-attack by truly frightening figures in the same way: “It was like dying.” In the film’s post-screening Q&A (which I was too frightened to stay for), Ascher reportedly asked the audience to raise hands if they had ever experienced similar episodes. And apparently there were many hands up. Tweets from the Q&A confirm one woman actually broke down in tears, talking about her own paralysis. I dare you to watch Nightmare and get a comfortable night’s sleep immediately after.

Crawling out of bed the next morning –after a truly ruined, almost non-existent sleep, compliments of Rodney Ascher-, I ran to Eccles to catch John Crowley’s Premiere title Brooklyn. Crowley, with previous films like Boy A and Is Anybody There?, is an unassuming storyteller. He knows how to make an audience feel. And with Brooklyn, led by a radiantly truthful performance by Saoirse Ronan, he masters his poignancy. In the film’s introduction, it was appropriately noted that Brooklyn, being a period drama, is a rarity of Sundance. Telling the story of an Irish immigrant girl who settles in 1950s Brooklyn at an all-girls boarding house, the film gracefully navigates the story of Ellis Lacey who yearns to establish a life away from home and struggles with her identity and future decisions when she temporarily goes back to Ireland with grim news from her family. Brooklyn is a gorgeous, straightforward and tear-jerking drama, ripe with earnest melancholy (in my view, superior to James Gray’s The Immigrant) and rich with period details. Grabbed by Fox Searchlight, Brooklyn is one of the titles out of this year’s Sundance to watch for.

While the party scene in the last couple of days in Park City was equally vibrant as the weekend, I found myself willingly skipping many gatherings (except for a quick stop at the Duplass Brothers’ party on Monday afternoon), desperately trying to recover from a cold (some call it “The Sundance Flu”), which is currently showing no signs of vacating my body. Turns out, you can take all the necessary precautions (like obsessively using hand sanitizers), but this thing will still get a hold of you somehow. Yet in Sundance, flu -like hunger or sleep deprivation- is just one of those things to ignore until you’re on a return flight back to the real world. And that’s what I’ll be doing.

2015 Sundance Film Festival Kicks Off: What Happened, Miss Simone?, The Overnight, True Story...

A tangible excitement has taken over the streets of Park City one more time, as the 2015 edition of the Sundance Film Festival, which kicked off on Thursday, is well underway. Last year’s festival is still fresh in minds, largely due to its rich crop of critically-acclaimed titles such as Whiplash (2014 opening night film), Boyhood, Life Itself, Love is Strange, The Babadook, Obvious Child and A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night proving to have legs beyond the mountains, and with the first two even scoring a number of Academy Awards nominations in major categories. This year’s festival has certainly a lot to live up to and during the festival’s Day 1 press conference, festival director John Cooper (joined by Robert Redford and Sundance Institute’s Executive Director Keri Putnam) promised nothing less in saying that the audiences would feel a wild ride.

As he often does, Robert Redford celebrated the notion of “change” –how it affects the world and the society we live in- during the conversation moderated by Salt Lake Tribune film critic Sean Means, setting the stage for the days ahead. The trio focused on interconnected topics around episodic storytelling in response to the blurring lines between TV and Film (reminding everyone that their lab model has expanded to offer help to filmmakers and storytellers in building episodic content), documentaries, distribution models and diversity issues in film industry. 

Tackling a question related to distribution (especially of the currently distribution-less Sundance title A Walk In The Woods starring Redford himself), Redford said he’s had some experiences with his own films that had either no or poor distribution, perhaps subtly referring to his remarks around All Is Lost in last year’s press conference that Roadside Attractions has handled the film unsatisfactorily (which was on the same day as Academy Awards nominations when he didn’t get a Best Actor nod.) “What’s the mindset of a distributor? What moves and galvanizes them? I don’t know. It’s weird,” said Redford. Touching upon alternate alleys of distribution while not alienating the traditional models, Putnam talked about “The Artist Services Program” carried out by the Sundance Institute year around to help artists both creatively tell their stories, and tactically and strategically connect with audiences. “It is about providing opportunities to filmmakers who want to be more entrepreneurial about releasing their films after the festival or at any point,” said Putnam. “We have a new partner we’re very excited about this year: Quiver Digital. They built a dashboard where all filmmakers using this tool can see how their film is doing. It’s really great transparency of data.”

Speaking of a visible festival trend this year, Cooper mentioned documentary filmmakers thinking about the cinematic experience from a use of story and character standpoint. “It’s not just about getting the information out there but also about how to engage an audience.” Answering a question from the crowd about why there seems to be a disconnect between Hollywood and the independent world in Sundance when it comes to the diversity of players, Putnam said; “If we had the answer to that question, we would be publicizing it pretty widely. We have done our own research with USC. The pipeline of young talent interested in telling stories is there but somewhere along the way, they fall out of the equation. When money comes in, it changes. One of the biggest obstacles towards changing it is there wasn’t even awareness this was a problem.” Then Cooper added, “I will just say that Ava DuVernay won the best directing award here with Middle of Nowhere,” delicately driving attention to her snub at the Oscars as a Best Director nominee and highlighting an attitude that sets Sundance apart from mainstream Hollywood.

The opening night films of the festival didn’t offer up the next Whiplash perhaps, but Liz Garbus’ Nina Simone documentary What Happened, Miss Simone? (screening as part of festival’s Doc Premieres slate) was a showstopper, and in many ways, brought home the points made at the press conference around documentaries and diversity. With the use of an extensive, stunning wealth of archival footage and a number of talking heads interviews, Garbus evidently chose to tell the well-known and widely unknown parts of the icon’s life story in a steady, straightforward manner and let the wonderful music and rich archival material speak for themselves. And what a deeply affecting result she has achieved in building Nina Simone first and foremost as an inimitably talented artist, but also as a fragile human being whose talents and eventual artistry were hindered by systemic racism of the time, despite her stardom and influential role at the Civil Rights movement. Nina Simone was originally trained to become a classical pianist, but she could never realize her true dream after getting rejected by the music school she applied to; a decision made due to her race. With her film, Garbus gracefully explores the truth about an international talent who never felt she was given a chance to rise up to her true calling in life. What Happened, Miss Simone? was especially powerful when the story reached to the heat of the Civil Rights movement, pointedly blasting Simone’s emotionally gripping “Mississippi Goddam” as well as footage of the Selma march and its aftermath; in a way, bridging the conversations the film industry has been having the past couple of weeks around Selma’s absence at the Oscars, with Sundance. Selma director Ava DuVernay was also at the screening. So was John Legend –an Oscar nominee this year for Best Original Song (“Glory” from Selma)- who sang a number of Nina Simone songs on the piano at the end of the screening; making a memorable night at Sundance even more special with “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood.”

Before making it to the next opening night film in my schedule, I accepted Anne Thompson’s kind invitation to stop by Indiewire’s infamous annual chili party at their condo and somehow managed to grab a bowl of delicious chili and a glass of wine, before running back to the Eccles Theater in time for Bryan Buckley’s US Competition title The Bronze – a film that only deserves a gold medal for featuring the raunchiest, funniest and the most borderline ridiculous sex scene in recent memory (hint: it’s a sex scene between competing gymnasts, so use your imagination.) However, the film itself was largely a flop, despite conjuring many uncomfortable laughs from the audience, unsure of what to do with poorly written material, delivered by its hilarious lead Melissa Rauch with distinguished comic timing. In The Bronze, Rauch plays a once-upon-a-time bronze medalist gymnast who’s now wasting her days in her dad’s basement watching videos of her expired glory, consuming thousands of calories a day (yet, still managing to stay inexplicably skinny) and swearing like a sailor to whomever and whatever crosses her path. I give it credit for its female-driven story where we get to watch women obsessing about things that have nothing to do with men and are given the luxury of being and acting gross, but The Bronze unfortunately uses up this credit of goodwill too quickly by becoming an often unfunny comedy, about 20 minutes too long.

Festival’s second day –which is its first full day with screenings starting as early as 8:30am- offered many hotly anticipated titles across a variety of programs. I gave my best shot to get into the Press & Industry screening of Robert Eggers’ US Dramatic Competition title The Witch, but unfortunately got shut out of it despite showing up 45 minutes early, and decided to see Mark Cousins’ 6 Desires: DH Lawrence and Sardinia instead (showing in Documentary Spotlight) which was the next viable option. Constructed as a letter to Lawrence to the accompaniment of footage of Sardinia as well as cinematic clips as references, I am sorry to say this project would have been better off if it stayed solely as a written essay. Offering no visual interest or imagery that is remotely cinematic (it takes a lot for one to make Sardinia look ugly), this little experiment was a puzzling choice for Spotlight, not to mention for a slot at the press screenings, where the theaters are already small and crowded.

Next, I watched Nikole Bekwith’s Saoirse Ronan-starrer Stockholm, Pennsylvania, a harrowing abduction story founded on a pretty unsound metaphor around love. The film, like Ronan’s character who returns in her early 20s after living in the captivity of her abductor for over 15 years, asks the question whether love evokes and fuels a sense of ownership and entitlement over one and other. Ronan, and Cynthia Nixon (who plays her mother) deliver fine performances, but the film only resonates to a limited degree.

The US Dramatic Competition title The Overnight (directed by Patrick Brice), if my prophecy holds, might become a sleeper hit of sorts of this year’s festival. The crowd at the Eccles certainly signaled it. Produced by Adam Scott and the Duplass Brothers (who are synonymous with Sundance at this point) and starring Scott, Jason Schwartzman, "Orange Is The New Black"’s Taylor Schilling and Judith Godreche, The Overnight is a sharply written comedy that dares to be a hipster-ized, 21st Century “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”, with intellectualism replaced with sexual humor. Watch out for plenty of full-frontal shots of Schwartzman and Scott (who ruined the fun by revealing "They are both prosthetics!" at the premiere's Q&A at the Eccles.)

My last stop on Friday was Jonah Hill, James Franco and Felicity Jones-starrer True Story, one of this year’s bigger offerings which distributor Fox Searchlight along with Plan B producers brought to Park City. The screening was attended by the director Rupert Goold, James Franco and to everyone’s surprise, Brad Pitt as one of the film’s Executive Producers at Plan B. True Story tells, um, a true story adapted from Michael Finkel’s book with same title. As a now jobless but once on-the-rise journalist (played by Jonah Hill), Finkel is confronted by the disturbing news that a potential killer of his wife and three young children (played by Franco) has used his identity when he was captured in Mexico. Interviewing the suspect in building an exclusive story with hopes of a comeback, Finkel unveils dark secrets amid a cat and mouse game where truth takes many shapes. Confidently directed and shot, True Story only falls short when it comes to a miscast James Franco (an artist whose versatility I generally admire), who frequently shows he’s ‘acting’ as opposed to ‘being’. Plus, an under-utilized Felicity Jones –who plays Finkel’s wife- makes one wish for more scenes with her. Still a respectable, competent feature debut that makes me look forward to theater-hailer Goold’s next feature. 

Friday ended with a quick stop at True Story’s after-party at Main Street, but in an effort to save my energy for Saturday morning’s 9am screening of The End Of The Tour, I called it an early night in anticipation of the days ahead.

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.

Robert Redford salutes film as agent of change at 2013 Sundance.

The 2013 edition of the Sundance Film Festival kicked off yesterday
with an opening day Press Conference, where the “Sundance Kid” Robert Redford
(Founder and President of Sundance Institute), Keri Putnam (Sundance Institute
Executive Director) and John Cooper (Sundance Film Festival Director) engaged
in a conversation with the members of press, moderated by The Salt Lake Tribune
film critic and columnist Sean P. Means.

Redford’s opening remarks celebrated film as an agent of
change and took pride in Sundance’s mission to embrace and use it, giving The
New Frontier –which brings high technology and the artist together in a social
and creative space- as an example. The course of the conversation revealed
impressive first-time stats around the diversity of this year’s 190-film slate,
which includes 51 first-time filmmakers and represents 32 countries around the
globe. It also touched upon the equal divide between male and female filmmakers
in the Dramatic Competition, which is another first at Sundance. When talking
about the visible trends in this year’s slate (as well as the submissions that
didn’t make the cut), Redford and Cooper both quoted an evolved study of sex,
one that is not necessarily tied to romance but more to relations. In response
to a question from a press member, the trio also drew attention to the musically
rich offerings of this year’s program with titles such as Sound City and Twenty
Feet From Stardom. Following a political diversion where the topic switched to
guns vs. media, the conference ended with Redford announcing that Sundance is
not going to Brooklyn (despite the false news that ran a short while ago).

Following the press conference, both films I was able to see
on the festival’s first day coincidentally align with one of the trends that
were raised earlier in the conversation. May In The Summer, directed by Cherien Dabis, is one of the dramatic competition titles from a female filmmaker.
Following her 2007 Sundance sensation Amreeka which was that year’s Grand Jury
Prize winner in Dramatic Competition, Dabis once again depicts the inner
workings of a family against a contrasting cultural backdrop and reunites with
many of the same cast members, including the great Hiam Abbass. Despite Dabis’
best intentions though, she only manages to deliver a watchable film with May
In The Summer, that suffers from a simple-minded yet cluttered script. In portraying
the relationship of three Jordanian sisters’ with each other and their mother
(for which Dabis, who also plays one of the sisters, admittedly was inspired
by her own family), May In The Summer seems more concerned about ticking predictable
boxes around the universal troubles of females, rather than injecting a breath
of fresh air into the topic. Still, its somewhat naïve charm played reasonably
well with the crowd in a packed Eccles.

After a quick stop at Indiewire’s annual condo party, the
second film I caught, Morgan Neville’s Twenty Feet To Stardom (which competes
in the U.S. Documentary section), has the potential to become the next music
documentary hit and is already generating some potential distribution buzz. I
caught a late press screening, however got word that the film, which shines a
spotlight on five back-up singers (Merry Clayton, Darlene Love, Lisa
Fischer, Judith Hill and Tata Vega) – the unsung heroines who sang back-up
for icons such as Rolling Stones, Sting, Bruce Springsteen and Stevie Wonder- received
a standing ovation during its Eccles premiere earlier that evening, with
Clayton, Hill and Vega taking the stage at the post-screening Q&A for a
brief impromptu performance. This is an irresistible title with many
legendary/familiar tracks, including “Gimme Shelter”, which is the subject of
the film’s perhaps most spellbinding set piece that will surely leave all future
audiences speechless. Sundance Institute announced earlier this week that all five singers and
multi-platinum recording artist The Fray will perform at the annual ‘A
Celebration of Music in Film’ event on January 20; a performance which many at Sundance
look forward to attending.

Fox Searchlight picks up 'Beasts,' 'Surrogate' at Sundance

For film buffs not attending the Sundance Film Festival, the hardest part is hearing the great raves for a film you might not be able to see for months, if not a year. This year's Sundance market has been hot for pickups. Fox Searchlight has picked up two high-profile films so far at the festival. Fortunately, both are set to release theatrically later this year.

Beasts of the Southern Wild. The director of this movie, Benh Zeitlin, actually graduated from my college a couple years before me. His talent was evident. His thesis film, "Egg," a stop-motion, silent, animated recreation of Moby Dick taking place inside an egg that itself was about to be destroyed, was a sight to behold. It later won the Grand Jury Prize at Slamdance. 

Beasts reportedly has a similar fantastical bent, with Variety calling it a "stunning debut" and THR naming it "one of the most striking films ever to debut at the Sundance Film Festival." Set in New Orleans and starring a poor black girl, the movie likely offers oblique commentary on the post-Katrina landscape. Fox Searchlight paid $6 million for the pickup, a high but not record figure.

The Surrogate. John Hawkes stars as a man confined to an iron lung who wants to lose his virginity. The plot sounds sad, but THR reassures that the movie is more similar to The King's Speech than The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. In his review, Todd McCarthy characterizes the 1980s-set movie as a "feel-good fairytale," a "cheerful" story that "argues in favor of living a full life, whatever one’s personal constraints." Still, an iron lung sounds tougher to market than a king with a lisp, but the message could have a nice awards resonance. Searchlight is also planning a 2012 release.

I'll continue to report on the Sundance films that have been picked up to open in a theatre near you.

The duty of a war documentary: 'Restrepo'

By Sarah Sluis

Last week I saw the Sundance Award-winning documentary Restrepo (read FJI's review here). Directors and journalists Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger (author of The Perfect Storm) followed a group of soldiers in the Korengal Valley for a year. In an area known as "The Valley of Death," these soldiers engage in firefights every day, and up to multiple times a day--the kind of combat not seen since Vietnam. The documentary's stated purpose is to document the life of the soldiers, without including the overarching politics

or outside viewpoints. I enjoyed the documentary, with some hesitations. After hearing it lambasted by another blogger, who felt the movie "misleads and distorts in a way that any fair-minded person would and should find infuriating," I feel the need to weigh in.

The documentary opens with the kind of scene that scares you half to death and gives you a huge adrenaline rush. While in an armored Hum-V, the soldiers take fire. They abandon their vehicle, take cover, and return fire. The camera moves Blair Witch-style, looking down at the ground as the camera operator runs for cover. Sonically, it goes from recording huge booms and gunfire so loud it's distorted, to eventually losing all sound, broadcasting a barely perceptible static. It's freaky, and one of those scenes you can't believe is real, because it feels like a movie.

Of course, most of the time the soldiers are hanging out, horsing around, or shooting at targets hundreds of yards away. They also have weekly meetings with local elders, and occasionally wake up residents in the middle of the night to gain information or detain them for questioning. Here, my sentiments toward the soldiers were not as positive. These soldiers are not culturally sensitive. You can understand their

frustration, but at the same time they act incredibly rude. The leader speaks to the elders with exasperation, annoyed that they are still focusing on the errors of his predecessor. The soldiers laugh about "the cow incident," in which they killed (and ate) a villager's cow that had become tangled in their fence, but they also don't seem understand how the cumulative impact of these incidents can engender ill will among the residents. No wonder the townspeople are hiding the Taliban, and the situation seems like it can only get worse.

Even if the documentary itself doesn't address how this behavior can affect what's going on in the bigger picture, its scenes are indelible. This week, General Stanley McChrystal is in the news for his comments in a Rolling Stone article, which just led to his dismissal as top U.S. commander in Afghanistan. When I read the article, I paid attention to the new military strategy referred to as COIN (counterinsurgency theory). "Think the Green Berets as an armed Peace Corps," the article explains, you "[send] huge numbers of ground troops to not only destroy the enemy, but to live among the civilian population and slowly rebuild, or build from scratch, another nation's government." I seriously doubt that the soldiers' presence in the Korengal Valley fostered good will among the locals. At its most benign, their actions were a nuisance and prone to misunderstandings. Once the soldiers start taking residents out of their homes in the middle of the night, killing cows and speaking to them in rude and frustrated voices, the relationship between the locals and the soldiers becomes one of toleration. Trust? How can they trust each other? The residents are hiding Taliban and soldiers accidentally kill innocent people trying to find them. By presenting footage without extensive commentary or contextualization, the filmmakers are doing audiences the favor of letting them draw their own conclusion.

Restrepo shows, it does not tell. Will everyone that watches the documentary be worried about how the soldiers treat the locals? No. But with many sources of information about the war in Afghanistan, there is a place for a documentary like Restrepo, and its portrait of Afghanistan is one I will remember for a long time.

See the fate of Flipper in 'The Cove'

By Sarah Sluis

Dolphins deserve their stuffed animal status. They're cute, friendly, intelligent, and have been known to protect humans from sharks and other perils. Their very appeal to humans, however, is what endangers them. The documentary The Cove focuses on the small fishing community of Taiji, Japan, where dolphins are sold to "swim-with-the-dolphins" businesses and performing aquariums around the world, and the dolphins not selected are shepherded into a hidden cove where they are killed with harpoons.

The leader of the anti-captivity movement, Richard O'Berry, is a dolphin-lover who has been on both sides of the debate. He trained the dolphins used for "Flipper" for ten years before having a change of heart, and has spent three times as long, as he puts it, undoing what the show unleashed. He's been particularly vocal against what goes on in Taiji, the center of the captivity trade, to the point where he is followed by police investigators wherever he goes. With a team of dolphin (a.k.a. cetacean) activists on his side, they devise a way to film the slaughter, Ocean's 11 style.

Interwoven with their filming mission is background about the intelligence of dolphins, the International Whaling Commission's inability to regulate smaller cetaceans like dolphins, and evidence that many people are unwittingly eating dolphins. Often marketed as whale meat, dolphin meat has a dangerous amount of mercury that makes it unfit for regular consumption.

The best--and worst--parts of The Cove are the incredibly powerful scenes of animal cruelty. Copious amounts of blood are spilled, to the point where the blood gushing out of the elevator in The Shining seems like a trickle. It's incredibly convincing, and enough to make some people rethink their positions about the mammals.

For someone like me, a middle-of-the-roader who enjoys eating meat and fish and has a rather pragmatic view about where animals are in the grand scheme of things, I think awareness is everything. I consider it my responsibility to know about the consequences of my choices, and where my food came from. After seeing this documentary, I would hesitate before participating in a swim-with-the-dolphins program. I certainly can't abide by slaughtering dolphins for food, especially when the food itself can cause health problems. It's ironic, though, that the very captivity programs the activists are trying to stop are what endear children to the animals in the first place, and make them want to protect them later on. The winner of the Sundance 2009 documentary award, The Cove is a great example of a confrontational animal-rights documentary that can inspire activism--you can visit the activist part of their website here--while alienating few.

Sundance '09: Dispatch Two

By Sarah Sluis

Reporting from Park City, Utah, FJI contributor Daniel Steinhart lets us in on the films and acquistions of the Sundance Film Festival.

Even though attendance seems down his year, the Sundance Festival was in full swing Saturday night and all day Sunday. Shuttle buses were packed and Main Street in Park City was teeming with locals, tourists, cineastes and the odd celebrity.

At the festival's midpoint, favorites have emerged with rumors of buyers circling a half dozen films. Since the last update, Sony picked up the Blaxploitation homage Black Dynamite, Fox Searchlight signed a deal for the romantic drama Adam, and Magnolia Pictures nabbed Humpday (see previous post for my review of that film.)

In the Dramatic Competition, this viewer has yet to find anything on par with last year's impressive award-winner Ballast, which injected new life into American independent cinema. This year, Cherien Dabis' Amreeka looked to stand out from the crop of American indies. The film, actually a U.S.-Canadian-Kuwaiti co-production, follows a Palestinian divorce and her teenage son who emigrate to Illinois to live with relatives. They have high hopes for a new life of opportunity but arrive just as the U.S. invades Iraq, encountering prejudice and bad luck in their new home. Aiming to shed light on the effects of American aggression on the Arab diaspora in the U.S., the film doesn't offer much penetrating insight. Ultimately, the depiction of cultural differences and ignorance seems more in the service of melodramatic effects.

A different kind of cross-cultural story is offered up in Sophie Barthes' Cold Souls. Paul Giamatti plays a version of himself, an actor who finds it increasingly difficult to separate himself from his lead role in the Chekhov play Uncle Vanya. His solution is to have his soul extracted by a soul storage company. When his new soulless self produces only bad acting, he rents the soul of a depressed Russian poet, which seems to deliver the goods. In the meantime, his original soul is stolen away to Russia, where Giamatti must track it down. All of this should be original material, but the questioning of identity, the self-reflexive performance, and the mix of fantasy and comedy recall Being John Malkovich.

In the Documentary Competition, Jeff Stilson's Good Hair examines African-American hair culture with Chris Rock as guide. Like too many documentaries these days, the film uses a competition as a structuring device�in this case, an annual Atlanta hair battle with stylists staging ludicrous coiffures. This is the stuff of reality TV, but the film is thankfully saved by amusing tangents on the process of hair straightening and production of the weave.

Also in the Doc Comp, Tom DiCillo's When You're Strange serves as a personal love letter to Jim Morrison and the music of The Doors. This too could have been fodder for television, wherein band members and witnesses recount the formulaic rise, fall and redemptive coda of a rock star. Instead, DiCillo fashions his film entirely out of historical footage, overlaid with matter-of-fact narration. For Doors fans, the material will be familiar, but the concert and studio footage still holds amazing power. And it all moves with the driving rhythm of a song like "Not to Touch the Earth."

The World Dramatic Competition offered very strong work. Lone Scherfig's An Education has been one of the more highly anticipated films of the festival. This well-made British film tells the story of Jenny (wonderfully played by Carey Mulligan), a beautiful and intelligent 16-year-old who attracts the attention of an older and charming admirer (Peter Sarsgaard). Jenny, whose tastes and curiosity transcend her drab surroundings, is swept up by the worldliness of her suitor, but their infatuation comes at a devastating cost. The movie has many elements in the right place: a fine script by Nick Hornby, assured direction, and strong performances from its leads and supporting roles (Alfred Molina is particularly good as Jenny's father). This film will undoubtedly make its way to theaters and please crowds.

Another British film, Unmade Beds, takes a looser approach to love and longing. Made by Argentine director Alexis Dos Santos, the film is a nice evolution from his debut, Glue. While Glue focused on a punk teenager stuck in a dead-end Patagonian town, Unmade Beds opens up, exploring the lives of two foreigners searching for fulfillment in vibrant London. Axl is a young Spaniard in search of the father who abandoned him. Vera is a young Belgian reeling from a break-up and exploring a new romance. Both live in the same squat, yet their paths rarely cross, with objects�a mattress, a jacket, a Polaroid�connecting the two. Unmade Beds is episodic and a little nebulous, but Dos Santos brings an exciting, impressionistic style to the film and a natural sense of visuals and music. As Glue's soundtrack had me listening to the Violent Femmes' "Kiss Off" endlessly, this new film inspired me to put Good Shoes' "We Are Not the Same" on repeat. Not a bad way to pass the time on the bus between screenings.