By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com
Sundance movies are bad for you, Corliss sez
Sundance defines indie, by the definition of Time magazine’s Richard Corliss. “[T]he kind of indie film nurtured by Sundance has become the dominant non-Hollywood movie form for smart people,” he asserts in a predictable plaint that could use some fresh reporting. “Sundance has become the crucial farm system for the major studios. Problem is, indie movies are getting as predictable as Hollywood’s. Sundance movies have devolved into a genre. The style is spare and naturalistic. The theme is relationships, beginning in angst and ending in reconciliation. The focus is often on a dysfunctional family (there are no functional ones in indie movies) that strives to reconnect… Given the typical Sundance pace, which is leisurely to lethargic, these road movies rarely get in the passing lane. The predictability of recent Sundance films is a pity, because the fest used to discover original movie minds. The honor roll of those who introduced their early work there includes both the big fish of indie cinema (among them Joel and Ethan Coen, Jim Jarmusch, Kevin Smith and Darren Aronofsky) and some of the mainstream’s champion swimmers (including Steven Soderbergh, Quentin Tarantino, Bryan Singer and Christopher Nolan). What most of these directors share is a gift for bending, sometimes gleefully mutilating, film form: taking old narratives styles like the crime movie or musical or horror film and making them fresh, vital, dangerous… You don’t find as much originality in Sundance films these days, and for a simple reason. In the beginning, the festival was a home for the homeless… There was no need to be cautious, since indie films were rarely hits. But as Sundance became the showcase for a form of movie gaining marketplace pull, young directors naturally made films to fit the new mold. Sundance films weren’t quirky; they did quirky. Quirky became another genre. In fact, truly imaginative movies have always been anomalies at Sundance…” [More of less at the link.]