Sundance Originals Archive for January, 2012
Sundance Docs Roundup: Detropia, Queen of Versailles, and Ethel
Detropia Sundance vets Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing were back this year with Detropia, a look at a city that’s gone from being the fastest growing city in the US to one of the most rapidly declining. Detropia has a palpable opinion about its subject matter (Ewing grew up just outside Detroit), and the filmmaker’s…
Read the full article »Sundance Review: Safety Not Guaranteed
One of the biggest surprises of this year’s Sundance is just how terrific Safety Not Guaranteed, Colin Trevorrow’s film based on a real Craigslist ad seeking a companion for time travel, turned out to be. The film’s quirky premise, which sends three magazine employees to investigate whether the man who placed the ad really thinks…
Read the full article » 2 Comments »Sundance Review: Goats
There’s a good deal to like in Goats, a coming-of-age tale adapted by Mark Jude Poirier off his own 2001, semi-autobiographical novel, and helmed by first-time feature director Christopher Neil (nephew of Francis Ford Coppola, cousin of Sophia Coppola). The film focuses on Ellis Whitman (Graham Phillips), a 14-year-old kid, wise and responsible beyond his…
Read the full article » 1 Comment »Sundance Review: For Ellen
So Yong Kim (In Between Days, Treeless Mountain) is back at Sundance this year with For Ellen, a quiet, meticulously paced character study about Joby (Paul Dano), a would-be rock star , who takes a road trip back to the small midwest town where his soon-to-be ex and young daughter live so that he can…
Read the full article » 2 Comments »Sundance Review: Compliance
Craig Zobel, who was last at Sundance in 2007 with Great World of Sound, a sharply directed and acted film about a record producing company scam, is back at Sundance this year with a film about a different sort of scam, Compliance, an equally sharp examination of what happens when Sandra, a fast food restaurant…
Read the full article » 2 Comments »Sundance Review: The Pact
The Pact, directed by Nicholas McCarthy, played here at Sundance as a short film last year, and came back this year as a full-blown feature. Now I’m not much of a horror chick, though I do occasionally enjoy a good scare. For me (and, I’d have to say, a sizable percentage of the public screening…
Read the full article »Sundance Review: The First Time
The First Time , in spite of its title, isn’t at all the kind of raunchy teen sex comedy about a guy desperately trying to lose his virginity, and his friends trying to help him get laid that you might expect it to be. It’s a sweet, funny story about these two young people, Dave…
Read the full article »Sundance Review: NOBODY WALKS
NEW YORKERS IN LOS ANGELES with Italian filmmaking on the brain: that would be director Ry Russo-Young and her co-writer Lena Dunham, with Nobody Walks, a tactile, tensile minor-key successor to Pasolini’s Teorema. Martine (Olivia Thirlby) is a 23-year-old New York photographer with an upcoming one-woman show and she’s come to stay with a Silver…
Read the full article »Sundance Review: The House I Live In
This film started out a little slow for me, and it also does two things I’m generally not fond of in documentary films: it uses a great deal of voiceover, and the director integrates himself heavily into the story. But wait, bear with me, because if you stick with this film, it pays off very…
Read the full article » 3 Comments »Sundance Review: Beasts of the Southern Wild
Beasts of the Southern Wild, directed by Behn Zeitlin and made by Court 13, the New Orleans-based filmmaking collective of which he’s a part, is a fabulous piece of cinematic storytelling. The story itself is fascinating, intricate, and completely unique: The protagonist is Hushpuppy, a six-year-old girl who lives a free and wild existence in…
Read the full article »The Sundance Institute Issues the following statement About Bingham Ray
The Sundance Institute Issues the following statement: Sundance Institute has learned that Bingham Ray, beloved friend of independent film, and Executive Director of the San Francisco Film Society, has been hospitalized while in Utah for the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. We have reached out to Bingham and his family and San Francisco Film Society to…
Read the full article »Sundance Review: Celeste and Jesse Forever
If you were hoping for Celeste and Jesse Forever, one of the most buzzed about titles going into Sundance this year, to be this year’s Like Crazy, you’re in luck. Beautifully written by Will McCormack and Rashida Jones (the writing debut for both actors), deftly directed by Lee Toland Krieger (The Vicious Kind), and effortlessly…
Read the full article » 1 Comment »Sundance Preview: Documentary Premieres
Yes, the Paradise Lost films followed this story for years, and you could argue that they’ve said much of what there is to say about the West Memphis Three. But Amy Berg, who previously made the outstanding, Oscar-nominated doc Deliver Us From Evil (which was on my top ten list in 2006) is sure to have a compelling take on the topic that will make West of Memphis one of the docs to catch at Sundance this year.
Read the full article »Sundance Preview: Premieres
I know, I know, another bride-themed movie. I hear you. But because Kirsten Dunst is in this, I have hope that Bachelorette will skew more toward Bridesmaids than Bride Wars. Fingers crossed.
Read the full article » 1 Comment »Sundance Preview: World Documentary Competition
Moved into boxing training centers, these boys and girls undergo a rigorous regimen that grooms them to be China’s next Olympic heroes but also prepares them for life outside the ring. As these young boxers develop, the allure of turning professional for personal gain and glory competes with the main philosophy behind their training—to represent their country. Interconnected with their story is that of their charismatic coach, Qi Moxiang, who—now in his late thirties and determined to win back lost honor—trains for a significant fight.
Read the full article »Sundance Preview: World Dramatic Competition
With the World competitions, I often don’t know a lot about the directors, so I have to pretty much go by what looks interesting from the catalog descriptions. It can be a bit of a crapshoot, since those descriptions tend to make every film at the fest sound like the Next Big Thing, but hey,…
Read the full article »Sundance Preview: US Documentary Competition
Also, a lawsuit’s been filed against the Sundance Institute for screening this film, to which the Institute basically said, “Screw you, rich people!” Which makes it automatically the most “must see” doc at a fest since Errol Morris’ Tabloid — which got WAY more interesting when Joyce McKinney started crashing fest screenings with her clone dog. If there’s a cloned pet somewhere in this story, it will be practically perfect.
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