Sundance Originals Archive for January, 2014
Sundance 2014 Last Call
As a documentarian, Balmès shows more than tells; his work tends to curate moments that strike him as meaningful into a largely abstract tapestry and let you make of them what you will. Consequently, Happiness is not a neatly delineated picture of narrative storytelling, nor is it quite traditionally structured documentary. True to form, the director’s work here tends toward the languid and fluid; we float gently along the placid life rhythm of this small village on a faraway mountaintop as the camera captures the subtle – and sometimes not so subtle – shifts in the cultural and social landscape wrought by the march of technological progress.
Read the full article »Sundance 2014 Review: The Better Angels
A film created to be seen on a big screen, where the gorgeous cinematography can fill your soul. Dialogue is sparse, used only to augment the narration and visuals, with the result that in many ways feels almost like watching a silent film with narration over it. Or perhaps, to be more accurate, it’s like immersing yourself into a black-and-white landscape of stunning beauty, where there happens to be this story happening around you. Edwards’ time spent as a cameraman on Malick’s films is evident here in the framing of shots, the extensive use of nature in storytelling, and his willingness to let his tale breathe in quiet spaces.
Read the full article »Sundance 2014 Review: Listen Up Philip
Here’s a truism about men like Philip: smart women who tell themselves they would never put up with his particular brand of bullshit no matter what nonetheless can and do fall prey to the allure of the reclusive, temperamental, misunderstood genius, and will keep coming back for more. Men like Philip present a challenge to overcome, a puzzle to solve – until the women in their lives finally have enough and say “no more.” And then those men end up alone, feeling misused and mistreated, looking everywhere save within themselves for the answer to the riddle of their loneliness and isolation.
Read the full article »Sundance 2014 Review: What We Do In The Shadows
This is one of the festival’s most pleasant surprises because it’s gotten to the point where certain horror tropes are dead or dying: recent zombie movies have been more shambling than exciting; vampires in general have become anemic and fangless (shout-out to the Twilight series, driving nails into the rhetorical coffin).
Read the full article »Sundance 2014 Review: War Story
The death of Lee’s friend has perhaps made her see the wages of war as a price higher than she ever thought she’d pay to be in the thick of it. She’s captured so many losses, so many tragedies, through the lens of her camera, but she has no idea how to capture and cope with her own. The film’s final moments elegantly underscore the truth about the death of those we love and how we grieve the impact of losing them: It hurts, it will always hurt, when you lose someone you love, and even more so when you feel yourself responsible. But life moves on, wars continue to happen, the world spins around its axis just like it did before you lost this person you cared about.
Read the full article »Picturing Sundance 2014: 21 Images
Sleep is good. Seeing movies is better. Writing solid, thoughtful reviews instead of instant reactions longer than a well-wrought tweet: even better. A few quick descriptions and some more glimpses of 10 days at Sundance.
Read the full article »Sundance 2014 Review: Imperial Dreams
Bambi’s story is something we in our cozy middle class lives maybe prefer not to think about too hard when we ponder the abstract idea of projects and prison terms. The real plight of poverty is the disparity of opportunity, and the way in which we blame those born into an urban war zone for growing up in a way that enables them to survive in it. It’s nature versus nurture: How do we expect a kid with the potential to do something amazing with his life to navigate his way there with no support system save for the friends and relatives who have him working the corner and holding a gun in his hand from childhood?
Read the full article »Picturing Sundance 2014 x 13 (Plus 140-Character Grasps For Instantaneous Truth)
If you go to parties, you miss movies. If you go to movie after movie after movie, you don’t have time to write, let alone think. But! Thank the Movie Godz for Twitter and for photographs.
Read the full article »Sundance 2014 Review: Obvious Child
I laughed a lot while watching Obvious Child. Not everyone will, to be honest. If fart jokes and sex jokes, abundant cursing, peeing in public and pooping in front of your best friend while awaiting the results of a pregnancy test are things that you can’t handle, this might not be the film for you. If you can get past those things to the core of this film, though, you might just find the places where the story resonates for you, too. It certainly did for me.
Read the full article »Sundance 2014 Review: Boyhood
A little after 1 AM on Monday, January 20, 2014, in a 1,296-seat high school auditorium in Park City, Utah, a piece of cinema history was made: the lights came up on the world premiere of Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, a film in production for more than a decade.
Read the full article » 3 Comments »Sundance 2014 Review: I Origins
Cahill’s fully-realized premise comes into view as Ian and Karen discover something astonishing about the nature of the human iris. There are some really interesting grand narrative implications here, suggesting a life of rigorous science is blind to some of the more arcane secrets of the universe.
Read the full article »Sundance 2014 Review: Hellion
It all sounds simple enough from a story standpoint, but Candler manages to interweave layers of complexity into these characters that elevate this tale beyond the surface level. These people feel real and honest in every respect; they could be you or me or anyone we know who’s drowning in grief and can’t see the way back to the surface to breathe again without every moment smacking you with what’s been taken in the blink of an eye, the crash of a metal, the stop of a heart beating.
Read the full article » 1 Comment »Sundance 2014 Reviews: Overnighters, Whiplash
Even in these scenes of heartwarming fraternity, there’s always this nagging feeling that Reinke’s generosity is perhaps misguided and downright bizarre, as if there’s something unhealthy or otherwise unspoken that drives his desire to help these men.
Read the full article »14 Must-See Films at Sundance ‘14
What sounds good?
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