Sundance Originals
Sundance Review: The World According To Dick Cheney, After Tiller
A credulous, shallow, near-hagiography of an elected official; a tender, melancholy yet emphatic observational doc.
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Radcliffe flawlessly takes Ginsberg on his journey from naïve middle-class Jersey boy to awakening young writer, from an emerging poet inspired by the casting aside of tradition and structure of Walt Whitman to the early stages of manic creative energy that shaped the influential writer he would grow to become. It’s terrific to see Radcliffe making such smart choices in his post-Harry Potter career, establishing himself as a young actor who’s pushing himself and stretching far beyond what anyone might have imagined.
Read the full article »Sundance Review: May In The Summer; Crystal Fairy
As Sundance is a festival dedicated to discovering the latest gems of independent cinema, it’s appropriate that the event takes place in a historic mining town; the majestic Wasatch mountain range acting as a panoramic backdrop for all the festivities.
Read the full article » 3 Comments »Sundance Review: When I Walk
As part of coming to terms with the new and ever-shifting “normal” that would be the rest of his life, DaSilva followed his instinct, picked up his camera, and turned it on himself. This project could have devolved into the maudlin and self-absorbed; instead DaSilva’s strength and resilience, his determination to stay positive – bolstered in part by his relentlessly positive mother, who’s prone to calling him out on any over-privileged American kid whining and reminding him constantly that we only have one life to live, and have to make the most of it – is what shines through every frame of his story.
Read the full article »Sundance Review: After Tiller
Imagine being pregnant with a lovingly anticipated child, having what you thought was a normal pregnancy, preparing the baby’s room, dreaming about the future the child kicking inside you will have – and then learning late in the pregnancy that your child has something terribly wrong with it, so wrong that the most humane choice you can make is to allow a doctor to gently euthanize him in the womb so that you can go through the pain of labor and delivery to push forth your already dead child. I know women who have had to make that awful choice. I’m grateful I never had to.
Read the full article » 1 Comment »Sundance ’13: Day One
And then there is the sex. We’ve already seen Gaby Hoffman running around buck naked – and not highly sexualized – in the title role of Crystal Fairy. But just wait til they get a load of dick. James Franco is the finger in the ass of Sundance this year, with two strong pieces.
Read the full article » 2 Comments »Sundance Review: Who is Dayani Cristal?
By failing to include any perspective at all from the other side of the immigration discussion, the filmmakers miss an opportunity here to answer those arguments with reasoned and impassioned counterpoints and proposed solutions. This lack of objectivity works to the film’s detriment as anything much beyond emotional tug-and-pull by spoon-feeding the viewer with what they should feel, rather than offering compelling arguments from both sides, stirring debate, and leaving it to the audience to decide what they think and feel about this issue for themselves.
Read the full article »DP/30: Twenty Feet From Stardom, director Morgan Neville
Opening night film at the Sundance Film Festival.
Read the full article » 1 Comment »Sundance 2013 Preview: US Documentary Competition Picks
Much like last year’s US Dramatic preview, my curtain-raiser on the US Documentary competition for the 2012 Sundance is packed with notable alumni: Chasing Ice, Detropia, The House I Live In, The Invisible War, and The Queen of Versailles all played at Park City last January. This year’s slate could potentially be just as solid. Here are my picks.
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Finally, finally! Upstream Color, the long-awaited second film from do-it-all-yourself Primer director Shane Carruth arrives at Sundance off some pretty heady buzz at New York pre-fest screenings. Primer, in case you don’t know, is an astounding, complex sci-fi indie that was shot for $7,000 and went on to snatch the Sundance Grand Jury prize in 2004 from films like Napolean Dynamite and Garden State. It’s also one of my favorite indie films of the past decade and I, like many of you, have been eagerly anticipating Carruth making another film. I am super excited to get my eyeballs on this film. Must. See.
Read the full article »Sundance13 Preview: Women of U.S. Dramatic
In honor of the Sundance Film Festival’s decision to invite an equal amount of men and women to compete in the U.S. Dramatic Competition (and perhaps recent discrepancies in representation, as seen in the 2012 Palme d’Or Competition), a look at the eight female director-screenwriters who will vie for the Grand Jury Prize Dramatic: who they are, how you may know them, and what they’ve done so far.
Read the full article » 2 Comments »Sundance: Wrapping the Fest
My Sundance pace finally caught up with me, knocking me pretty much flat for a couple days, but here’s the last bit of my Sundance coverage this year. For me, this year was what my great-grandma would have called a “fair to middlin’” sort of Sundance. In other words, there were plenty of films that…
Read the full article »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…
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