Sundance Film Festival ‘11
After years of saying “I’ll go next year,” I finally made it out to the Sundance Film Festival. Thanks to some invaluable advice from Sundance veteran @dordotson, not only did I make it out to Park City but was able to see 12 films during my 4 days at the festival. It was an exhausting but thrilling experience* to be among the first audiences to see most of these films. By the time these films are released over the next year or so, they’ll all have posters, trailers and other marketing materials that give you an impression of what that movie will be like. When you see it, the film will either live up to or disappoint those expectations. But this was an almost completely pure movie-going experience. So here are the films I saw at the fest ranked most-to-least favorite.
1. Submarine (dir: Richard Ayoade) This deadpan British comedy was my most anticipated film going into Sundance and my favorite film leaving it. The fast, funny story of a social outcast experiencing first love as his parents marriage is falling apart will no doubt keep garnering comparison’s to Wes Anderson’s Rushmore but first-time director Ayoade (Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace) has his own comic voice. Read my full review.
2. Like Crazy (dir: Drake Doremus) Boy meets girl. They fall in love. Girl overstays her student Visa and can’t return to the US until her legal matters get sorted out. A long distance relationship ensues. This film will be painfully accurate to anyone who’s ever been through it. Anton Yelchin isn’t quite charming enough to believably win over Felicity Jones (who is radiant in the role), but if you can suspend disbelief there you will be wrecked by the tragic finale.
3. Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel (dir: Alex Stapleton) A great documentary about legendary film producer/director Roger Corman. With over 5 decades in the business and over 400 credits to his name the film does a great job recapping the career of this B movie icon. He helped start the careers of countless actors and filmmakers including Martin Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich, Jack Nicholson, Jonathan Demme, Robert De Niro, Ron Howard and more, all of whom are interviewed here. A must see for cinephiles. Read my full review.
4. Another Happy Day (dir: Sam Levinson) This dysfunctional family dramedy received the most enthusiastic audience response of anything I saw at the festival. Written and directed by filmmaker Barry Levinson’s 25 year old son, the film assembles an impressive cast including Ellen Barkin, Ellen Burstyn, Thomas Hayden Church, Demi Moore and Kate Bosworth among others. It’s undeniably full of indie cliches but done with total sincerity and balances the weighty subject matter with character based comedy. Read my full review.
5. The Details (dir: Jacob Aaron Estes) A dark comedy starring Tobey Maguire and Elizabeth Banks as a bored married couple led into a chain of events that includes multiple infidelities, extortion and a murder. Shares some DNA with the films of The Coen Brothers but is tonally inconsistent. Laura Linney steals the show as neighbo/crazy-cat-lady Lilith Wasserman. The Weinstein Co. bought this for $8 million, (the biggest sale of the fest), so expect a heavy marketing push later this year. Read my full review.
6. Terri (dir: Azazel Jacobs) Coming of age indie about a lonely overweight teen (newcomer Jacob Wysocki) and his friendship with his Vice Principal (John C. Reilly). Reilly is hilarious and the film can be commended for not going where you think it’s going to, (Terri gets a makeover, Terri gets a girlfriend, etc.) but without some kind of resolution the film feels slight. Read my full review.
7. Take Shelter (dir: Jeff Nichols) A film about the end of days or mental illness, depending on your reading of the film. Michael Shannon plays a man who starts having nightmares (or are they premonitions?) about a dark future ahead. The film does a great job carrying a tone of pervasive dread but at nearly 2 hours the film becomes repetitive. This is the one film I saw that would be greatly improved from trimming 15-20 minutes before it’s release.
8. The Future (dir: Miranda July) Bipolar film from filmmaker/artist July where the first half resembles an LA hipster Woody Allen film and the second half is a surrealistic David Lynchian nightmare. Really enjoyed the funny quick wit of the first half and was completely thrown by the left turn into symbolism. Did July go through a bad breakup or something?
9. Martha Marcy May Marlene (dir: Sean Durkin) Elizabeth Olsen (Olsen sister/breakout Sundance star) plays the titular character, an extremely damaged young woman who has recently escaped from a cult. The movie is disturbing and unsettling but the repetitive nature of the film (flashback, current, repeat) became grating in the final act when you’re waiting for something anything to happen. Still, the film has stayed with me more than most and that must count for something.
10. Reagan (dir: Eugene Jarecki) An even handed doc about President Reagan. A quickie history lesson for 80s kids (like myself) who are too young to have known what was going on during his presidency. A good overview but a little dry and probably would have been better (and more comprehensive) as a mini-series. I think this airs on HBO tonight.
11. Another Earth (dir: Mike Cahill) A homemade sci-fi film set in the near future as mankind learns of an identical duplicate planet Earth which might contain another “you.” Disappointingly much of the film is a slow moving grief drama, with the carrot of science fiction dangled just out of frame. Anyone frustrated by last year’s bait-and-switch Monsters will likely find themselves feeling the same way here. Read my full review.
12. Circumstance (dir: Maryam Kershavarz) Yet another coming-of-age drama, this one set in Iran as a wealthy family deals with their rebellious daughter. Starts promisingly but story threads disappear, there are too many scenes of slo-mo and the film really just runs out of steam. Curiously the film won the Audience Award for Dramatic feature though I suspect that may have had more to do with the film’s sympathetic backstory. Read my full review.
*For those people interested, the scene was mostly over by the time I got there. The first half is when all the paparazzi/celebrity/Seacrest’s show up, so I decided I’d rather go the second half and have a better chance at actually getting into the films than staring at famous people. (Besides, I can do that in New York.)
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