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January 26, 2008
Movies I saw at Sundance
While at Sundance we managed to fit in a few movie screenings between interviews. Saw some great stuff. Here's a list of what I saw and the description from the Sundance Website.
Sunday 01-20-2008:
Quid Pro Quo
One Word Review: intriguing
Quid Pro Quo is a dark, puzzling tale of strangers who crash into one another's lives and transform them forever. Isaac, a paraplegic, is a popular New York City public-radio reporter who is investigating a story from an anonymous source about a man who walked into a hospital demanding that his leg be amputated.While pursuing the story to satisfy his own probing curiosity, Isaac meets the strikingly beautiful and mysterious Fiona, a restoration artist. Isaac's investigation not only initiates a relationship with Fiona but also leads him into the strange subculture of "wannabes," those longing for wholeness—or lack thereof—in rather peculiar ways. Will Fiona lead Isaac to answers about this underworld of seekers, or will their stormy association push him toward a more painful truth?
In his sleek directorial debut, Carlos Brooks confidently navigates the delicate line of the psychological thriller genre with the help of eerie and convincing performances from Vera Farmiga and Nick Stahl. Quid Pro Quo does not celebrate or sensationalize the subculture it portrays but instead explores the human psyche and allows the audience to ask questions. Brooks takes us on a journey to explore our desires, find order in disorder, and exhume the need to restore normalcy to a society we find ourselves ostracized from.
Perro Come Perro
One Word Review: gritty
Set in the Colombian crime world, Carlos Moreno’s smartly scripted debut feature, Perro Come Perro, depicts a brutal universe where gangsters are as vicious as rabid street dogs and voodoo reigns as the supreme form of punishment, doling out karmic fate to its thuggish denizens.El Orejón is a violent and agoraphobic crime boss who lives surrounded by telescopes in a luxury high-rise apartment in the center of the city. When his godson William Medina is killed, he beseeches Iris, a voodoo priestess, to avenge the murder by casting a deadly spell on the shooter. While Iris conducts her black magic, miles from her a small-town heavy named Victor Peñaranda is carrying out a job to collect money from a slippery pair of twins. He makes a disastrous decision to break the sacred law of the crime world--he keeps the cash for himself. His choice unwittingly sets off a detonation pattern that wreaks havoc through two cities and the realm of the netherworld.
Energetic direction, beautiful lensing , and fantastic performances--led by Marlon Moreno and Oscar Borda--bring this gripping thriller to life. Perro Come Perro is one of the best genre films to come out of Colombia in years and marks Carlos Moreno as an exciting talent to watch.
Monday 01-21-2008:
Anywhere, USA
One Word Review: quirky
At 2:00 p.m. every Tuesday, Tammy beats Gene with a tennis racquet. It’s his penance. In retrospect, he shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions about the pistachio nut. Meanwhile, Pearl is having doubts. An orphaned eight-year-old in the care of her uncle, she has unwittingly eaten pot brownies and begins to suspect that the tooth fairy isn’t real. Finally, there’s Ralph, a man of privilege who, somewhere between bites 23 and 27 of his steak, comes to a startling revelation: he doesn’t know any black people. Don’t be alarmed. It’s just another day in Anywhere, USA.Told in three parts ("Penance," "Loss," and "Ignorance"), Chusy Haney-Jardine’s wildly original snapshot of du jour America is such an audacious, personal expression of vision that you occasionally feel as if it’s being projected directly from his brain. Haney-Jardine delights in theatricality, burlesque images, and wonderfully mismatched devices (rednecks frolicking as Puccini blares or an entire story line narrated by two women gossiping at a tanning salon). And for all its humor, the film observes life with tenderness and humanity, finding an emotional center in Pearl and her uncle.
Here’s a film that takes real risks and reaps the rewards tenfold. Shot in Haney-Jardine's hometown of Asheville, North Carolina, edited in his garage, and featuring an almost entirely nonprofessional cast (his daughter, Perla, is the sole exception), Anywhere, USA wears its independence like a battering ram that gently knocks at your door.
Hamlet 2
One Word Review: hilarious
Hamlet 2 is a late addition to the Premiere lineup for the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, but who could resist a hilarious new film that features the incredible talents of British comic actor Steve Coogan. Even in rough cut, it was clear that all the elements were present to make the world premiere at Sundance a moment to remember. Lucky audiences will unearth a comedic gem and in turn discover a very talented director in Andy Fleming.The film is mostly set in a high school, and there are musical numbers, but any resemblance to the High School Musical franchise stops here. Irreverently zany and at times pushing the envelope of political correctness to its max, Fleming steers an all-star cast that ricochets easily between delicious dialogue and insane situations. He is not afraid of a few sight gags, either.
The plot revolves around an ex-actor, ex-user, relentless dreamer, and sometimes-delusional high school teacher played by Coogan. He has just mounted one of his infamous screen-to-stage productions—this time it’s Erin Brockovich—but the reviews aren’t all that he hoped for. When his students rebel and his job is threatened by budget cuts, he is forced to kick ambition into high gear and shoot for his ultimate dream: staging an original production of Hamlet 2, a sequel to Shakespeare’s classic. Enough for setup?—let’s just say the film takes many a twist and turn, and the finale is definitely worth the wait.
Tuesday 01-22-2008:
Death in Love
One Word Review: uncomfortable
What burdens do the survivors of those who survived carry? A young woman in a Nazi concentration camp saves her life by seducing the young doctor who performs medical experiments on prisoners. Cut to decades later, when that same woman (played by Jacqueline Bisset) is living in New York City and married with two grown sons.The two siblings have developed differently under a mother with a long history of erratic behavior. The younger one can’t cope at all, and the older one copes too well. Portrayed by Josh Lucas, he is now 40 years old and hides out in psychosexual escapades and a job at a fraudulent modeling agency scamming the young and hopeful. He is good at them both--too good. So why is he growing increasingly frightened? Is he losing his game? His sexual prowess and intellectual diatribes no longer make him feel better. He will have to change to survive.
Boaz Yakin returns to Sundance with a wonderfully insightful, yet personal, film about family, guilt, ambition, lust, and the impossible task of trying to live without them. The detailed performances of the talented cast capture the subtleties of characters maneuvering through a minefield of family relationships. Death in Love reminds us that no matter how much we wish it weren't so, our actions reverberate and affect others in monumental ways, especially those who love us.
Wednesday 01-23-2008:
Assassination of a High School President
One Word Review: awesome
Director Brett Simon’s feature debut is an intricately crafted high school drama that strays from the typical teenage fare and manages to keep what at first seems like a familiar plot twisting and turning until the very last frame. Combining a keen sense of relief that no one can make you go back to high school with an equally strong desire to return and make all of the cool kids realize that there’s life past graduation, Assassination of a High School President deftly captures a new kind of grown-up teenage angst.Sophomore Bobby Funke, played with witty nuance by Reece Thompson, is a self-described newspaper dork whose social skills are severely lacking in this high school hierarchy, yet he is instantly recognizable as the person with the most promising future in his class. Determined to win a spot in a coveted summer journalism program, he finds himself at the epicenter of a story that threatens the entire social structure of St. Donovan’s High School--everyone from jocks to misfits to Bruce Willis’s campy and over-the-top principal. The rest of the perfectly cast ensemble creates a high school from hell, where anything seems possible, especially since every character appears to be 16 going on 30. Giving any hints about the way this film turns out would only destroy the fun.
Funny Games
One Word Review: creepyish
The Farber family--George (Tim Roth), Anna (Naomi Watts), and young Georgie (Devon Gearhart)--drive through the countryside to their summer home. Shortly after they arrive, two well-mannered young men, Paul (Michael Pitt) and Peter (Brady Corbet), appear, hoping to borrow some eggs. But they are neither friendly neighbors nor interested in eggs. Taking the family hostage, the intruders proceed to entertain themselves with increasingly sadistic “games.” Then, with alarming politeness, Paul bets the Farbers that they won’t survive the next 12 hours. He turns to the camera: “Think they stand a chance?”It may not be immediately evident that an unrelentingly brutal home-invasion thriller can rekindle your faith in a cinema of ideas, but that’s what Funny Games does. In every detail, Michael Haneke’s remake of his own 1997 Austrian film is constructed expressly to comment on itself. The physical and psychological violence forms a powerful, self-reflexive conceit to challenge the audience’s complicity and systematically frustrate the impulse toward gratification. At one point, Haneke literally hands control of the film itself over to one of his characters.
Refusing to tiptoe around the brutality inflicted on the family, Haneke doesn’t want to entertain you; he wants to challenge you. He wants blood flowing to your brain, not just across the linoleum. Why wouldn’t he remake the film for Americans? It’s about us.
Thursday 01-24-2008:
The Visitor
One Word Review: poignant
Director Tom McCarthy returns to the Festival (The Station Agent won three awards in 2003) with an outstanding sophomore effort, The Visitor, an illuminating and superbly crafted film about how disparate people form familial bonds which inspire an emotional rebirth in a lonely widower.Walter Vale, an economics professor from suburban Connecticut, has withdrawn from life since his wife died. When he must attend a conference on globalization in Manhattan, he goes home to his seldom-used apartment in the city and frightens a young couple who have been living there illegally, Tarek, a Syrian man, and his lover, Zainab, from Senegal. Seeing that the couple have nowhere else to go, Walter softens and invites them to stay until they sort something out, and a friendship blossoms. One day Tarek has a chance encounter with the police and is immediately detained. Since Zainab cannot visit Tarek at the immigration detention center, she turns to Walter for help. When he decides to assume responsibility for his new friends, Walter begins a journey back toward personal and emotional revival.
McCarthy's simple and precise direction elicits wonderfully nuanced performances from a talented cast led by Richard Jenkins. The Visitor possesses a powerful, yet quiet, grace and establishes McCarthy as a masterful storyteller.
Posted at 1:52 PM
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