where i cough up random shit i find online

Sundance 2008: A Film Recap

I saw these films:

Outstanding

  • Strangers (World Dramatic Competition): An incredible film about an Israeli man and a Palestinian woman who fall for each other after a chance encounter. Directed in complete cinema verite style (handheld cameras, no extras, on location), this film just about blew away everyone in the audience. The stories from behind-the-scenes as told by Guy Nattiv (one of the directors), made the film even more amazing:
    • Filmed in two weeks (one week in Berlin, one in Paris)
    • Lubna Azabal and Liron Levo hadn’t met in real life until the subway where they were sitting across from each other.
    • To sneak the camera into the stadium past security, the two directors and Liron Levo had to disassemble the camera and hide it amongst themselves, then sneak into the stadium, reassemble the camera, and continue filming.
    • Lubna Azabal really fell for Liron Levo during the film (which may explain their amazing on-screen chemistry).

    • There was NO SCRIPT. All the dialogue was ad-libbed.

Great

  • The Wave (World Dramatic Competition): A film based on the true story of the Palo Alto High School teacher who used an alternative method to teach his students about autocracy. The week long experiment got so out of control and spread so far that extreme measures had to be taken to return things to normal. The German film interpretation of this story proved particularly impactful as the director and the students discussed how German youth have become desensitized to the events of WWII with the mandatory education on the impacts and effects of the Third Reich. This film was beautifully filmed and extremely well acted. The real-life teacher took the stage for questions and two of the students from the class in the late 60s were in the audience.  I look forward to this one getting picked up and distributed.
  • Mancora (World Dramatic Competition): The steamy Latin-American film at Sundance. Definitely one of the hotter and stylish films, Mancora is a film about a young man who’s just experienced tragedy in his life, and tries to escape it by taking a road trip with his stepsister and her husband to a beach resort. The story may lack some originality and/or some seemingly necessary depth, but the technical execution is near flawless. Themes of egotism, sexuality, and youthful ignorance proliferate and the cinematography is about as good as anything coming out of Latin America right now…oh…and the actors are beautiful.
  • Under the Bombs (Sous Les Bombes) (World Dramatic Competition): An extremely well made film, shot similar to Strangers, but under far different circumstances.  Franco-Lebanese Director Philippe Aractingi, shot this entire film during the Lebanese-Israeli conflict in 2006.  As soon as the airstrikes began, he picked up his camera and ran into the thick of the drama with two Lebanese actors: Nada Abou Farhat and Georges Khabbaz.  Aractingi came up with the plot just as the conflict  began and shot it as a pseudo dramamentary, taking us on a journey through what was to become a war-torn region in southern Lebanon.  All the extras are actually townspeople, taxi drivers, news correspondants, and victims of the events that happened for 34 days in 2006.  The actors themselves followed a plot of a woman (Nada Abou Farhat) who had left Lebanon for a few days, leaving her son with her sister in one of the most badly hit civilian areas.  The entire film is a search for her son and the relationship that she develops with the cab driver (Georges Khabbaz) and all the while living in darkness and fear.  A very well-done film, that I really hope gets picked up.
  • Roman Polanski (Documentary Competition): This documentary really hit a spot with me.  I have an immense amount of respect for Polanski as a director.  Rosemary’s Baby is one of my favorite films and the controversy surrounding his exile from the US saddens me to a certain extent, since I really have no insight into the story of what happened.  This documentary explores the unfortunate circumstances of his life: his beginnings as a Jew during the holocaust, the death of Sharon Tate, and the corrupt Hollywood trial he was forced to endure before he desperately went to Dino DeLaurentis seeking a way out of the country he really loved.  At points the film tries to make him out as the victim (the fact is, he did admit to sleeping with a 13 year old), but it does a fair job of showing that he is living a life in exile and that it’s also due, in part, to the corrupt criminal system in this country.
  • Perro Come Perro (World Dramatic Competition): The first Columbian drama to premiere at Sundance ever, Perro Come Perro is an artistically brilliant film portraying the sadistic irony of the drug underworld in Columbia.  The story is fairly basic, and perhaps overtold to an extent, but where the film lacks in plot originality, it makes up for in the way it was filmed.  The use of filters, handheld cameras, and uncomfortable camera angles really add to the drama and violence being displayed.  The use of editing to depict hallucinations and dream sequences also helps to tell the story in an effective and original manner.  This film is helping to define the new Latin-American genre of filmmaking we’ve seen (City of God, Amores Perros, Y Tu Mama, Pan’s Labyrinth) and been thrilled by, over and over again.

Good

  • Good Dick (World Premiere): An original, engaging, oddball love story about a video store clerk (Jason Ritter) who falls in love with a very eccentric woman who comes in daily to rent erotica (Marianna Palka). Her ability to accept him into her life seems almost impossible until he’s able to break through to her core and bring out her inner strength.  Very heavy and overwhelming themes in this film with some hilarious and sometimes extremely uncomfortable moments.  Good Dick was a well-done film portraying a dark side of life and love that is almost impossible to endure, yet impossible to turn away from.  Marianna Palka directed this film and really did a great job creating chemistry among the video store clerks, between the two main characters (who are unnamed), and allows us to see what love can do to transform a troubled soul.  I don’t think I’ll ever be able to sit through it again, but I’m glad I was able to once.

Underwhelming

  • Be Kind Rewind (World Premiere): One of the most anticipated films at Sundance, I really had super high hopes.  The film’s premise is so eccentric and funny, that when I read the description I found it impossible that this film could fail…unfortunately, it got close.  It was more than obvious that an original storyline from the imagination of Michel Gondry was completely fucked up by the studios.  The film starts off brilliantly.  A Passaic, NJ video store owner (as in VHS videos), played by Danny Glover, is struggling to keep his business above water as the larger video chain takes his business away.  He puts his faith in Mos Def as a pseudo-son to help him run the place when he’s not there.  Jack Black, a neighborhood local spends much of his time conspiracy theorizing about power plants trying to suck knowledge out of their brains using the power grid.  When an accident occurs and Jack Black becomes magnetized, he deletes all the videos in the video store.  Mos Def and Jack Black partake in an adventure to recreate every video in the store themselves.  There are some hilarious moments that make you want to cry with laughter.  UNFORTUNATELY, halfway into the film, it takes a turn for the worst as the plot line becomes the most cliche Hollywood garbage you’ve ever seen and during the Q&A no one seemed regretful for the downward spiral this film endured.  I was so frustrated that a film like this chose to debut at Sundance.  (Dave Matthews and The Edge happened to be among the plethora of celebrities in the audience).
  • The Last Word (World Premiere): What could’ve been a potentially great film, suffered from weak execution.  Wes Bentley does a great job as a dark, lonely man who makes his living out of writing suicide notes for others.  While self-critiquing his eulogy at a victim’s funeral, the victim’s sister (Winona Ryder) notices him and a bumpy and poorly developed love story ensues between the two.  Apparently this film was riddled with production issues and the film almost didn’t get off the cutting room floor.  It’s obvious from the scattered applause during the opening credits, that many of the issues were due to Winona Ryder (applause went silent from the production crew when her name came up).  Ray Romano plays a supporting role as one of the suicide victims, unfortunately he sounded and acted exactly like Ray Barone from Everybody Loves Raymond and that comedy was very misdirected in a film like this.  I can see this coming out in wide release to fairly lukewarm reviews.

Awful

  • Pretty Bird (World Premiere): Awful is a pretty strong word, but I wouldn’t be lying if I said I wanted to blow my brains out by the end of this screening.  Billy Crudup and Paul Giamatti star as two losers who try to go into business together to build a rocket belt (a single person flying machine that was actually built in the 60s).  This film fails on so many levels, it’s incalculable.  Both Billy Crudup’s and Paul Giamatti’s characters are such losers, it’s almost painful to endure.  Billy Crudup plays the “marketing guy” with no education, no skills, and gets by on his charm that only one person (his gay friend who has a crush on him) falls for.  Paul Giamatti is an aerospace engineer who has been out of work because he was sick and tired of getting shit on by corporate America.  Unfortunately, this film rambles on and becomes so depressing that I almost felt like walking out.  The ending redeems it a little bit, although I could also argue it put the final nail in the coffin.  As if the film couldn’t get any worse, the Q&A from the director was a rambling mess and I almost walked out on it.  If this gets picked up and distributed, I may kill someone.

The BUZZ

(Films that got a lot of buzz and got favorable reviews):

  • In Bruges (World Premiere)
  • Slingshot Hip Hop (World Documentary Competition)
  • The Wackness (Dramatic Competition)
  • Sunshine Cleaning (Dramatic Competition)
  • Diary of the Dead (Midnight Horror)
  • The Great Buck Howard (World Premiere)
  • I.O.U.S.A. (Documentary Competition)
  • A Complete History of My Sexual Failures (World Documentary Competition)
  • In Prison My Whole Life (Documentary Competition)
  • Gonzo (Documentary Competition)
  • Absurdistan (World Dramatic Competition)
  • The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (Dramatic Competition)
  • Choke (Dramatic Competition)
  • Phoebe in Wonderland (Dramatic Competition)
  • American Son (Dramatic Competition)

Lesson Learned:

  • World Premieres will more often than not, suck.