Sundance Gone, But Good Documentaries Still in Town

[Post Fest] The sun has officially set on Sundance, but that doesn't mean you won't be able to watch a good documentary or two until next year.

The Salt Lake Film Society is still pumping out relevant and though-provoking films for free right here in town.

Tonight at the Downtown library there will be a screening of the award winning documentary A Walk to Beautiful which follows five Ethiopian women born with physical disfigurements in their struggle for acceptance in their own communities. The screening will be tonight Mon. Jan 28 at the City Library auditorium at 7:oo pm. It will include a discussion with local activists as well as some of the producers of the film.

There will be another feelgood documentary at the city library this Wednesday at 6:30 pm, when the movie Freedom from the Abuse of Power: Torture and Unlawful Imprisonment is shown. This one is a snapshot of our country's recent unpleasantness with secret prisons and extraordinary rendition. University of Utah Professor Tim Chambless will lead a discussion on the legality and ethics of torture in the world, after the movie.

Sure they might not be the kind of movies your looking for if you're in a Weekend at Bernie's kinda mood, but if you are feeling like you want to grapple with some of the most challenging issues of our times then they are well worth checking out, and you don't have to drive to Park City. (Eric S. Peterson)

Sundance: Gold Metal

[Film Fest] Director Sacha Gervasi obviously understands the shadow that This Is Spinal Tap casts over his documentary Anvil! The Story of Anvil, his chronicle of the long-lived, never-quite-made-it Canadian heavy metal band for which he was once a roadie in the 1980s. During a recording session, he zooms in on an amplifier where the numbers go to 11; he follows band members on a tourist trek to Stonehenge. Even the band members themselves understand that they’re living a Spinal Tap-esque existence, as a backstage walk through a tiny venue’s blank hallways inspires a shout of “Hello, Cleveland!” I mean, the drummer’s name is Robb Reiner (as opposed to the single-b Rob Reiner who directed Spinal Tap). It seems like they were doomed from birth to these comparisons.

But there’s something even more poignant about Anvil!, because it’s all real. Founding members Reiner and singer/guitarist Steve “Lips” Kudlow – childhood pals now in their 50s, supporting themselves with day jobs like delivering school lunches – soldier on at turning their 35-year project into something that will finally draw the wide acclaim that always eluded them, despite inspiring speed-metal legends like Anthrax, Megadeth and Metallica. And Gervasi, allowed extraordinary access thanks to his longtime association with the band, discovers both a tale of almost absurd persistence and a sweet tribute to Kudlow and Reiner’s friendship. Ultimately, those two ideas become impossible to separate: As much as they love making the music, you get the feeling that they also can’t give up the bond that keeps them together.

At times, Anvil! hits some of the cringingly hilarious comic high notes of Spinal Tap: watching Kudlow try to raise money for a studio session by doing high-pressure telemarketing; a gig at a Prague nightclub where the owner tries to pay them in bowls of goulash; a performance at the wedding reception of the band’s other guitarist. But there’s one other crucial way that Anvil deserves comparison to This Is Spinal Tap: It has fun with its subject, but never loses respect for their commitment. A room full of critics broke into spontaneous applause at one point, recognizing an improbably heroic moment for the band. How much more awesome could a salute to these guys be? The answer is none. None more awesome. (Scott Renshaw)

Sundance: More Black and White

[Film Fest] Sundance documentaries this year want us to know that we still live in a very race-divided society. Thank you, Sundance documentaries. In other news, the sky is blue.

I kid Sundance documentaries, because I love. But I would love a lot more of them this year if they weren’t so dependent on their premises, and not on what the filmmakers are able to do with those premises. The Order of Myths begins with a fascinating footnote: the way the city of Mobile, Alabama holds two distinct Mardi Gras celebrations, one historically all-white and the other historically all-black. At times, director Margaret Brown captures that distinctively Southern capacity to justify nearly anything because of its connection to “history” and “tradition;” it’s jaw-dropping watching members of all-white “secret societies” putting on masks and hoods as though their revelry could have no other possible connotation. But ultimately there aren’t truly compelling characters to carry the film beyond everything it told you in its first 15 minutes.

Trouble the Water – in which Tia Lessin and Carl Deal follow Hurricane Katrina survivors Kimberly Rivers and Scott Roberts for 18 months before, during and after the ordeal – proves to have at least a little more intriguing subtext. The “before” and “during” part is the real hook, as New Orleans Ninth Ward resident Rivers used her personal camcorder to chronicle her neighbors’ preparations, and their two days trapped in an attic before taking a boat to safety. The footage is undeniably gripping, and narrowing the impact of the disaster – both natural and bureaucratic – to these individuals provides a distinct perspective. But Trouble the Water actually proves more interesting as a portrait of community, including the band of survivors that becomes a makeshift family for Rivers and Roberts. The country may have let New Orleans down, but it brings a little lump to the throat watching the way those who lived there refused to let each other down. (Scott Renshaw)

Sundance: Flaws of Distraction

[Film Fest] It's early yet. I keep telling myself this: Only three full days down, six more to go. That's plenty of time for a gem to turn up. Don't panic. It's early yet.

For the last several years, I've come to depend on discovering at least one or two films destined for my year-end top 10 list: Napoleon Dynamite in 2004, Kung Fu Hustle and Murderball in 2005, Brick and Half Nelson in 2006, Once and My Kid Could Paint That last year. That’s a lot of pressure to put on the festival, and maybe even a lot to put on myself. What if the one film I can’t quite schedule this year turns out to be “the one?”

While the Documentary Competition has delivered at least a couple of solidly worthy efforts – Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired and Bigger, Stronger, Faster* -- the Dramatic Competition has thus far been characterized by interesting failures and decent films with at least one glaring flaw. In the former category, we have something like Sleep Dealer, a science-fiction allegory with a killer premise: In the near future, the border between Mexico and the United States has been completely shut off, but immigrant labor still performs many tasks remotely by plugging into “nodes” installed in their bodies and becoming the virtual eyes and hands of robot construction workers, nannies, etc. Director/co-screenwriter Alex Rivera has some clever fun with his premise, but the main characters – a rural immigrant to the big city, a writer who sells her memories on a sort of existential eBay, and a Mexican-American guilty about selling out his heritage – aren’t nearly interesting enough. I like my social satire with at least a little more convincing humanity.

On the “glaring flaw” side, we have stuff like The Wackness (too undisciplined), Ballast (too minimalist) and the hilariously named Good Dick. Go ahead, say it once without snickering like an 11-year-old, I dare you. The film itself is about a clerk at an independent video store (Jason Ritter) who becomes obsessed with a customer (Marianna Palka, who also wrote and directed) who always rents porn. The relationship demands a whole hell of a lot of suspension of disbelief, but it’s almost kind of interesting – until the underlying cause of the woman’s intimacy issues is revealed. When Tom Arnold appears in the movie, you can safely assume that it is about to go off the rails. And in this case, not for the usual reason that Tom Arnold sends your movie off the rails. (Scott Renshaw)

What's Up, Docs?

[Film] Every year, people ask me to predict the Academy Awards. And every year I resist, because I want nothing to do with furthering the legitimacy of this gold-statuette-dispensing gaggle of clown-shoes.

The latest example of the Motion Picture Academy's mind-boggling lack of artistic vision comes with this week's announcement of the 15 "short-listed" finalists for the Documentary Feature category. Since you may know little about the specific titles listed, let me offer some helpful Harper's Index-style statistics:

* Percent of finalists that are in some way about America's Middle East adventure: 26.6%
* Percentage of finalists that are in some way about war: 53.3%
* Percentage of finalists that are about a clearly and obviously "important issue" like slave labor, Chinese democracy, health care, abortion, etc.: 100%

So forget a shot for the year's most interesting and stylistically innovative documentaries: Manda Bala (Send a Bullet), Manufactured Landscapes, The King of Kong, My Kid Could Paint That, Protagonist. Always desperately concerned about putting on its serious face, the Academy ignores anything that doesn't come with Cliff's Notes thesis statements. Remember: These are the awards given by an industry to itself. Trust them accordingly. (Scott Renshaw)