Sundance 2009: And the Winners Are ...

The 2009 Sundance Film Festival approaches its close with the announcement of the awards:

U.S. Dramatic Competition:
Grand Jury Prize: Push: Based on the novel by Sapphire
Audience Award: Push: Based on the novel by Sapphire
Directing Award: Cary Joji Fukunaga, Sin Nombre
Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award: Nicholas Jasenovec and Charlyne Yi, Paper Heart
Cinematography: Adriano Goldman, Sin Nombre
Special Jury Prize for Acting: Mo'Nique, Push: Based on the novel by Sapphire
Special Jury Prize for Spirit of Independence: Humpday

U.S. Documentary Competition:
Grand Jury Prize: We Live in Public
Audience Award: The Cove
Directing Award: Natalia Almada, El General
Editing Award: Karen Schmeer, Sergio
Cinematography Award: Bob Richman, The September Issue
Special Jury Prize: Good Hair

World Dramatic Competition:
Grand Jury Prize: The Maid (La Nana)
Audience Award: An Education
Directing Award: Oliver Hirschbiegel, Five Minutes of Heaven
Cinematography Award: John De Borman, An Education
Special Jury Prize for Acting: Catalina Saavedra, The Maid (La Nana)
Special Jury Prize for Originality: Louise-Michel

World Documentary Competition:
Grand Jury Prize: Rough Aunties
Audience Award: Afghan Star
Directing Award: Havana Marking, Afghan Star
Editing Award: Janus Billeskov Jansen and Thomas Papapetros, Burma VJ
Cinematography Award: John Maringouin, Big River Man
Special Jury Prize: Tibet in Song

Look for a festival wrap-up in the Jan. 29 issue. (Scott Renshaw)

Sundance 2009: Alumni Association

[Film Fest] One of the things that makes the Sundance Dramatic Competition such a fascinating gamble every year is that, with few exceptions, the filmmakers are unknown quantities. Not so with the documentaries -- and this year in particular, it feels like homecoming week. Davis Guggenheim, who improbably turned Al Gore into a rock star in An Inconvenient Truth, returned to follow actual rock stars Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White in It Might Get Loud. Liz Garbus (The Execution of Wanda Jean) has Shouting Fire; Doug Pray (Hype!, Scratch) has Art & Copy; and of course the Yes Men are back in the house.

Joe Berlinger has made four previous Sundance appearances, with some of the most compelling documentaries of the last 20 years (Brother's Keeper, Paradise Lost, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster). So it's hard not to be a bit disappointed that his latest, Crude, feels more like late-model Sundance advocacy filmmaking without much spark. His subject is certainly worthy: the 15-year battle of Ecuadoran attorney Pablo Fajardo to get restitution for oil contamination of the Amazon Basin by Chevron/Texaco. Berlinger dutifully allows the corporate spokespeople their face-time to argue that they didn't do nothin', but the film ultimately comes down to one of those "fight against the big, dark corporate system" movies. And as important as this issue might be, Berlinger doesn't do anything with it cinematically. He's had a gift over the years of making documentaries that are about more than their ostensible subject. He's not the guy who should be spending time shooting Police reunion concert footage just because Sting's wife is on the side of his protagonist.

Similar expectations surrounded a return visit from Ondi Timoner (Dig!), but she delivers big time. We Live in Public does what the best documentaries have always done: Find a compelling subject, explore its deeper context, and make it interesting movie art in the process. Her subject here is Internet visionary Josh Harris, who anticipated the YouTube/Facebook/24-hour webcam generation years ahead of his time, including some groundbreaking experiments in online voyeurism. If Timoner had done nothing but chronicle the life of the enigmatic Harris, she would have had an intriguing movie on her hands. But she also prods at some of the puzzles of an online world that allows people who feel unseen in real life to expose way too much of themselves. It's gripping as biography, as cinema, and as sociological history. Come back again any time, Ondi. (Scott Renshaw)

Sundance 2009: Viewing and Brewing

[Film Fest] At Park City's showcase festival venue, the Eccles Center, nothing stronger than water is allowed inside the theater. In Salt Lake City, you can actually knock back a brew with your indie film fix.

At the Rose Wagner Center, patrons not only can buy beer at the concessions booth, but they are able to bring their frosty beverage to their seat. Combining the Brewvies experience with the Sundance experience: It's an experiment worth continuing. If nothing else, it could make the post-film Q&A sessions more lively. (Scott Renshaw)

Sundance 2009: All in the Family, part 2

[Film Fest] A few days ago, Scott touched upon the rise of documentaries directed by their subjects' family members, and wondered where they fit into cinematic journalism. I believe such movies have their place, but they only work when the filmmakers are honest about their relations and their approach.

In many cases, it seems as if the film's subject came up by default. It's a lot easier to make a documentary when your dad can call on all his friends to participate. While Shouting Fire presents an educational mosaic of the nation's most extreme free-speech practitioners, it only peripherally acknowledges that attorney Martin Garbus is director Lis Garbus' father. The film is well-made, but when Martin tells his daughter that there are other lawyers who protected free speech before and after him, one wonders why these people don't have more screen time.

However, there is a long tradition of biographies by family members, and there's no reason that these shouldn't exist in film form. Emily and Sarah Kunstler remember growing up as the children of a famous radical civil rights lawyer in William Kuntsler: Disturbing the Universe. They present a personal portrait that would have been nearly impossible for a detached journalist to capture.

One gets the feeling that the subject's daughters might actually be harder on their father than someone with more distance. When he decided to take on criminal cases for accused rapists and assassins, he put them at risk. They had to answer schoolmates’ questions about their dad's cases, and reconcile the construct of their father the hero with the guy who defended mob bosses and cop killers.

As is usually the case in cinema—whether fiction or non-fiction—the question isn't whether or not a filmmaker should tell a story, but how he or she tells it. The Kunstler sisters tell theirs with a perfect balance of the personal and the public. (Jeremy Mathews)

Sundance 2009: Creep Shows

Last year, I suggested that considering Sundance's reputation as a place for earnest dramas and quirky comedies, it's actually a pretty good place to see scary movies. And I'm kind of wondering what the hell I was thinking.

Maybe it was the extraordinarily fond memories I have of The Blair Witch Project talking (if one can describe a memory of walking out of a midnight screening, getting a fallen branch caught on my pant leg, and nearly pissing myself in fright as "fond"). But despite my enthusiasm for seeing the horror films and psychological/supernatural thrillers every year, they've let me down lately. This year, Grace looked like a promising concept: A woman whose baby dies in utero during a car accident gives birth to something that may be a zombie. I mean, how bad can a zombie-baby movie be?

Not bad, as it turns out, but certainly not particularly good, either. Writer/director Paul Solet realizes he's got something as ridiculous as it is creepy on his hands, and he definitely has fun with some of the more over-the-top moments (think vampiric breast-feeding). He also seems to be tweaking vegans and new-agers, but does so in such a haphazzard way that it's not clear what kind of point, if any, he's trying to make on the subject. While the final 15 minutes turn into a gory-hilarious set piece, it's hard to shake the feeling that the whole thing was one big shaggy-dog set up for the final punch line. Which, admittedly, is pretty freaking funny.

Maybe Grace also looks better in comparison to its Midnight category-mate The Killing Room. The set-up is one of those Saw-like premises that traps strangers together in some bizarre experiment, the point of which is not entirely clear to them. In this version, however, we're also getting the point of view of the hands pulling the strings, as a veteran military scientist (Peter Stormare) breaks in a new recruit (Big Love's Chloe Sevigny).

And good for screenwriters Gus Krieger and Ann Peacock for shaking up the idea -- except that it doesn't actually work. The story ends up spending a lot of time on whether or not Sevigny's character will reject the moral implications of the mysterious experiment, but doesn't provide nearly enough insight into that character. So we're left to watch the frightened lab rats -- including Timothy Hutton and Nick Cannon -- try to figure out the point of it all. The scariest thing is that the big reveal inspires something more like a shrug than a shudder. (Scott Renshaw)

Sundance 2009: Tonight's Locals Best Bets

[Film Fest] If you're cruising around downtown Salt Lake City deciding which of the many Sundance options to pick, you could do worse than The Vicious Kind (which I've already pumped up here). You've also got a couple of interesting documentary choices in The Yes Men Fix the World and Nollywood Babylon.

Of course, if you want to unleash your inner nihilist, there's always Bronson. Co-writer/director Nicolas Winding Refn takes on the twisted life of Michael Peterson, an English career thug who re-dubbed himself Charles Bronson to match his brutish persona. There’s plenty of wild violence in Refn’s film, but there’s also a surprising degree of cinematic artistry, particularly as he captures Bronson’s own theatrical narration. And he gets plenty of mileage simply out of waiting for Bronson to erupt. Does the film really try to understand Bronson’s compulsion for a fight? Only a little. But Hardy’s hilariously scary performance makes him one hell of a fascinating enigma. (Scott Renshaw)

Sundance 2009: Congratulations Are in Order

[Film Fest] The Academy Awards nominations were announced this morning, a couple of days later than usual, but still during the Sundance Film Festival. And as seems to happen every year, at least a few of the nominees happened to be in town.

I kind of knew this, but it was still a weird experience to walk into the lobby of the festival headquarters just a couple of hours after the nominee announcements and spot one of the new honorees: Revolutionary Road supporting actor Michael Shannon (above), in town with the noir drama The Missing Person. And considering my enthusiasm for his performance, it was a particular pleasure to be able to congratulate him in person. And I'm glad he was gracious, because he is very tall and scary looking. (Scott Renshaw)

Sundance 2009: Lessons in Love

[Film Fest] Ah, l'amour. The movies have always loved love, but if it's a Sundance romance, odds are that it's a love story in which someone learns something.

The connection between love and life lessons is most clearly on display in An Education, adapted by screenwriter Nick Hornby (High Fidelity) from the memoir by Lynn Barber. In 1961 England, 16-year-old Jenny (Carey Mulligan) is a top student on her way to fulfilling the dreams of her practical-minded dad (Alfred Molina) that she attend Oxford. But a charming older man named David (Peter Sarsgaard) enters her life, and Jenny soon becomes enamored of his sophisticated world of art, music and trips to Paris -- even if it happens to be financed by a little thievery.

A surprisingly minuscule amount of time is devoted to Jenny's qualms about living a larceny-fueled high life, but Mulligan -- in a thoroughly charming lead performance -- makes Jenny's desire for beautiful things more interesting than shallow. It's a generally satisfying story as a whole, with one glaring problem: It's hard to believe Jenny actually gets into this situation in the first place. As played by Molina, her father is almost a sit-com character, far too easily swayed by David's smooth talk to allow his teenage daughter to take off on weekend trips with a 30-something guy. And Sarsgaard's David, frankly, doesn't come off as all that much of a smooth talker. Long before Jenny realizes it, we've already figured out that she could do better.

There are no such problems buying the central pairing in the delightful 500 Days of Summer -- in large part because we're told from the outset that this love story won't end happily. Tom (Joseph Gordon Leavitt), a trained architect slumming as a greeting-card writer, falls hard for his boss's new assistant, Summer (Zooey Deschanel), and for a while the attraction is even reciprocal. The catch is that the director Marc Webb's chronology flips back and forth in time, and we see their breakup fairly early on.

So what's the appeal in a doomed romantic comedy? True, the script does push the limits of cuteness, including touches like having Tom's primary romantic confidante be his worldly-wise 12-year-old sister. Still, it's hard to resist a lot of the material here, including a dance number setting Tom's post-coital bliss to Hall & Oates' "You Make My Dreams." Even better, this is the rare romance that isn't about the love affair that's "The One." It's about the one that makes you ready for "The One," as painful as it can be when it's over. That's love, Sundance style. (Scott Renshaw)

Today's Locals Best Bet: Good Hair

[Film Fest] If you're a Locals Quick Pass Holder--or just a local movie-lover deciding what to wait-list--you've got some good choices tonight. Jeremy Mathews commented earlier today on The Cove, and I touched on the documentary Burma DJ over the weekend.

But you'll probably have the best time if you make a run at Good Hair (tonight, 9:30 p.m., Rose Wagner Center) – and not just because of the off-chance that Chris Rock might show up at the Rose. Rock serves as tour guide through a documentary exploration inspired by his young daughter’s question: “Daddy, why don’t I have good hair?” What follows is a frisky, enlightening 90-minute trip through the multi-billion dollar industry that caters to (primarily) black women, selling them toxic chemical “relaxers” and weaves that can cost thousands of dollars a year to maintain because “if you’re nappy, you’re not happy.”

As a piece of filmmaking, it’s somewhat uneven. Director Jeff Stilson spends an inordinate amount of time on a bizarre hairdressing competition at an annual expo for black hair-care products, a freak show with little to do with the actual subject at hand. And Stilson and Rock ultimately go a little – okay, a lot – easy on the question of whether this obsession with long, straight hair is actually a problem. But did you know that most hair-weave hair in America comes from a temple in India, where it’s ritually sacrificed by Hindus and becomes a pure-profit industry? Or that the artificial nature of so many black women’s hair makes it, er, problematic during sexual relations? I sure didn’t – and I sure didn’t expect to laugh so much while discovering it. (Scott Renshaw)

Sundance 2009: Let's Misbehave

[Film Fest] There have always been politically charged movies at Sundance, but this year's festival showcases filmmakers – like The Yes Men – who decided to make their point by misbehaving. These rogue documentarians are up to no good, and they let you in on the adrenaline rush.

Louie Psihoyos' The Cove could lend its setup to a Hollywood action movie. In the seemingly quaint, dolphin-loving town of Taiji, Japan, the townspeople mask a deep secret. The fishermen, the mayor and the police are all in on it. As dolphin-rights advocates travel through the town, they see cars following them and men videotaping them.

Ric O'Barry, the former dolphin trainer on Flipper who became a dolphin-rights advocate, has been trying for sometime to bring attention to the slaughter that occurs an unseen cove that no one can ever see. So the activists embark on a dangerous undercover mission to steal the footage they need. Like any good heist, there's a crack team of specialists including divers, gadget men extreme athletes. Using thermal cameras and night vision, they plant hidden cameras, and capture all the drama of the operation on video. The tense, thrilling mission is more exciting than most Hollywood action sequence. (Jeremy Mathews)

Sundance 2009: Pop Cultures

[Film Fest] For years, I've repeated the mantra that, on the whole, the documentaries at Sundance are more satisfying than the dramatic films. But I'm beginning to re-evaluate why I espouse that point of view. Maybe the movies themselves really are that much better. Or maybe I just love the experience of walking out of a theater not merely entertained, but having learned something.

I've learned a lot about the world by watching Sundance documentaries, and if there’s one constant, it’s that you can learn the most about another country through two primary sources: its spirituality, and its popular culture. And when the two overlap, it can be particularly fascinating.

The World Documentary Competition Films Afghan Star and Nollywood Babylon took on subjects that I couldn’t resist simply from the film guide summaries. The former, from British director Havana Marking, follows four of the top 10 finalists on Afghanistan’s newly created, post-Taliban version of American Idol. At the outset, a viewer might fear that it’s going to be nearly as painful as early season episodes of the American American Idol, full of shrill failed auditioners. But the film gradually segues into what makes the phenomenon—and it is just as huge there as it is here—distinctive in Afghanistan. Will the viewer-voting for the Tajik, Hazara and Pashtun finalists echo the country’s historical schisms? Will a woman who dares to perform—and dance!—on television risk her life in a country that’s more secularized, but still deeply Islamic? I couldn’t honestly tell you whether any of the finalists are actually talented—Middle Eastern singing is still far too alien to me—but I definitely learned something wonderfully bizarre: In a country where overt sexuality is taboo, for some reason eyebrows are a subject of physical admiration in love songs.

Nollywood Babylon also finds an unexpected crossover between the secular and the spiritual as Ben Addelman and Samir Mallal look at the burgeoning local film industry of Nigeria. The film's primary subject is Lancelot Imasuen, a director making his 157th down-and-dirty feature in the capital city of Lagos, and its fairly evident that great artistry is less important in this world than telling African stories to African people. But more compelling is the nature of most of those stories: Largely financed by the impoverished country’s evangelical mega-churches, the plots consist primarily of morality plays and fairly blatant attacks on the animist/pagan traditions of the country. Do the filmmakers derive cheap entertainment simply from showing the ultra-low-budget trailers and special effects? Sure. But as a way to learn something about a country’s faith, economy and art, it sure goes down easy. (Scott Renshaw)

Sundance 2009: The Fandom Menace

[Film Fest] Genuinely interesting screenwriters often develop an artistic thumbprint as distinctive as any director's. For Robert Siegel (The Wrestler), if you throw away The Onion Movie—and he probably wishes he could—that calling card could be the psychology of losers whose sense of self is connected to something superficially inconsequential.

Big Fan—Siegel's directing debut, in addition to his latest screenwriting credit—casts Patton Oswalt as Paul Aufiero, a Staten Island parking garage attendant who lives and dies based on the success of his beloved New York Giants. One night he and his pal (Kevin Corrigan) spot the team’s star linebacker Quantrell Bishop, and impulsively follow him to a nightclub, where an attempt to get chummy results in Paul getting his ass kicked. But when Bishop’s legal fate threatens the team’s chance for a playoff spot, Paul has to choose between the Giants' well-being and his own.

Siegel treads dangerously close to caricature in portraying Paul as a lives-with-mom, no-girlfriend sadsack, and shows a bit of a tin ear when it comes to the heavily-scripted rants of the guys who call in to sports-talk radio shows. But Big Fan nevertheless proves both funny—and sad—when it comes to exploring the sense of power-by-proxy that comes from cheering for a winning team. Like The Wrestler’s protagonist, Paul can’t envision himself as having any sort of intrinsic worth as a person, and his most absurd decisions show a perverse sort of integrity. As tragic as Siegel’s perspective on this kind of character may be, at this point it’s distinctively his own. (Scott Renshaw)

Sundance 2009: Soderbergh's Surprise

[Film Fest] "You were never here, and you never saw this film." Steven Soderbergh told the audience this after he premiered his The Girlfriend Experience Tuesday night, under a sheer veil of secrecy.

Some audience members were anticipating the film's unadvertised screening, while others expected a special extended sit-down discussion with one of the festival's top alumni. Sundance first billed the night first as "Sneak Preview 2," then as "A Surprise Evening with Steven Soderbergh." "Don't miss this special chance to meet the Academy Award-winning director," a ticket sales email said, "and hear first-hand the tales of his unique career ranging from sex, lies, and videotape to Traffic, from The Limey to Che, and beyond." Such an event isn't unheard of at Sundance, and Soderbergh was already in town for the celebration of sex, lies, and videotape's 20th anniversary. But with the screening scheduled at Eccles Theater's prime time slot, most people expected something more.

Before the screening, Soderbergh sat on a stool next to festival director Geoffrey Gilmore to begin the special evening. Soderbergh said that people kept approaching him during the festival to say that they were looking forward to seeing his film, and he had no idea why they thought he had a new film. "Maybe it's because we do have a film to show" he added.

Many in the audience may have found the stunt more entertaining than the film. The Girlfriend Experience revisits some of the structural experiments Soderbergh conducted in films like The Limey, but fails to craft an interesting story to scramble. While compelling for its compositions and labyrinthine restructuring of a simple story, the film can't shake the suspicion that the core story is rather tedious. Porn star Sasha Grey stars as a high-end call girl who goes from client to client while her boyfriend (Chris Santos), a personal trainer, tries to find financial stability. Working mostly with non-actors, Soderbergh often had them speak without any pre-written dialogue. Unfortunately, they don't always have interesting things to say.

The Girlfriend Experience is one of the most unique films of the festival, but in the end may be more interesting to talk about than to watch. (Jeremy Mathews)

Sundance 2009: Straight Outta Brooklyn

[Film Fest] No Sundance experience beats that of wandering into a film with an unknowncast and director and finding yourself completely wrapped up in the joys andturmoils of its characters' lives. For a couple hours, you forget all thefestival cynicism, the sleep deprivation, the hour-long shuttle rides andbask in the discovery.

The Dramatic Competition entry Don't Let Me Drown delivers such an experience. Cruz Angeles' film focuses on a story of young love during troubled times. It weaves through the lives of two Brooklyn families as they struggle in themonths after the Sept. 11 attacks. Lalo and Stefanie, the children of these families, find solace in one another.

While certain plot developments feel somewhat out of place, we never lose our affection for these great characters. The World Trade Center attacks impacted both families. Stefanie's sister died in one of the towers, causing her father to turn mean and overly protective; Lalo's father worked as a janitor in the towers, and now spendshis days inhaling harmful dust while trying to clean-up the wreckage.

But Don't Let Me Drown refuses to fall into despair. It instead evokes the loving relationships between friends and family, allowing extremely funny organic humor to grow out of the character interaction. Angeles' greatest asset is his cast, especially the teenagers. They play well-meaning kids who laugh at and tease one another, but ultimately have each other's interests at heart. The past may be haunting, but they know that their happiness depends on how they go into the future. (Jeremy Mathews)

Sundance 2009: Caught in the Activism

[Film Fest] Plenty of Sundance documentaries over the years have been intended to motivate viewers to some kind of action through awareness. But there has been a special sub-section of that category: the documentaries about people engaged in some kind of high-concept project to make a point. Think Super Size Me, and you’ll be get a sense for what I'm talking about.

Or in the case of this year's No Impact Man, think Super Downsize Me. Writer Colin Beavan, as part of a project for his latest book, decides to spend one year attempting walk his progressive talk by having zero environmental impact, and brings his wife Michelle and 2-year-old daughter Isabella along for the ride. And by “zero impact,” he means zero: no electricity, no fuel-powered vehicles, no food that isn’t local and seasonal, no new purchases, no trash generated, not even toilet paper.

There’s certainly some fascinating conflict in Laura Gabbert and Justin Schien’s observation of the family’s year, both external (the blogosphere haters accusing Colin of grandstanding) and internal (hard-core urbanite Michelle’s struggle dealing with coffee withdrawals and attempting to cook an actual meal for the first time). But as the experiment unfolds, it becomes less about what they’re depriving themselves of than what they’re gaining in the process: a greater sense of connection with one another as a family, with their community, and with the rest of the world around them. If it’s just a stunt, it’s a stunt that brings a family closer together, and it's as emotionally affecting as it is practically inspiring.

The Yes Men – Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonnano – also attempt to live their principles through stunts, as they first showed in their self-titled 2003 film that played at that year’s Sundance. In their follow-up The Yes Men Fix the World, they’re once again out to expose the follies of corporate America by passing themselves in various elaborately-staged hoaxes as representatives from major corporations. And once again, they show primarily how hard it is to say anything so absurd that someone in the corporate world wouldn’t consider it a real good idea. The film record of their latest exploits – pretending to have made candles from human tallow; announcing that Dow Chemicals is compensating Indian victims of the 1984 Bhopal chemical disaster – is certainly self-congratulatory, and more than a bit disjointed. It’s fascinating mostly to watch real corporate spokespersons attempt to portray the Yes Men as being cruel to those who to whom they’re giving “false hope.” But it’s still bracing to watch movies about people who live their lives as though there still is hope. (Scott Renshaw)

Sundance 2009: More Quick Hits

Arlen Faber: I'm not sure whether I'm more upset at writer/director John Hindman for squandering a good idea or a great cast. His Dramatic Competition film is about a grumpy, reclusive author (Jeff Daniels) who wrote one of those hollow self-help sensations like The Secret 20 years ago. The phenomenon never faded, however, because the book was purportedly transcribed from the author's conversations with God.

If you accepted that last statement without an ounce of skepticism, you'd fit in nicely amongst the ensemble of characters who encounter this jackass yet fail ask him any interesting questions about his life or book. This is the kind of movie in which no one ever says the things that they obviously should – not for lack of motivation, but because if they did, the movie would be only five minutes long. Any viewer of mild intelligence will deduce Arlen's shocking revelation at the outset, but must listen to 90 minutes of greeting cards before the big unveiling.

The Greatest: A substandard mainstream screenplay hiding in a very well-made and well-acted indie film, this drama grows farther from the truth as it progresses. It opens with a rather touching depiction of teenagers in love, but then one of those teenagers dies a tragic death. The deceased didn't know his new girlfriend (Carey Mulligan) very well, and his family never met her, but he did manage to get her pregnant on the night of his death. With nowhere else to go, she moves into the boy's family's house, and into a storm of emotional turmoil.

Grief manifests itself in vastly different forms. Susan Sarandon's mother has become obsessed with discovering all the details of his son's death. Did he suffer? What was he saying when he died? Pierce Brosnan's father went the opposite direction to an equally unhealthy extreme, wishing to avoid discussion of his son at all costs. And his younger brother (Johnny Simmons) masks his feelings with animosity toward his brother, the family's favorite child.

While writer/director Shana Feste's dialogue tends toward the obvious, the interaction between these clashing characters is fascinating. Less fascinating is the third act, which sets out to neatly resolve every hang-up and loose-end. The truth, which the film approaches in its first half, is that death leaves unanswered questions, and that that’s okay. Too bad The Greatest takes the easy way out. (Jeremy Mathews)

Sundance 2009: DFWTF?

[Film Fest] There are people--plenty of them, and most of them smart--who considered David Foster Wallace a true American visionary, and mourned his death last year like the passing of a guru. Me, I've read virtually none of his work. So I'll have to leave it to others to decide whether John Krasinskils adaptation of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men is a misguided mess on its own terms, or on DFW's.

Krasinski (The Office's genial Jim) wrote and directed, and he does what a lot of actors-turned-filmmakers do their first time out of the box: creates something full of showy, actor-y moments. Familiar faces like Bobby Canavale, Will Forte and Josh Charles are among those who get to deliver monologues, mostly about their relationships with women, to an anthropology grad student named Sara (Julianne Nicholson) doing research about the male psyche.

The framing narrative reveals that her motivations are less than clinical – she was recently left broken-hearted by a man played by Krasinski – but it’s fairly tough to care about Sara as a character. It’s nearly as hard to understand what Krasinski is doing with flourishes like having his pair of wandering minstrel bartender/narrators addressing the audience directly. And it’s damned near impossible to justify Krasinski giving himself a five-minute monologue, considering that 1. he’s not adept enough a director to make the scene cinematically interesting, and 2. he’s actually not adept enough a dramatic actor to make his character interesting.

Only once – during a segment involving one interviewee's recollections of his hard-working father – does Krasinski blend visual style with emotional connection. For the other 70 minutes, he’s merely giving Wallace neophytes like me reason to explore how work so beloved could go so wrong. (Scott Renshaw)

Sundance 2009: They Are Family

[Film Fest] I know that it's not a completely new phenomenon, but for some reason it feels more prevalent at Sundance this year. In the documentary competition, filmmakers apparently have decided that the most compelling subjects are in their own home--or at least in their own genetic lineage.

Who's making a movie about rabble-rousing civil rights attorney William Kunstler (William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe)? His kids. Who’s interviewing Martin Garbus about free-speech issues (Shouting Fire)? His daughter. Who’s exploring the story of Mexican revolutionary hero and one-time president Plutarco Calles (El General)? His great-granddaughter.

Now maybe it’s a quaint notion in a post-Michael Moore movie universe to think of documentaries as works of cinematic journalism. But you have to question, even more so than usual, what happens when a filmmaker is approaching a subject about which they can have little or no objectivity. Or is it worth asking whether it’s even desirable for a filmmaker to attempt journalistic distance, no matter the project? I have only seen one of the three films in question as of yet, so this is not about their specific merits. I’m just left uneasy by what happens when the eye on the other end of the viewfinder is daddy’s little girl (or boy). (Scott Renshaw)

Sundance 2009: A Good Year?

[Film Fest] By Monday every year, just like clockwork, the consensus is already beginning to develop: Is this year a good year or a bad year for Sundance films?

And sure, it’s an arbitrary and completely subjective evaluation. All I can say is, I have yet to walk out of anything in disgust. That, for me, marks a better year than average.

It helps as well, of course, to have a few things to rave about. Sometimes they’re the things everyone seems to be raving about; I’ve yet to encounter too many people who don’t love Humpday. But occasionally I get to go out on a limb for something that either hasn’t been widely seen, or hasn’t been widely loved.

From the Spectrum category comes 2009’s first out-of-nowhere find for me: The Vicious Kind. Writer/director Lee Toland Krieger’s drama sets up a distinctive dysfunctional-family scenario from that time-honored backdrop of the Thanksgiving weekend gathering. Caleb (Adam Scott) still lives in the same small Connecticut town as the dad (J. K. Simmons) he hasn’t spoken to in eight years. He’s done his younger brother Peter (Alex Frost) the favor of driving him home from college, along with Peter’s new girlfriend Emma (Brittany Snow). But Caleb’s got more demons than we can count, and the relationships between these four people are more complicated than it’s possible to guess.

And that’s where I knew Krieger was on to something: Every time I was sure I knew where the characters were headed, and why, I was proved wrong. Caleb’s an odd conglomeration of emotional drama, but Scott’s performance somehow brings this mess of a guy together. Every interaction strikes just the right tone, and even the minor supporting characters feel completely lived in. That, too, can be a marker of a better year than average—pleasant surprises from unlikely places. (Scott Renshaw)

Sundance 2009: Coming to America

[Film Fest] I don't mean to bang yet again on Sundance's knee-jerk liberal biases--OK, yeah, I sort of do – but if there's anything the audiences here might love more than a movie about people trying to lift themselves out of their disadvantaged lives, it's a movie in which the people trying to lift themselves out of their disadvantaged lives are immigrants.

That’s not to issue a blanket dismissal of such plots. Just last year, Sugar did a wonderful job of dealing with an impoverished protagonist’s culture shock. But we’ve also seen a lot of movies in recent years – particularly at Sundance in recent years – about newcomers immersed in the slow boil of our American melting pot. And as individual as some of these stories may be, you start to wonder how many different ways there are to talk about what it’s like to get to – and be in – 21st-century America for the first time.

Cherien Dabis’ Amreeka certainly comes at the subject from a solidly intriguing point of view. Palestinian single mother Muna Farah (Nisreen Faour), fearing for the future of her 15-year-old son Fadi, takes advantage of receiving a long-delayed visa request and moves to Illinois, where her sister and her family live. Many of the expected challenges ensue – Fadi facing bigoted classmates; well-educated Muna winding up underemployed at a fast-food restaurant – while compounding them by setting the story in 2003 during the early days of the Iraq War. Faour delivers a rich performance, somewhat making up for a narrative that races through Fadi’s Americanization from fresh of the boat to getting stoned and wearing hip-hop gear in seemingly a matter of days. It’s understated, and only a little bit familiar.

More familiar – though only partly – is the milieu of Sin Nombre. Writer/director Cary Joji Fukunaga follows three primary protagonists over several days: Sayra, a Honduran teenager attempting to get to New Jersey with her estranged birth father; Casper, a young gang member in southern Mexico; and Smiley, Casper’s 11-year-old protégé. After Casper saves Sayra by killing one of his own fellow gang brothers, the two wind up on the run together, leaving Smiley’s story mostly in the dust – and that becomes the movie’s biggest frustration. The hardships of the illegal immigrant journey to America have been covered in many other movies (most recently something like La Misma Luna); far less so the way a pre-adolescent would-be gangsta has to make adult choices far too soon. The gang angle gives Sin Nombre a distinctive point of view, but it’s also the point of view that sometimes gets lost in the river crossings and immigration raids. (Scott Renshaw)