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-Keith Pelczarski
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Going Nutty at the Sundance Film Festival
If you've been following me on Twitter or Friendfeed or even Facebook, you already know that I went to Park City, Utah last month for the Sundance Film Festival. If you don't follow me on those sites, well, you know now. I was lucky enough to stay with my ol' college buddies Jake and Sonja, who were gracious hosts and who helped me learn to ski. A lot of people have asked me what I saw while I was there and what I thought, so here goes.
First off, what I didn't see was celebrities. I heard a bunch of directors talking about their films in the Q&A after screenings, and there were a bunch of actors there, but I didn't see any big big stars. That's okay with me, but it seems to be very disappointing to people when they ask about the festival. I did see a moose, which I thought was a cow at first. I also kept seeing a kid who I thought must've been John Krasinski's younger brother, except now that I looked on IMDb it looks like John is the youngest of three brothers. Maybe it was a cousin? Nephew?
Okay, so now you know what I didn't see. What I did see was 14 features in 7 days (and the moose, of course). The number is even higher if you count short films in addition. I'll share some thoughts on each, but won't go into too much detail lest we drift into spoiler territory.
The Yes Men Fix the World
Sundance '09 page | IMDb | Official site
The Yes Men are prankster activists who create mock corporate websites in order to get themselves invited to speak at big conferences as spokespeople for big companies like Dow Chemical, Exxon Mobil, etc. I gave these guys a standing ovation, not so much because the film was technically great (although it wasn't bad) but rather because they were doing their quixotic best to make a real difference, to point out stuff that's really, really wrong about business as usual. It reminded me of Michael Moore, but felt better going down for me (Moore has started playing a bit too fast-and-loose with the facts). I especially appreciated the Yes Men's honest portrayal of their own nerves and anxiety as they prepared for their pranks. This was not only a highly amusing documentary, but it was also quite inspiring to see the impact that ordinary folks can have if they decide to give a crap. As a special bonus, they handed out a great issue of the NY Times from the future possible.
The Girlfriend Experience
IMDb
This was billed as "An Evening with Steven Soderbergh" but that was a pretty poorly kept secret. Even an industry outsider like me was able to guess what would be screened just by looking at IMDb. This film was shown as a work in progress, so I can't really come down on it too much, but it dragged a bit for me. It was an intriguing concept exploring the world around a high-priced call girl through layers of story revealed out of sequence. The thing that kind of lost me was the amount of redundancy in the clips. That might be a function of it not being finished. If not, it requires a more patient viewer than I. It would be really interesting to see the thing in the straight chronological order without all the timeshifting. I'm not even sure how long it would be. It felt like it might've been half as long without the redundancy, but again, it was a work in progress. Well, it seems as if I've caught the redundancy bug, so I'll quit while I'm behind here.
The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle
Sundance '09 page | IMDb | Official site
The title is a mouthful, but the film was a trip. No, really, there were so many hallucination sequences that it felt like I was having flashbacks. That's not to say that it wasn't fun. What's not to like about a ragtag band of janitors getting messed up on chemical-laden cookies? There was a weird, paranoid, yet funny vibe throughout that was reminiscent of "Repo Man." The film touched on a variety of topics ranging from religion to big business to consumerism and more. After the show the director said that he wasn't really trying to make a particular statement so much as just getting a bunch of stuff out of his head into the script. Depending on your own mindset, this movie could give you a lot of food for thought. Me, I just enjoyed the sensation of warm cookies.
Cold Souls
Sundance '09 page | IMDb | Official site
One of my festival favorites, "Cold Souls" is a metaphysical cautionary tale which will certainly draw comparisons to films like "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and "Being John Malkovich." Paul Giamatti played himself, and did a great job. You could really believe that he was Paul Giamatti. Beyond that, the film made you think about the nature of identity, and entertained along the way with a quirky story and good production.
Humpday
Sundance '09 page | IMDb | Official site
I saw Humpday on a Wednesday, but it didn't have anything to do with being over the hump of the work week. No, this Humpday was a comic story about two college friends reunited after years traveling different paths through their lives. In addition to grappling with some awkwardness between them, they both wrestle with their own feelings about their lives since college. All the grappling and wrestling results in them agreeing to do a non-gay male-on-male porn flick together for Hump!, a real-world amateur porn film festival in Seattle. Hilarity ensues, and not the kind of cheap gay porn jokes you might have come to expect from Hollywood. Sure, there are jokes, but they aren't cheap jokes. No, these are high-class dude-on-dude jokes.
Sin Nombre
Sundance '09 page | IMDb | Official site
Sin Nombre is a powerhouse story, chronicling the journey of illegal immigrants traveling through Mexico on their way to the United States. Paralleling and intersecting that storyline is a tale about the brutality of gang life and its impact on two young men. Desperation and hopelessness run through this film, but so do hope and perseverance. It's a poignant mix. Normally, subtitles really get in the way of me getting engaged in a film, but they weren't an obstacle here. The emotions were so raw, so real, that they spoke a language all their own. It was my favorite of the festival.
Mystery Team
Sundance '09 page | IMDb | Official site
Three childhood friends solve crimes. No case too big, no case too tough. Will also work for fruit roll-ups. In the tradition of Encyclopedia Brown, the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, et al., these kids are detectives. Their early success in mystery-solving didn't translate well to their teen years, but they don't seem to have noticed the world changing around them. This film is the first feature-length production by Derrick Comedy, whose films are usually of the internet short variety. The transition isn't completely smooth, as it felt like the film could've been shorter, but there are lots of laughs along the way.
Big Fan
Sundance '09 page | IMDb
Patton Oswalt stars in this portrait of an obsessed NY Giants football fan who has his loyalty tested. Written and directed by Robert D. Siegel, former editor-in-chief of The Onion and writer of "The Wrestler", the film managed to be both depressing and uplifting in a twisted way. Fandom is an interesting thing; it's staggering the amount of emotional investment that gets put into something over which there's no real control. This picture really holds that up to the light, and holds up well.
Peter & Vandy
Sundance '09 page | IMDb
"Peter and Vandy" examines the rise and fall of a relationship. This one, like Soderbergh's high-priced hooker flick, tells the story in a non-linear fashion. I don't mind that technique per se, in fact I really liked how Tarantino used it in "Pulp Fiction" and "Reservoir Dogs" (a Sundance film back in the day). The thing is, shifting the timeline around doesn't make the story more interesting if the story isn't that interesting in the first place. A lot of the story dwells on the mundane, which I suppose is different than what you get from a lot of films, but personally I don't go to the theater for mundane. There's enough of that in real life. This is sounding a bit harsher than I mean it to. It wasn't a terrible film or anything, but it was a little underwhelming when held up next to all the really kick-ass films at the festival.
Adam
Sundance '09 page | IMDb
Adam is sweet on a woman who lives in his building, and she's sweet on him. Adam has Asperger's syndrome, on the autism spectrum, so there are some challenges there. It's a sweet movie, and enjoyable enough, but it was a little bit Gump-y (Forrest-y?) in spots. (They actually made a joke about this in film when Adam says something along the lines of "I'm not Forrest Gump, you know.") Again, the film isn't as bad as it might sound from my tepid description, but that's largely a function of comparison to all the kick-ass things seen so close to it. For what it's worth, "Adam" did win the Alfred P. Sloan prize “for its credible and moving portrayal of an engineer with Asperger's Syndrome whose passion for science helps him in his struggle to achieve a meaningful relationship.” So it's got that going for it, which is nice.
Død Snø (Dead Snow)
Sundance '09 page | IMDb | Official site
As one of the Sundance staffers said before the midnight show at the Egyptian, "When I say Nazi, you say zombie!" Pretty much all you need to know about this film is that it's full of Nazi zombies. There can't be too many people on the fence about that sort of thing, can there? You're either for the zombies or you're against the zombies. Personally, I am a huge zombie fan, and I wasn't disappointed, even though these zombies weren't nearly slow or stupid enough for my taste. But come on, they're Nazis! Not quite as funny as "Shaun of the Dead" or "Evil Dead" it was still on the funny side of the zombie spectrum. As an added bonus, they warmed up the crowd with a very entertaining slasher short entitled "Treevenge" about what happens when the Christmas trees decide that they've had enough. Ho ho ho!
Animation Spotlight
I had high hopes for the animated shorts program, but it ended up being a mixed bag. The highlights of this program were "This Way Up" (an Academy Award nominee), "Dear Beautiful," "Western Spaghetti," and "I Am So Proud of You." The lowlights won't be named, but my friends and I wondered how the Sundance programmers ended up with this group out of the hundreds of submissions they received.
We Live In Public
Sundance '09 page | IMDb | Official site
This was the Grand Jury Prize Winner for the documentary category. It follows the rise and fall of one Josh Harris, an internet/new media personality who has done a lot of personal and professional exploration of online surveillance and connectedness. It was an interesting, thought-provoking film, though some of the assertions that it made were annoyingly over-general. In particular, I had trouble with the line of logic that went like this: 1) Josh Harris was an internet pioneer. 2) Harris is narcissistic and engaged in some really invasive social experiments. 3) Therefore, every social site is inherently narcissistic in nature. I thought maybe I was reading too much into it, but then the director said in the Q&A that she thought that online community/networking sites are driven primarily by narcissism. That seems cynical to me, and discounts the desire to connect with other people and share something meaningful, not just "look at me, look at me, look at me." The film was technically well-made, with years and years of footage, and was an interesting biopic about Harris. The broader conclusions were a bit of a stretch, though. They looked in the mirror for data, and narcissism was staring back.
Push: Based on the Novel by Sapphire
Sundance '09 page | IMDb
Not to be confused with the superpower flick "Push" coming out in theaters now, this film won both the grand jury and audience prizes for dramatic film -- high acclaim, indeed. The premise of the film is grim, telling the story of an illiterate teenage girl in Harlem who is pregnant with her father's child (again). Doesn't sound like a feel-good sort of flick, does it? Well, I honestly wouldn't have gone to see it if it hadn't been the dramatic winner at the festival, but I'm glad that I did. There were lots of really strong performances, and a story that was really moving without being cheesy. You probably wouldn't want to have this as a first date movie or anything, but it was worthy of all the accolades.
Overall, Sundance was a great experience and I would recommend it to anyone who loves movies and doesn't mind being challenged a bit. You might not see a bunch of stars, especially if you go toward the tail end, but seeing so many great independent films in such a short span is a real treat. With any luck, this will become an annual tradition for me. A film nerd could get used to that sort of thing....
:: Keith 23:22 [link] :: ::